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HashiCorp CEO Predicts OSS-Free Silicon Valley

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Re: HashiCorp CEO Predicts OSS-Free Silicon Valley

#41

Post by gabeio »

cvccvroomvroom wrote: post #27
api wrote: post #5

This has been brewing for a very long time, and he's by no means the only person or even the best person making these points. Open source dates back to the 1980s but really took flight in the 1990s with Linux, Linux distributions, and the mainstreaming of the Internet. Back then it was mostly a movement for software freedom and openness in contrast to closed source software like Windows and macOS. While it obviously…

80's or 90's open source? There was no effective internet. There were only BBSes and Compuserve. FOSS took off in the 00's.

> 80's or 90's open source? There was no effective internet. There were only BBSes and Compuserve. FOSS took off in the 00's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution

Initial release: 1978

Just because there was no effective internet doesn't mean computers didn't exist and people weren't working on projects together.

Re: HashiCorp CEO Predicts OSS-Free Silicon Valley

#42

Post by alephnerd »

jarym wrote: post #22
alephnerd wrote: post #15

The title is editorialized > there would be “no more open source companies in Silicon Valley” unless the community rethinks how it protects innovation This is a sentiment I've heard from VC friends of mine for the past year now after their experience seeing the inability of Confluent, Sysdig, and even Hashicorp fail to successfully monetize their core offerings by undervaluing them.

They shouldn’t have gone all OSS if monetisation was their goal. It’s their own fault for thinking they could build a base off open source and then monetise it later.

They raised and went public in a different era.

Public Investors have significantly higher expectations for rates of return, and plenty of OSS-core companies raised significantly larger late stage rounds. That said, try IPOing a tech company with $15-70M a year in revenue in the 2020s.

Those numbers were the norms in the late 90s/early 2000s, which allowed companies like RedHat or Sun Microsystems to IPO, while still being able to ramp up their own vision and product lines.

Until almost a year ago you could raise IPO-sized valuations in the private market, while dealing with less regulatory scrutiny and overhead.

Re: HashiCorp CEO Predicts OSS-Free Silicon Valley

#43

Post by paxys »

The only thing that will die is the open source rug pull model where companies dominate their space by having an open ecosystem and a large community of volunteers and then unilaterally switch the license terms from under everyone so that the founding team and VCs can make billions. Efforts like OpenTofu have thankfully shown us that the community can organize and take back control of their projects, and I really hope we see more such forks.

Going forward as a contributor your best bet is to direct your efforts towards a project sponsored by a reputable open source foundation, not a VC-funded startup.

Re: HashiCorp CEO Predicts OSS-Free Silicon Valley

#44

Post by sneak »

josephcsible wrote: post #40
api wrote: post #5

This has been brewing for a very long time, and he's by no means the only person or even the best person making these points. Open source dates back to the 1980s but really took flight in the 1990s with Linux, Linux distributions, and the mainstreaming of the Internet. Back then it was mostly a movement for software freedom and openness in contrast to closed source software like Windows and macOS. While it obviously…

> Against this model open source software is offering zero resistance. Pushover licenses like MIT offer zero resistance to it, but that's just a reason to use better licenses like AGPLv3 instead, not to abandon open source entirely.

AGPL is very clearly a nonfree license, despite what the FSF says.

Re: HashiCorp CEO Predicts OSS-Free Silicon Valley

#45

Post by unethical_ban »

aeyes wrote: post #25

... if you want the whole pie. The open source business model works if the service you provide is to sell consulting, implementation, certification... If you want the whole SaaS pie then why are you going open source in the first place? To have the community develop the ecosystem for free for a decade making an SaaS business viable before you pull the rug?

The middle ground gets lost here.

What if you like the idea of collaboration, letting list people use your work for free, and making some money on proserv with the people who need it?

Well, too fucking bad, because Megacorps (Amazon) or others can create an alternative to your product at a loss just to curbstomp you out of existence.

