This concept of a social contract misrepresents both the letter and the spirit of open source, including copyleft, and gives people who don't know any better the impression that using open source would obligate to do something beyond just complying with the license (even if it's presented as a matter of etiquette rather than an actual legal obligation).
If anyone's out there writing open source code because they anticipate getting anything in return from anybody, ever, for their efforts, they have misunderstood the spirit of the thing and will most likely be disappointed.
Eh? The GPL is a copyleft license that was made to do just this, both in letter and in spirit. "Getting code back" is its explicit purpose.
> If anyone's out there writing open source code because they anticipate getting anything in return from anybody, ever, for their efforts, they have misunderstood the spirit of the thing and will most likely be disappointed.
Open Source and Free Software are similar but different, and you're conflating the two. Redhat is the canonical example of someone who writes FOSS because they anticipate getting stuff for it. Atlassian also writes specifically open-source stuff; you can inspect it, but you can't use it without paying a license.
And I think you're semantically wrong anyway - if you're writing free software because you're community-minded, then it's not unreasonable to expect some engagement from the community, especially for a popular project. No-one is legally obligated to help you, but at the same time, for so many to use your stuff and so few to kick a little back over so many years is something that a reasonable person could be a bit sour on.
Yes it is. Just because you are 'community-minded' doesn't mean you get that - there is no expectation there unless explicitly warranted.
Principally, the food is a scarce resource whereas the equivalent to software would be where the community were competing amongst themselves to make a single great sausage; that sausage would be placed on a table by the kerb and people outside would be able to take away as many molecularly identical copies of the sausage as they provided energy to create. The community can socialise amongst themselves and you are free to join in but there is no requirement to do so.
To continue with the (now tortured) bbq analogy: as the sausages go cold (=software ages), someone has to cook up more fresh ones.
I think a great idea was just born! #sausagecoldwar
This poor characterisation of me has nothing to do with the topic, and is just abuse.
There is an expectation at a BBQ, though this differs culturally. There is not such an expectation for FOSS projects, unless explicitlty stated somewhere.
If you want to compare the two; tell me why BBQs are generally not open to anyone, whereas there are few restrictions on FOSS contributors? What are the consumables in a BBQ (food) versus a FOSS project (developer time), and who contributes these in each case?
> tell me why BBQs are generally not open to anyone
Hence why I specified "local community", not "someone's friend's backyard".
In any case, you're missing the point of the analogy, and extend any analogy and it will fall apart. You're missing the human aspect of FOSS, instead interpreting it as a literal legal case.
And yes, there is expectation in FOSS that others will pitch in and help when your project is extremely popular. ESR, coiner of the 'open source' term we're talking about, explicitly promoted it with the term 'enough eyeballs make all bugs shallow'. How is that not seen as an expectation of kicking back at least some effort?
ESRs quote praises the OS virtue of allowing source code to be read, it doesn't imply an obligation on all users of FOSS, legal, moral, or otherwise.