The commitment to run an open source project is huge, it's time consuming and draining.
Just putting the source code of something you built out there and saying "I built this, do what ever you want with it" is an incredibly generous thing to do and should always be encouraged.
Indeed, and originally that is what open source was all about!
One of my pet peeves is the conflating of open source with some sort of communal development model. Open source certainly enables that model, but open source is much bigger than that. Furthermore, you need other things to make the communal model work well - specifically funding (like a foundation or other patronage funding model) to support development and community management.
It is the only major database that has obtained DO-178B certification, allowing it to operate legally in this avionics environment and role.
Relaxing the strict controls upon it, and allowing contributions that do not pass the tests (in th3) will remove newer versions from avionics applications.
There are some people who are actively trying to fork, which means precisely the above.
I read at some point that Airbus has a software support agreement in place for SQLite that expires in 2050.
They can study the thing. If someone wants something you don't provide, they have the right to make their own derivative. Possibly with open contributions. You can take from these forks if they are public and open source too (but you control what you take and how).
If closed to contributions is the way you prefer writing your software, go for it! And you can always change your mind if needed.
Taking contributions can be very fulfilling, satisfying, nice and everything, but it can also be tiring since it can require to be pedagogical, polite, possibly make compromises, argue, etc. Your call and thanks for releasing your software in any case :-)
It's only bad if it seems open to contributing but actually isn't. Having the source available and even a copyleft license does NOT imply open for contributions.
Taking contributions requires effort on the part of the maintainer and I think it’s completely fair to want to open the code but not deal with that aspect of open source.
A contribution is a nice thing from the contributor.
As a contributor, I won't ask and then open a MR for a trivial contribution. It's too much trouble. I will ask for a bigger contribution to know if the author had related plans or their ways though.
As an author, I do state that I'd rather not have medium/big contributions before we discussed about it in the project's CONTRIBUTING file.
It is polite to do so, and I'd make the effort, but I certainly wouldn't call it a duty at all.
> and to disable the relevant features in the tools they use.
That isn't always possible, and even when it is this does not stop contributions perhaps coming in by other means (email if you have an address publicly known, issue reports, …).
You need enough funding to be able to work without outside help, an opinionated enough development philosophy that the cost of integrating external contributions exceeds the value they provide, and a reason to want to give away the source code.
Plenty of companies have the first two, but consider the program they are developing a competitive advantage.
> funding
Not everyone is coding for a commercial entity or otherwise monetising their projects, they might just be doing it for fun and want to share, but want to keep their version properly theirs.
A key reason for this can be licensing, if the licence is not a very permissive one. If you have a project that is AGPL and you later want to change to MIT, or if you do decide to go commercial, then if all the code is yours that is easy: just do it. You can't revoke the earlier licence of course, so the last GPL release is effectively dual-licensed. If you have numerous other contributors then you may have issues with relicensing their contributions. They might not care if you are going from AGPL to something more permissive (though that might*, depending on ideology) but they are more likely to if there is money involved.
Moving to a more restrictive license is often easier, but might still not be 100% plain sailing.