> Not so, these developers chose to volunteer their time to benefit the commons, and corporations occupy the same spaces once in a while. Whether or not there are abusive companies who stake out those projects for rent-seeking, to build walled gardens of their own, looting the commons making money for themselves and giving nothing back, is really not a function of the person who did something good for everyone's benefit.

It actually is, that's my point. The developers knew there were licensing arrangements that guarded against that possibility, and they chose licenses specifically designed to allow such looting.

Reciprocity is great. But if you license your code in a way that says "Feel free to take this and make money off it and give nothing back" when there are other options, then you made that decision and there is no obvious fairness argument that somebody should be punished for doing what you granted them license to do.

The point of the linked video, at least the relevant part about the street scammers that hand you something and then ask for money, is that we actually banned that kind of behavior in public spaces because it was exploitative.

People have evolved to trust in reciprocity, because it's to our mutual benefit as a society that reciprocity remains a thing, and behaviors which are pathologically exploitative of this evolved trust in reciprocity are fully in the wrong. We decided it and made laws about it, something like 30 years ago. I learned this watching the keynote myself, and was surprised (as it actually hasn't stopped, in spite of legal protections which you might assume put a permanent end to the practice, to the contrary there are still monks handing out little plastic bracelets outside of the Smithsonian in DC, and no shortage of people who are not wise to it, with the $20 to spare.)

If the next generation of developers can't anymore trust in reciprocity and they have to decide on non-free licenses as a result of these companies which plainly don't understand reciprocity, we will all have lost something profoundly important. (And if we assume these companies and their behavior is purely exploitative now, what makes you think a legal machination like non-permissive licensing is going to have more success at getting them to stop doing that? You might have more avenues for recourse, but at what cost...)

It's not about fairness or punishment, it's about protection of our shared mutual benefit via social cues, and we can exile or something like exclude them from polite society if they are not well-behaved. From the receiving end it might look like a punishment, but I prefer to think of it more like as "corrective prodding" or "defensive posturing," and if it works the bad behavior will change, or if it doesn't, then hopefully at least the blast radius can be well-contained.

There are corporations which have learned to behave more thoughtfully and in harmony with OSS, who made a point to be aware of their community footprint, and sure plenty of such individuals too. Those who are not well-behaved can either hopefully see the light, or maybe there's no hope remaining, they will totally take over, and complete the tragedy of the commons. I submit humbly that we should not degrade the commons though as a response to their influence, because even with the bad actors around and their bad behavior, the facts show that our innate understanding of reciprocity is mostly still a beneficial trait, worthy of keeping around.