So what does the GPL bring to the party

Jordan Wiens is a friend of mine. I originally met Jordan when the university he was working for was looking at vulnerability management solutions.  Though he did not choose StillSecure VAM, we still struck up a nice relationship and over the years have kept in touch.  Jordan started helping out on some reviews for various magazines, often presents at Black Hat, DefCon and other security shows and most recently has become a blogger. He covers the security beat for Network Computing. Jordan also has his own private blog here.  Jordan is one sharp young dude. So when he posted the following comment on my post on the elves of the open source continuum I read it carefully.  Here is what Jordan said:

Ironically, open source isn't just about source. Many open source products include documentation done by the users, support done by the users, QA and beta testing, etc. There are many different ways that folks who benefit "give back". The community is more than just the developers.

How about one that hits close to home -- look at Snort, for example. The number of people who've contributed source is far, far smaller than the number of people who've contributed signatures. The value in the product comes from both. So to say that the product hasn't benefited based on the number of people who contributed source is to misunderstand the open source model.

People contribute so freely in those ways because of the open source license. They know that the product is unlikely to up and disappear, taking their work with it, and if it does, someone can fork it. /That's/ the value of open source.

Jordan makes a great point. I did not mean to disrespect the significant role that the communities play in the open source world.  Between beta testing product and providing feedback, suggesting features, providing free tech support on the forums and boards, the community members certainly do a lot to help in the success of any open source project. 

However, to Jordan's point about people who have contributed Snort signatures and I will define those as signatures that make it into the official release, the fact is the amount of folks contributing is paltry compared to the user base.  In my work with the Open Source Snort Rules Consortium, that is something we tried to come up with an answer to.  How do you get more people involved.  So Jordan, I would have to say that the fact is, a very small amount of people (I would guess under a 100, out of a million users) actually contribute signatures on any regular basis.  Here is another point where I disagree with Jordan.  He says people put their faith in an open source license (like the GPL I guess) because they know the product will not up and disappear taking their work with it.  Again, the fact is that once something is open sourced, regardless of what license it is released under, it cannot be taken back.  Future versions of that product could be pulled from open source (like Nessus 3.0 for example), but once a product is released open that version must stay open.  As to work contributed by the community, again you have to look at what the individual license says, but the author should maintain their copyright at the very least.

All in all, again I am not seeing a clear reason why the GPL offers an advantage over any other license that allows software to be free and the source code available.  Jordan thanks for writing and as usual your points are well thought out.  Speak to you soon and good luck!