[hnfong]

Because that's revisionist history?

Do you have any written evidence that this was a commonly accepted "social contract"? Because I've been using FLOSS since last year's of last millennium as well and I've never heard of such attitudes until recent years. (Even today, I rarely see OSS project leaders actually saying they expected all users to give back something -- it's mostly other users who somehow assume everyone else needs to do so. And if I may say, making presumptions on the intentions of OSS developers is a bit... presumptuous to say the least, even if well intentioned.)

One of the few "giving back" contracts I'm aware of is the GPL. Which explicitly states in the license that you need to open source your modifications if you distribute the binary. Vim nags you a bit to donate to Uganda children, but that's explicit as well.

[pbhjpbhj]

You demand evidence, implicitly, but give none ... calling something revisionist (suggesting purposeful misleading, ie lying) without any backup is, um, a bit unfriendly. Maybe it was just that people in projects I came across followed that pattern of share-and-share-alike?

>Even today, I rarely see OSS project leaders actually saying they expected all users to give back something //

I've never seen it _demanded_ of anyone. Also, I think it largely went away in the early 2000s, as more, varied licenses came online bringing OSS a much broader base.

Pay-it-forward seemed to be a growing movement across society (well before Oprah latched on to it) but particularly on the 'net/burgeoning web. I used Slackware as my primary and got a lot of code from Sourceforge as well as using Debian and RedHat packages later.

Perhaps it was our approach [my, and other people with this impression]. That the first [and only] FOSS license I heard of was GPL, that the movement rallied (to my recollection) around that banner and so the idea of giving back was embedded -- I'm not a programmer. My self-apportioned part early on was to share Linux, help people with compilations and installs; act as a helper and advocate I suppose. It wasn't an explicit obligation, maybe it comes from transactional thinking having grown up in a Western Capitalist society under right wing governments?

[I'll have a dig around for some sources if I get chance.]