[protomyth]

It would be polite, and NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD all have frameworks for companies to contribute money. Some folks just don't, but the license doesn't require it.

Companies that modify the code would do well to contribute that code back. It really isn't a matter of nicety in that circumstance, but a cost savings measure. Constantly having to patch after each release or, worse, being stuck because the community picked a different solution since the company's solution was not presented makes for increased costs. Losing the testing and expertise of the community should be incentive enough.

I have never believed requiring participation like a copyleft license would actually improves things. They don't want to engage and forced engagement really isn't going to help you. Let them learn the problems of going it alone.

[prodigal_erik]

Sometimes the GPL is a win simply because "otherwise upstream won't have our patches" isn't a high enough short-term cost to overcome the bureaucratic inertia required to release them, but "otherwise we can't use their code at all" makes them compare the cost of license clearance to the cost of reimplementing the GPL'd code.

[protomyth]

I'd rather have organizations that get the deal then companies forced into it. To often we get "code dumps" with the GPL and not an engaged company.