> That seems to be the point being debated now. When a megacorp forks an OSS project and cuts out the author, how does that encourage developers? How does that encourage OSS?
When a megacorp forks an OSS project, the maintainer should know that it is allowed. If you are MIT licensed, that megacorp can resell your software, create a business around it and make billions in revenue. That is allowed. If they are bothered by it, they either should use a different license or take the software proprietary. To me, the problem here is that Microsoft hasn't properly followed OSS license here. My qtile window manager config file has copyright notice of all the authors. That is how you follow MIT license. Another problem I see here is not knowing how to do license compliance. Also, why should it matter if the one who forks it is an individual or a mega corp. As far as OSS is concerned, it's irrelevant.
> And for that matter, perhaps less ideological but practical, how does that encourage small startups who want to be as open as possible while wanting to be able to scratch out a living working on something they care about?
I have been an OSS guy for a long time. And think OSS in business is a very tricky and hard problem. If you don't have the reason to be OSS, it's better to be honest about it. There are other ways to support OSS. Just support like 10% or even 5% of the dependencies you use as a business and that will make wonders. And be honest about things. Obviously, there are success stories. But if you have seen the recent trend, people are in the mindset that someone forking your OSS is ripping off of them. Not stopping to think that it was allowed all along.
> You suggest staying closed source, rather than tweaking an open-source license to limit corporate forks, for the purpose of protecting OSS philosophy. It strikes me as odd.
Because the moment you "tweak" the OSS license the way you are talking, it stops being OSS. Also, your proprietary software still needs to abide by the OSS licenses it uses. If I use a OSS software, it should abide by the OSS license somewhere in the output.
I think it's better to be honest about OSS than being like... we love OSS (Just like Microsoft <3 Open SOurce) and saying.. you know what? Don't use this software in this industry because that where my business happens. Oh and since you don't agree with my politics, you can't use it. I am not gonna list them, but there are licenses which does these and they are exclusionary. Free as in Freedom is what brings in people to OSS. The moment you start excluding people, it's a slippery slope. It's already happening in politics and else where. Let's just keep software away from it all please.
