Open source should be about optimisation. For example you have some infrastructure code (like LLVM, Linux kernel, etc.) that brings you little competitive advantage but you benefit from distributed maintenance - OSS is a perfect fit. And people using it but not contributing back is not really that big of a deal.
The incentives to upstream exist without licensing requirement - maintaining a fork which when the upstream knows nothing about what you're doing and could break you with every commit is not fun. You also lose on distributed review/support aspect. At the end of the day if someone finds a way to profit and not contribute back - how does that impact you ? Unless they are a direct competitor and you OSS something critical - in which case like people above said - you should rethink your business model.
Also OSS has a bunch of secondary benefits - recruiting, developer mindshare, etc.
I think viewing OSS as a generosity is not sustainable, and the incentives exist even without restrictive licensing.
Sure it's nice when you can motivate it like that but I feel that the long tail of open source projects doesn't fit your description but are projects driven by a few enthusiasts.
Open source should be about optimisation. For example you have some infrastructure code (like LLVM, Linux kernel, etc.) that brings you little competitive advantage but you benefit from distributed maintenance - OSS is a perfect fit. And people using it but not contributing back is not really that big of a deal.
The incentives to upstream exist without licensing requirement - maintaining a fork which when the upstream knows nothing about what you're doing and could break you with every commit is not fun. You also lose on distributed review/support aspect. At the end of the day if someone finds a way to profit and not contribute back - how does that impact you ? Unless they are a direct competitor and you OSS something critical - in which case like people above said - you should rethink your business model.
Also OSS has a bunch of secondary benefits - recruiting, developer mindshare, etc.
I think viewing OSS as a generosity is not sustainable, and the incentives exist even without restrictive licensing.