Those who have been around the free and open source software world long enough have heard “We open source it, and then developers show up and do work for free” at least once and have called bullshit on it at least once.

It turns out that people don’t go and work on software for free. They are either modifying software to scratch their own itch (in which case they’re getting 99+% of the code for nothing, so contributing a small bit back is the equivalent of paying for it – with their time rather than money) or it’s a good bit of fun.

So why do software projects that are dual licensed with a commercial license get fewer outside contributions? I think it’s quite simple: people don’t tend to spend their spare time making other people money while making none for themselves. Simply, these projects are left with only contributions from those being paid to work on it (usually by the company who sells the commercial license) and people/companies scratching an itch. Projects that aren’t dual licensed are more likely to have contributors from several companies as then it’s not all-but-one company spending time and money to make another company money.