I don't blame a company for trying to earn a living for them and their family while trying to find a middle ground that allows for open source and free community usage.

Re: HashiCorp CEO Predicts OSS-Free Silicon Valley

#46

Post by erik_seaberg »

echelon wrote: post #21
kervantas wrote: post #7

> Says Linux Foundation's OpenTofu adoption "tragic" Yeah, for them, not for the community that they tried to fuck over.

Where's this same vitriol directed at Amazon, Google, et al.? They've built huge cloud platforms on the backs of open source. These are highly profitable machines that siphon up so much free labor and give very little back. Instead we attack HashiCorp, whose entire product is going to fall into disuse over a fork of the very thing they built. Why is that? I'm angry at AWS - it's literally just open source software ru…

HashiCorp is seeking a monopoly on hosting Terraform, which is bad for me as a user if I think another vendor might do a better job (or even just to keep prices in line with costs). It would have been better if they had been paid for writing Terraform and now hosting services could compete on their own merits.

Re: HashiCorp CEO Predicts OSS-Free Silicon Valley

#47

Post by worik »

api wrote: post #5

This has been brewing for a very long time, and he's by no means the only person or even the best person making these points. Open source dates back to the 1980s but really took flight in the 1990s with Linux, Linux distributions, and the mainstreaming of the Internet. Back then it was mostly a movement for software freedom and openness in contrast to closed source software like Windows and macOS. While it obviously…

> Microsoft Enterprise Internet with IIS as the only viable web server and NT as the only viable server OS. Imagine that hellscap

Easy to imagine. That is the mobile space. Two suppliers, but a hellscape nonetheless

Re: HashiCorp CEO Predicts OSS-Free Silicon Valley

#48

Post by unethical_ban »

echelon wrote: post #21
kervantas wrote: post #7

> Says Linux Foundation's OpenTofu adoption "tragic" Yeah, for them, not for the community that they tried to fuck over.

Where's this same vitriol directed at Amazon, Google, et al.? They've built huge cloud platforms on the backs of open source. These are highly profitable machines that siphon up so much free labor and give very little back. Instead we attack HashiCorp, whose entire product is going to fall into disuse over a fork of the very thing they built. Why is that? I'm angry at AWS - it's literally just open source software ru…

Right, I wonder how many people are insulting Hashicorp while deploying to AWS.

Re: HashiCorp CEO Predicts OSS-Free Silicon Valley

#49

Post by worik »

sneak wrote: post #44
josephcsible wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Against this model open source software is offering zero resistance. Pushover licenses like MIT offer zero resistance to it, but that's just a reason to use better licenses like AGPLv3 instead, not to abandon open source entirely.

AGPL is very clearly a nonfree license, despite what the FSF says.

Please elaborate

Re: HashiCorp CEO Predicts OSS-Free Silicon Valley

#50

Post by danenania »

teekert wrote: post #24
jen20 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine it looks a lot like BUSL: source is available, and fine for use in non-competing ways, but using it to compete against the commercialisation efforts that pay for primary development is not allowed. Basically every successful open source company other than Red Hat at this point has the model in one way or another.

That sounds reasonable indeed. But competing against the commercialization efforts is just so vague. It’s also a huge turn off for enterprises, they are already afraid of the GPL, I think enterprises will not touch BUSL code. It’s nice for self hosters perhaps. But I for one am always thinking about how I can commercialize my self hosting skills (and have been somewhat successful here and there).

Enterprises are afraid of the GPL for libraries or OSS stuff they’re running but not paying for.

If they’re paying for a service because they need it (not so they can resell or repackage it in some way), I don’t think they’re going to be so picky about the license. They pay for plenty of 100% closed and proprietary software after all. The benefit of OSS/SA licenses in that case is debugging, being able to contribute patches, and continuity if the vendor goes bust. For those purposes, having access to the source is what matters, not the particular license.

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