The contract is broken for open source developers

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

Important, if true:

What has happened though isn’t so much that these companies are “stealing” but that they forgot the contract. The unwritten contract held between corporations and FLOSS developers was basically this:

“I, FLOSS developer, agree to create software and release it for free so long as you, corporation, give me recognition, a job, or at least help build it.”

Consumer internet companies however are just not bothering with this. They frequently will use software and then slander the author of it claiming it’s “crap”. They often will hide the software they use rather than admit they couldn’t build it all themselves. And, as RMS is finding, they keep innovations and improvements to themselves rather than share.

As this trend rises, the value proposition for releasing software for free begins to dwindle. If you’re not really going to get that great a job, and nobody can see who’s using your software, and even worse the companies using it claim it’s crap even though they use it, well then why bother?

Post external references

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    http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1286998492.html
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