I think I agree with you, but just to debate a bit: couldn't you contribute to open source for entirely selfish reasons?
For example:
- There is no existing project that completely meets my needs. This one almost does. I can patch it, but maintaining a separate fork would be a lot of trouble. Therefore, the easiest thing to get what I want is to contribute a patch to the main project.
- I want to prove to the world that I'm a good developer so that I can achieve my career goals. I can't easily show off my closed-source code. Therefore, the easiest way to get what I want is to release good open source code.
- I like having lots of open source software available for free, and I want to keep that paradigm functioning, therefore I view contributing as an investment with a good payoff for me. (This one is a bit more of a stretch.)
I think you can contribute to open source for truly selfish reasons, and that can work out well for everyone. It's similar to how you can run a business purely for profit, and as a necessary means to that end, provide a good product for a good price.
However, in practice, I personally contribute to open source partly for selfish reasons and partly out of altruistic ones.
It's possible, but I find those that are truly, "selfish" (and I don't mean this in a bad way) - such as companies that don't want to share the work they've done, but want to take advantage of the work of others, tend to go with a BSD licensed project where possible. That way they can build their appliance on to of the BSD stack, without sharing any of the technology they've built.
For example:
- There is no existing project that completely meets my needs. This one almost does. I can patch it, but maintaining a separate fork would be a lot of trouble. Therefore, the easiest thing to get what I want is to contribute a patch to the main project.
- I want to prove to the world that I'm a good developer so that I can achieve my career goals. I can't easily show off my closed-source code. Therefore, the easiest way to get what I want is to release good open source code.
- I like having lots of open source software available for free, and I want to keep that paradigm functioning, therefore I view contributing as an investment with a good payoff for me. (This one is a bit more of a stretch.)
I think you can contribute to open source for truly selfish reasons, and that can work out well for everyone. It's similar to how you can run a business purely for profit, and as a necessary means to that end, provide a good product for a good price.
However, in practice, I personally contribute to open source partly for selfish reasons and partly out of altruistic ones.