Here you go again. You have this fear because it is under a permisse license
that everyone is going to take it and make it proprietary. Everyone is gonna
claim the code as their own and the only savior is the GPL with its bearded
face and big shiny cape.
Guess what? Apache is under a permissive license and used all over and people
contribute code because they want to and are not forced to. The other web
server, nginx, is also under a permissive license and its marketshare is
growing by the day.
The point is that people will contribute to a big project if they think it is
worthwhile whether it is BSD or GPL. If they find value in it, they will
contribute back. I would think that most programmers these days know the
value in the original project and would rather contribute code back to Apache
and make it better than forking it on their own and maintaining it within a
company.
If they are that talented and get accepted to contribute code back to Apache,
then they are making the strides to contribute code back whether the license
is permissive or not. Its just that modern times have pushed the developers
towards the permissive licenses more than the GPL because they find it less
restrictive and feel more comfortable contributing back.
