Eduardo, it doesn't really matter if you believe my motivations or not. Even if I am a megalomaniac, open-source licenses and copyright are what they are. I didn't invent them.

All open-source licenses require attribution. Every single one, without exception. My code contributions are all released under a simplified BSD license, which is the most permissive open-source license currently available. I couldn't make my code "more free" even if I wanted to.

You want me to ignore the attribution requirement of open-source, but without attribution, there is no way to coordinate bug-fixing and patches. Instead, all you have is a million standalone code snippets, with no attempt to coordinate efforts or move the language forward. Apparently this is what the VB community wants, which is why its open-source efforts have made zero progress over the past twenty years.

If you have discovered a way to make open-source work without requiring attribution, please share it with the rest of us. That would be a revolutionary discovery.

But in the meantime, remember this thread every time the "why doesn't VB6 have a successor?" question arises. VB6 doesn't have a successor because the community is obsessed with what open-source allows them to take. They care far less about what open-source asks them to give.

Even if a person gives away their code freely, with the most permissive license imaginable, a license that allows anyone to freely use the code in any project they want, open or closed source, commercial or non-commercial, the community will still say "that's not enough. We also want you to give up any hope of getting bug reports or patches for your code."

This attitude is what's toxic. Why would anyone continue to participate in a community like that?