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Comment by n42 | Hacker News Reader

I have contributed plenty of bug fixes for tools we use at work. I have never had any concern about the license or philosophies of the maintainers, because at the end of the day, all I cared about was unblocking my work. The fact that they own my code is inconsequential to that goal. A rising tide lifts all boats, and so on.

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> The fact that they own my code is inconsequential to that goal.

To some extend. Projects that are “open-source” but not MIT piss me off because they make my life harder.

I know that’s not strictly fair, but nonetheless true.

How do they make your life harder compared to projects where the source is not available?

Maybe he works for a proprietary-software company that wants to just take the code and never give back. Or maybe he is dissatisfied with lots of OSS licenses being mutually incompatible.

But it is weird that just MIT seems to be acceptable to him, I would think some BSD licenses variant would be OK as well. But maybe even an acknowledgement of the hard work of others is too much to ask for...

When the source is not available, I don’t have to think about whether or not I can use it.

When the source is available, I need to carefully consider what the license is, and if it’s anything other than MIT I’ll have to go through a whole approval process to use the thing. Any experience with corporate means you know the thing cannot be used if you value your sanity.

I just fundamentally believe that making the source available should be the same as making it free/unencumbered. If you need the legal system to enforce your license for you something is going wrong.

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