Yes, this idea that you must “contribute back” is itself an infringement on privacy, and is why copyleft licenses are falling out of favor of things like MIT.
The spirit of the GPL was never a good idea.
The spirit of the GPL was never a good idea.
Same thing applies to free software. If we actually care about keeping that world alive, there’s gotta be some duty baked in—some expectation to contribute back, or at least not strip-mine the commons and bounce.
MIT’s blown up mostly because the big players don’t need the broader free software community anymore. They’ve got the scale, the headcount, and the cash to build and maintain their own internal ecosystems. So from their POV, permissive licenses like MIT are perfect—no obligations, no copyleft, no friction.
But let’s not pretend that’s “freedom” in the idealistic sense. It’s freedom to extract, sure. Freedom to integrate and forget where it came from. For a lot of people on HN, that’s fine. But if you care about the sustainability of the broader ecosystem? Then yeah, we’ve got to talk about duty, not just rights.