I hope libarchive gets something out of this, at least a nice donation or a t-shirt.
Feels like not getting anything in return from giant corporations making billions of dollars is in the spirit of BSD style open source.
Feels like not getting anything in return from giant corporations making billions of dollars is in the spirit of BSD style open source.
I think its perfectly OK for big companies to use FOSS tools without contributing anything. Why do you care? Authors gave it to the world for free or they would use more restrictive licence.
If the big company really wants some more stuff in it, they will probably contribute or donate anyway.
To me, it seems this is irrelevant methaphysical question that those that don't understand FOSS constantly try to empose. Once you accept money, its a different game, with money comes expectations... If you can't do something for free, and you expect to be payed for everything, you are probably not the one that will advance the field.
I admire people that passionatelly do stuff for nothing but pure passion and sence of accomplishment. That is the world I want to live in.
Yeah, there are predators, but if you really care about it you can probably create defensive strategy to minimize those chances.
If the project is not going full-tilt as a startup, then that juice might not be worth the squeeze. Do maintainers want to add administrative duties to their plate just to maybe preemptively knee-cap large tech companies? If I this were to become a reality and I were a decision maker at a large tech company, I'd opt to pay you from the Japanese subsidiary - just 'cause.