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Comment by weland | Hacker News Reader

More often than not, he wasn't referring to contributions in the FSF sense (i.e. people modifying code that they don't send back to the original authors). He simply meant that many of the institutions that run and use OpenBSD, which is available entirely for free, don't give anything in return - be it in the form of code, money, documentation or promotion. Another free license solves only a small proportion of this problem.

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    Another free license solves only a small proportion of this problem.

True, but with BSD I'm not sure you can view it as a problem to begin with since the license is explicitly designed to legally absolve the user of all obligation to do just that.

If you desire monetary contributions be made, some kind of commercial license is the solution. If you desire modifications be contributed back, there are other licenses that cover that expectation. And there's nothing stopping you from creating your own license.

If you don't require or expect any contributions back or monetary contributions under any scenarios, then BSD is a great license for that.

I'm sure when confronted with a lack of contribution (monetary, labor, code modifications), most companies would reply "Well, yes. That's why we chose software with a BSD license."

There are things in this world that are not a business.

But also this things don't have money to spend on software they can use for free. Or time to contribute in any other way.

Yes, but forget monetary/labor contributions. I think jkyle has a point: the BSD license is a "no strings attached" license, and so it can be chosen by people who presumably don't even want to promote the software, advertise the fact they are using it or campaign for more software like it. If Theo De Raadt finds this disappointing, maybe he should choose a different license?

The problem is that de Raadt and crew have a much bigger priority: that OpenBSD's code proliferate and prevent any duplication of effort in creating secure programs. They've explicitly stated in the past that they consider proprietary use of their code to be a good thing (albeit it would be better if they'd push some money back to the OpenBSD crowd) because it prevents those companies from having to create yet another in-house-developed (and probably half-assed) security implementation.

That's a perfectly reasonable priority! It's just that it possibly comes along with some disappointment, caused by people who don't contribute anything back (money, code, documentation or simply promoting the software).

Indeed. I'm personally glad it's the priority; knowing full well that non-free software ain't going away any time soon (alas), I'd much rather that non-free software be using well-designed and thoroughly-audited OpenBSD-derived code than using some hacked-up monstrosity in its place.

    The problem is that de Raadt and crew have a much bigger priority: that OpenBSD's code proliferate and prevent any duplication of effort in creating secure programs.

I think that's an excellent reason to use a BSD license. If you want to facilitate wide industry adoption that has zero resistance from legal departments, BSD is an obvious choice.

There is definitely business value in contributing to these projects.

First of all, by contributing, you show a mutual interest in the increased quality of the solution. This in turn will motivate the maintainers to better understand the business concerns of the new contributor.

By contributing, the contributor will gain insights in the workings of the solution, thus increasing the quality of the product itself. (As an analogy: by taking apart an amplifier, you increase your understanding of the way the product satisfies your needs).

Last but not least, contributing generates good-will, subsequently increasing the probability of adequate answers to support questions.

There's also a lot of business value in freeriding when the software license explicitly allows you to do so.

Sure, the business values I mentioned are like 'extra income' over the free-riding 'income' you mention.

(Now this makes me wonder how to book the use of open source software in management accounting)

It's also free on-the-job training for your in-house developers, and it probably also helps your company when you're recruiting developers--you can look for potential employees among the other contributors to the same OSS project your company uses.

I think from the BSD point of view, contributing back is seen more of a weak social obligation than a legal one. You contribute back because it's a nice thing to do for those giving you free stuff, not because of section 6 paragraph 1 of some ten page legal document.

Asking people to consider it is the right thing to do. Switching license would defeat the entire point.

There probably exists lots of differing experience on this, but I've found it easier to get permission to contribute paid work on a tit-for-tat basis, because it alleviates the "why should we let our competitors use our work for free" question.

I don't think that it is a coincidence that GPL led to Red Hat, a billion dollar support and services company, while BSD let to a multitude of hardware companies. The former is direct and the latter indirect profits of their respective software. The difference in worldview leads to different business ideas.

> I don't think that it is a coincidence that GPL led to Red Hat, a billion dollar support and services company, while BSD let to a multitude of hardware companies.

GPL isn't directly responsible for Red Hat. The popularity of GNU/Linux at the time (vs *BSD) of it's inception is responsible for that. Licence had nothing to do with it.

Don't take my word for it. Take Bob Young's.

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