|
|
|
|
|
|
by growse
1377 days ago
|
|
|
True, but this misses the point about why a lot of people bother to contribute to OSS in the first place. A thriving OSS project is more than just the software, it's a community. People contribute features and bug fixes upstream so that everyone else can benefit, because in return they also get the benefit of others contributions. It's a body of collective endeavour. There's a social contract. Taking an established, OSS project and closing it destroys that community. Sure, it's legal, and everyone can continue to use the version they're currently on, but something dies, and trust is broken. |
|
|
No. If there is a vibrant community of developers, then that community can make the decision to fork. From the OP it seems like there is no community, just enterprise users that do not “give back” open source, which happens.
Even without the community, those enterprise users can create a new community of users to keep the current version maintained.
A similar situation occurs when a library supplier company goes under - which is one risk you take on whenever you depend on a commercially developed library (whether FLOSS or closed).