Thanks for contributing.

I am wondering if you could provide further information or references to the IP issues you refer to. Are these organizational issues (for example: An individual contributor haven’t cleared the issues with his employer)?

~Johannes

I think in general it would be better for the industry as a whole for “consumers” of open source to contribute more back. Yet there are many reasons that doesn’t happen so much–not least of them, the IP issues. (For example, we would not want any contributions to Spring that could potentially have unclear IP issues.) I think the issue of advantaging competitors is not so significant–very often, useful contributions are quite generic, like the frameworks themselves. Clearly it would be unreasonable, for example, to expect a company that implemented one of its core business algorithms as an extension of Spring to open that up to its rivals.

But of course using the framework and reporting bugs/suggesting improvements on mailing lists/issue trackers is an important contribution in itself. It is *definitely* short-sighted to be a “silent” user of any project, open source or commercial: not in your interests or anyone else’s.

Rgds
Rod

Thanks for contributing.

I am wondering if you could provide further information or references to the IP issues you refer to. Are these organizational issues (for example: An individual contributor haven't cleared the issues with his employer)?

~Johannes

I think in general it would be better for the industry as a whole for “consumers” of open source to contribute more back. Yet there are many reasons that doesn't happen so much–not least of them, the IP issues. (For example, we would not want any contributions to Spring that could potentially have unclear IP issues.) I think the issue of advantaging competitors is not so significant–very often, useful contributions are quite generic, like the frameworks themselves. Clearly it would be unreasonable, for example, to expect a company that implemented one of its core business algorithms as an extension of Spring to open that up to its rivals.

But of course using the framework and reporting bugs/suggesting improvements on mailing lists/issue trackers is an important contribution in itself. It is *definitely* short-sighted to be a “silent” user of any project, open source or commercial: not in your interests or anyone else's.

Rgds
Rod