Comment by quadrifoliate

> To me this is just as much "not open source" as a specific no-compete with the primary project sponsor.

I feel like this is a completely different conversation, but this is just as much a misunderstanding of what open source is as DHH's.

As long as the code is under BSD or GPL, you are free to take it as-is and do what you want with it. You could run your commercial service using it. You can certainly write patches and apply them to your own servers. You could even email the maintainers with them -- worst case is that they will ignore the emails!

Open Source does not guarantee that your contributions will be accepted or merged back to the project -- indeed, if you think about it, that would be absurd. I might want some random thing in the Linux kernel, but the maintainers will always have the final word on whether they want my patches or not.

The O'SaaSy license says that (essentially) 37Signals will sue you if you try to host this on your own servers, and try to sell it as a service. That's totally different, and a legal rather than a technical hurdle.