Open Sourcers Drop Software Religion for Common Sense | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com.
If you work with open source software at all, it’s really important to understand both the license of both the software you’re using in addition to the license of the software you’re writing. These details often go overlooked under the umbrella thought of open source being used for anything for free, but that’s not always the case.
Things get even more interesting when trying to make a business out of open source. This article is a great look into the view of developers moving from restrictive licenses like the GPL (WordPress) to something like the Apache license, which doesn’t require that modification must be contributed back to the originating project.
Apache doesn’t require that you contribute back to the community, thereby keeping the pieces you’ve built essentially private to your own eyes. That allows you to retain a competitive advantage, but does it defeat the purpose of open source? Not always.
There’s a lot of activity in the open source business world, this article is a neat look into it.