With a recent change that removed dialog in favor of bsddialog, FreeBSD has now retired the last piece of GPL-licensed code in its base system. Although the impact of this change will be minor for …
You can look it and go “yeah, it is shit, but I see what it is doing, it is better done like this” and push that upstream. Saves time reverse engineering.
What do you mean “never contributed back”? All of these projects give their source code back, as the GPL requires.
The source is available but not in a form that will be accepted upstream. Often for good reason, but that doesn’t do you any good.
So? It’s not like upstream should have to accept everything every fork does.
What is the practical difference between code not accepted and code hidden?
You can look it and go “yeah, it is shit, but I see what it is doing, it is better done like this” and push that upstream. Saves time reverse engineering.
While someone can, in practice that doesn’t happen in most cases
Does happen though. Better to have the option and not often use it, than not have the option at all.
The practical difference is that the code is there for whoever wants to use it.