I haven't been there for almost two years, even then, I'm sure most engineers wouldn't have stood silent if an OSS license was being violated... unless their managers made them afraid for their jobs and careers for doing so. Oh, and getting permission to submit a simple patch made to an otherwise completely GPL'd piece of software was always an exercise in frustration. Send the necessary info to legal. Wait 3-6 months for them to say no. Lather, rinse, repeat. It was pretty damn bad while I was there.Now, my current employer... Email your manager: "I wrote this entirely in-house and would like to open-source it." Manager: "OK, let's talk to Legal" Legal: "OK, get at least one other person to verify that it doesn't contain any trade secrets and sign this." Upload to github. Done.
And submitting patches upstream - just a matter of code-review and sending it out. Now that's OSS-friendly.
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