For me, copyleft licenses like the AGPL solve this issue.
I want to share my hobby projects with others sharing my interests. I want to provide everyone with tools that make the world a little bit better. I want to know others benefit from something I've created. I'm not sure I could (or even want to?) get paid for this.
But I don't want to be exploited. I don't like the idea of unethical companies essentially treating me as free labour.
Copyleft licenses make sure that just as companies benefit from my contributions for "free", I and the rest of the community benefit from their contributions right back. To me, choosing a license like the MIT is just foolishly playing into the hands of the callous giants.
How do you enforce this? For instance, what happenes when a company uses your code for a close source software. Is there methods to detect it? If so, do you have to pay out of your own pocket for the lawsuit?
Yeah that's an issue of its own. Maybe I'm naïve, but I'd like to think that most companies wouldn't take needless risks like that. I could possibly ask the FSF and EFF for help, if worse comes to worst.
I used to work for a company with a very large user base. On 2 separate occasions we found code with GPL2 notices. One was in a header file and the other was in a monitoring script (we were technically distributing this script because of our corporate structure and who was running the servers).
Management took the issue very seriously -- in both cases the code was pulled and the features rebuilt. Annual trainings were introduced to make sure people were aware of licenses and that they can't just pull in code without looking. The company actually contributes quite a bit to open source.
You're absolutely correct that most companies wouldn't take the risk. I've seen this taken so far as to need Legal approval for including any new libraries. Unfortunately a lot of developers don't understand what they are doing regarding licenses. They don't understand that they are taking a risk on behalf of the company when they include code with a copyleft license.
Every place I've ever worked for has used code in production with licenses requiring attribution, but it's very rare that I've seen it actually done.
I want to share my hobby projects with others sharing my interests. I want to provide everyone with tools that make the world a little bit better. I want to know others benefit from something I've created. I'm not sure I could (or even want to?) get paid for this.
But I don't want to be exploited. I don't like the idea of unethical companies essentially treating me as free labour.
Copyleft licenses make sure that just as companies benefit from my contributions for "free", I and the rest of the community benefit from their contributions right back. To me, choosing a license like the MIT is just foolishly playing into the hands of the callous giants.