In reply to Alec.

I’m not sure if Human Made, Moove or Crowd Favorite are hoarding software so I won’t include them in that list.

I can't speak for the others, but almost all of our "platform" (standard plugins we use on sites) are open source and available for everyone to use. We're in the process of writing up exactly what we use on every site properly so others can take it and run, but they're all publicly available.

We do have some parts that aren't open source, but for the most part, this is just site-specific stuff. There's stuff we could release though and probably will in the future; just needs to get into a releasable state before we do so. We definitely try and release as much as we can though.

With all that said though, we don't have a hugely standard set of tools. Every project calls for something different, so we pick-and-mix depending on requirements.

Private code hoarding is apparently acceptable, even encouraged, both technically and socially. Strange world we live in.

I think this is a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison. The GPL only says that if you're given software, you have to be given the source code too. For sites created for clients, no one except the client has to be given the source. There's no responsibility for everyone to be given the source.

We see the benefits of releasing stuff as open source, which is why we do so, but it's not purely altruistic.