The software ecosystem revolves around the sharing of information and little code snippets but often once they enter this system they get lost without an owner forever. While little snippets are not licensable this ecosystem applies to a lot of larger works. This brings up a great example of Andrew Tanenbaum, who released MINIX, an operating system, under a BSD license. Intel swept MINIX and used it to make the Intel Management Engine (which was possible due to the licensing), making it the OS of the spyware microprocessor/backdoor now running in all Intel CPUs. Even if this OS has become the most used OS because of its large implementation the permissive license allowed Intel to take it from Tanenbaum and make the source of it closed.
It completely removes the programmer from the program when distributed and with guides and such with copyleft, you get the credit for your work when it inevitably gets modified and redistributed.
Why ShareAlike
With the example of Tanenbaum, the source code of Intel Management Engine was completely closed off so they could make it into the spyware that it became with the basic work done by Tanenbaum. The extent and full known use of the IME are still kinda unknown because of this fact and without open source code, no one can see it.
So this is why I like ShareAlike licenses, while ShareAlike is the term used by Creative Commons it’s a good term to describe the use of a clause in a license that requires all modifications that are distributed to be under the same or equivalent license/license terms. So this means that it has to be open source for all future distributions which solves this issue from the example above for software but it is also helpful with documents.
With another example with guides and such, using a ShareAlike means that the knowledge becomes virally free. All the information that gets added on in remixes and modifications compounds and has to be released so that people can do the same. So we all win.
Commercial
While you can also conclude that ShareAlike is restrictive for all the licensing that goes forward and we should just stop companies from using these programs like MINIX in commercial products and solutions with a non-commercial clause. But it goes against the philosophy of free cultural works which should not deny access to this because of intentions because something like newsletters or software CDs are distributing the work and doing it for a commercial benefit but it’s not nefarious. Plus there are thousands of situations where it doesn’t restrict access to the source. Also, we want these companies to help with the effort and it’s much better to just release the source or use ShareAlike compared to just not being able to use such a thing.
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