To me, this entire story was about HashiCorp updating their TOS without changing the "updated date" - which to me is reason enough to drop use of all products from a company. That being said, it does look like the updated date has been modified to reflect the change. So maybe it's not so "silent" anymore, or maybe they changed it because of the backlash here.
The Terraform Registry Terms of Service have been updated
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Re: The Terraform Registry Terms of Service have been updated
#92Companies want the benefits of open source (massive community contributions, lower development costs, better security, community exposure, marketshare) but don't like the downsides (from their perspective: forks, lack of control, freeloaders etc). TOS changes like this are fine, it's their garden, but ultimately all they'll do is put even more power behind forks and alternatives. Because the people that were motivate…
I think this damages all commercial OSS projects. Because after Docker and Terraform, any effort to bring in some OSS project as a dependency will be met with "Sure, it's open source now, but what about when...".
Most businesses are not directly competing with the businesses making software they depend on
Re: The Terraform Registry Terms of Service have been updated
#93I wonder if there are some module authors who would like to pull their modules from the terraform registry as a result of this...
Re: The Terraform Registry Terms of Service have been updated
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure he's been well compensated for his hurt feelings.
Yeah, by those of us who bought in post IPO at $82… this BSL nonsense is particularly annoying to me because I lost a bit of dosh on HCP.
Nonsense? Now that the company is public we can see the issue. They are losing a ton of money. This isn't about quarterly projections, it's about keeping the company afloat.
Re: The Terraform Registry Terms of Service have been updated
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Would you rather use a service that worst-case, you have to patch and maintain yourselves? Having to patch and maintain a complex piece of open source code yourself for most smaller non tech companies for all practical purposes means that it might as well be abandoned closed source code.
Exactly. The end result is the same. Folks are wise to question if they should use OSS that has a CLA assigning copyright because that means they should have zero expectations about the license not changing.
I could fork any MIT, BSD, or Apache-2-licensed project without a CLA and start publishing new versions under HashiCorp's BSL tomorrow.
HashiCorp's CLA doesn't assign copyright. It just licenses it. Hence CLA---contributor license agreement. Contributors keep their rights to use and license their work otherwise.
Seeing legal FUD via throwaway account here doesn't make me happy for HN.
Re: The Terraform Registry Terms of Service have been updated
#96Corporations double down on stupid.
Which is a shame. If they backed down then only a little goodwill would be lost rather than the whole thing. So now they are probably going to lose goodwill AND market share. I'm hoping that OpenTF becomes the winning fork, just like Jenkins won over Hudson.
Yeh I thought Terraform might not have been a direct target of the BSL license change (vault/consul etc are bigger fish) but this makes it clear this is not the case.
Re: The Terraform Registry Terms of Service have been updated
#97I've seen a lot about OpenTF and I applaud the (very large) effort to get a viable alternative in place in short order. Is anyone aware of corresponding projects for other tools in the HashiCorp suite?
Vault has been in use at several of my former companies. I haven't even considered what they might do.
Vault is under the BSL now too: https://github.com/hashicorp/vault/blob/main/LICENSE
Re: The Terraform Registry Terms of Service have been updated
#98Not the OP, but I suspect HN has trimmed the anchor link. > https://github.com/opentffoundation/roadmap/issues/24#issuec... That's the comment that made the issue clear -- specifically TOS were amended for https://registry.terraform.io to state: > You may download providers, modules, policy libraries and/or other Services or Content from this website __solely for use with, or in support of, HashiCorp Terraform.__ ie.…
How would they even know when the protocol is identical? I mean this is hardly the least unethical thing a company would do.
Re: The Terraform Registry Terms of Service have been updated
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't matter if you agree, it only matters if there are some decision makers that agree, and I know for a fact that there are. So the damage has already happened.
Likewise. This is precisely how it happens, and no amount of wishful thinking about how companies are going to insource the maintainance of some major FOSS package is going to change that. It simply will not happen that way, companies want to focus on their business and not on the vast amount of tooling that underpins basic functionality, they'll just use another supplier.
another supplier in this case is opentf.
Re: The Terraform Registry Terms of Service have been updated
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the contrary, it shows how opensource is a reliable long term choice through the possibility of forking.
It doesn't matter if you agree, it only matters if there are some decision makers that agree, and I know for a fact that there are. So the damage has already happened.
Most decision makers aren't impacted nor concerned by Hashicorp's change of licence.