I think the situation isn't quite that dire, based on a couple factors:
First, keeping your own private fork of a GPL library isn't all that easy an option if you also expect to be able to benefit from any further work done by the project's maintainers. By going that route you're committing to spending a lot of time and money on a lot of hairy merging.
Second, for most serious companies the open source libraries they rely on are not a part of their secret sauce. You're really not maintaining a whole lot of competitive advantage by closely holding that tweak to MySQL's query optimizer that lets your social office supply reviewing site respond to requests with 1% lower latency. Unless fractionally shorter response times is really what your company has going for it, of course. In which case it's probably doomed anyway.
I think these two factors in concert mean that it's generally much better for a business to contribute back than to try and maintain an internal fork.
Of course, businesses only contribute back to projects that they've decided to use in the first place. Using GPL code for your SASS product probably won't cause any immediate problems. It can still be a huge strategic misstep, though, because it does still limit your options for how you can pivot in the future. If you're a startup that could also mean a big drop in your value in the eyes of a potential suitor.
> Using GPL code ... can still be a huge strategic misstep ... that could also mean a big drop in your value in the eyes of a potential suitor.
Yes, I think this explains the dearth of GPL contributions from recent startups.
I didn't mean to imply that GPL was ever the perfect way to license code that you also intend to use commercially. It's mediocre at best for that purpose, and intentionally so. After all, why would RMS want to facilitate production of proprietaty software?
What is undeniable is that the cloud and the startup scene are leading a new trend in FOSS licensing. The recent Github statistics show more MIT/BSD/Apache licensed projects than ever before. This shift will have far-reaching consequences on the FOSS ecosystem in the long term, and I'm just not sure whether those consequences will be good or bad. We've got too many idealists and too many VC-chasers in the same room here ;)
First, keeping your own private fork of a GPL library isn't all that easy an option if you also expect to be able to benefit from any further work done by the project's maintainers. By going that route you're committing to spending a lot of time and money on a lot of hairy merging.
Second, for most serious companies the open source libraries they rely on are not a part of their secret sauce. You're really not maintaining a whole lot of competitive advantage by closely holding that tweak to MySQL's query optimizer that lets your social office supply reviewing site respond to requests with 1% lower latency. Unless fractionally shorter response times is really what your company has going for it, of course. In which case it's probably doomed anyway.
I think these two factors in concert mean that it's generally much better for a business to contribute back than to try and maintain an internal fork.
Of course, businesses only contribute back to projects that they've decided to use in the first place. Using GPL code for your SASS product probably won't cause any immediate problems. It can still be a huge strategic misstep, though, because it does still limit your options for how you can pivot in the future. If you're a startup that could also mean a big drop in your value in the eyes of a potential suitor.