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Rexford, NY
Marcus D. Hanwell | Marcus leads the Open Chemistry project, developing open source tools for chemistry, bioinformatics, and materials science research. He completed an experimental PhD in Physics at the University of Sheffield, a Google Summer of Code developing Avogadro and Kalzium, and a postdoctoral fellowship combining experimental and computational chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh before moving to Kitware in late 2009. He is now a Technical Leader in the Scientific Computing group at Kitware, a member of the Blue Obelisk, blogs, @mhanwell on Twitter and is active on Google+. He is passionate about open science, open source and making sense of increasingly large scientific data to understand the world around us.
Authored Comments
I think KDE can be a great project for new developers, and is one of the first I contributed to. It is a very large and established project, but it is split into many smaller subprojects that can satisfy most interests from low-level graphics programming in C++/OpenGL, through to plasma and the use of interpreted languages to create useful widgets in a relatively short amount of time. The community is friendly and inviting, they take part in the various programs such as Google Summer of Code to encourage new contributors, and have an annual developer conference.
I take your point, but I don't think it is that simple. You seem to assume that all open source is developed/expected to be developed by volunteers. My intent was to present an alternate view, and I am well aware it is not the only one. There is quite a lot of development done by professionals in their paid time, and permissive licenses offer a simple way of sharing code that can equally be incorporated into many GPLed works as well as proprietary works. If it is important to guarantee freedom to any and all users of your work, then the GPL licenses are an ideal choice, but freedom is not the one and only reason to develop open source code.
We should also be aware that the GPL has some downsides, such as license compatibility and complexity. They may well be worth it, and this likely depends on the project and its contributors. There are also examples of GPL code being taken without companies contributing back - Apple adhered to the letter of the GPL if not the spirit in the early days of webkit development for example. I don't see how I am "promoting ignorance" in what I wrote, and disagree that the only reason to choose MIT, BSD, Apache etc is "to manipulate a community into doing the foundational work". I agree that there are many companies using the GPL and running sustainable businesses, with Red Hat being a prime example.
There are also examples of multiple stakeholders contributing to software platforms licensed under MIT/BSD/Apache for their mutual benefit, with members of the wider community free to take part in development and/or use the code in their own projects. I think this is a much better model than dual licensing with copyright assignment of contributions for example. There are many licenses and models that can be used in a software community, and I will continue to contribute to projects whether they are GPL or MIT/BSD/Apache. I also have a deep admiration of the Linux kernel community, and think that the GPL was a great choice for that community - I would love to contribute to the Linux kernel if I can find the time/a meaningful way to contribute there. I don't think there is a one size fits all license, and seeing the issues the Drupal community had with the Bootstrap license inspired me to write this article (along with my own experiences in different software communities over the years).