> I wouldn't work anywhere where I couldn't contribute to Open Source communities
Okay, but note that that's not at all what my comment was about. Contributing new code to an open project isn't a hard problem, in any company I'm familiar with, but taking a large closed project that your company wholly owns, and getting it released as MIT is a different matter.
Even if the project was begun under the assumption it would be opened someday (as I imagine may have been the case here), momentum is against it and it tends not to happen unless someone is passionate about making sure it does.
This is so true. When I worked at Yahoo, there were a couple of people dedicated to helping people open source projects, and would help us make the right choices (eg, don't open source for the sake of it, etc).
Okay, but note that that's not at all what my comment was about. Contributing new code to an open project isn't a hard problem, in any company I'm familiar with, but taking a large closed project that your company wholly owns, and getting it released as MIT is a different matter.
Even if the project was begun under the assumption it would be opened someday (as I imagine may have been the case here), momentum is against it and it tends not to happen unless someone is passionate about making sure it does.