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HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

hashicorp.com

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Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#111

Post by mfer »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #41
jamestanderson wrote: post #28

All that I get from this is that HashiCorp is no longer an open source company. > However, there are other vendors who take advantage of pure OSS models, and the community work on OSS projects, for their own commercial goals, without providing material contributions back. We don’t believe this is in the spirit of open source. This is 100% in the spirit of open source. If this is a problem for them, why not adopt an o…

Ideology is great until people need to eat. That’s what revenue is for. High level, times have changed. Source should be (my two cents, ymmv) about a mutually beneficial partnership between builders and users, not “give it all away for free or you’re not legit.” Users get to understand and extend what they’re running (via source), while the project steward/maintainer/owner can continue to do so. It is a balance to be…

Looking at the public data [1], Hashicorp looses money every quarter. At some point they need to stop burning cash because they have yet to figure out how to run a sustainable business.

I don't know enough about their operations to have good suggestions on how to become sustainable. But, I don't like this move. There are many sustainable open source companies. Moving to source available from open source will likely never be a move I like.

[1] https://www.google.com/finance/quote/HCP:NASDAQ

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#112

Post by pessimizer »

falcolas wrote: post #100
rcme wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source-available is still hugely beneficial to users, even if it’s not open source.

Closed source can (and does, see Windows) provide source to customers too.

No, if words have meaning, "closed source" does not provide source. Closed source does not mean "not open source."

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#113

Post by riku_iki »

klardotsh wrote: post #107
riku_iki wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything before the change is still MPL and can be forked and built on top of freely. per my reading of FAQ if you fork and modify old MPL it still have to be MPL, so if hashicorp fork old MPL code they need to release it under MPL.

Which does not disclaim "be forked and built on top of freely", especially given that Hashicorp products (in the modern era, at least) are written in Go and MPL is a file-level license: creating a new file in the same module under a non-MPL license and shipping it beside the MPL code as one broader unit is, I believe, fair game. But even still: MPL is a legitimate open source license that just asks that you give your…

> creating a new file in the same module under a non-MPL license and shipping it beside the MPL code as one broader unit is

but they are not saying they will be adding new files under business license keeping old files under MPL, they are saying future releases of products will be shipped under business license.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#114

Post by afiori »

jamestanderson wrote: post #28

All that I get from this is that HashiCorp is no longer an open source company. > However, there are other vendors who take advantage of pure OSS models, and the community work on OSS projects, for their own commercial goals, without providing material contributions back. We don’t believe this is in the spirit of open source. This is 100% in the spirit of open source. If this is a problem for them, why not adopt an o…

> This is 100% in the spirit of open source

That is the spirit of Free Software (ie restricting users as little as possible) Open Source is much smaller in scope.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#115

Post by hashtag-til »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #94
hashtag-til wrote: post #4

I’m a full time engineer, working on OSS for more than a decade. As much as I love open-souce, I get the point that there are a bunch of freeloaders using stuff and not contributing back.

> As much as I love open-souce, I get the point that there are a bunch of freeloaders using stuff and not contributing back. Freeloaders like HashiCorp using other people's compilers and libraries?

You missed the point.

Hashicorp were probably not packaging a compiler+libraries and selling it and didn’t have a business model around compilers.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#116

Post by pessimizer »

davorak wrote: post #87
toenail wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abusing the spirit of open source, what? If somebody doesn't want any competitors they should have read the licenses and understood them, and not simply used open source as a buzzword for marketing purposes.

Not having competition is not the problem I have seen listed when abuse is talked about. It is not contributing back in ways that are promotional to how much the company is benefiting. Or not going out of their way to acknowledge that they started with someone else's open source project, not even something like an academic citation.

Open source licenses don't require you to do those things. That was the intention in coming up with them.

They were the Bazaar people. They sold open source as something that makes software quality better. It was the counterpoint to Free Software, who said they made programs morally better, and that it was largely irrelevant whether copyleft made software quality better.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#117

Post by pessimizer »

Barrin92 wrote: post #67
toenail wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your business can't succeed using an open source license you made poor business choices. Own it, don't blame the license or the open source community.

If I have to pay developers, operate a business, allocate time and money to create value and take the risk that comes with it, and you come and take my work unchanged, strip all atribution and mereley resell it, then I can't succeed by definition. The most talented businessman on earth cannot. If that's what you think open source is, it'll vanish. No commercial system can exist like that and it should not because it…

Open source is what's written in the license, no more, no less. It doesn't have spirits or souls.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#118

Post by pseudalopex »

riku_iki wrote: post #20

how this works from the point of view of current license? They can't just take MPL code and modify license terms in my reading of FAQ (Q9 in https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/FAQ/ )?..

They required contributors to sign a licensing agreement.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#119

Post by hashtag-til »

evanelias wrote: post #108
webmobdev wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't want "free"loaders using your software why is it "free" in the first place?

By any chance are you familiar with Little Free Library ( https://littlefreelibrary.org/ ), those public boxes for people to take or leave books? How would you feel if someone took ALL the books, repeatedly, and then sold them? Would you just shrug and say "well that's totally fine, why is it free in the first place?" This behavior is antisocial, and completely destroys the offering/concept for everyone. I have a boo…

Thanks for the post. I’m sorry you went through this with bad actors in open-source.

I agree fully with your *GPL point of view and have seen that in practice many time.

It is in the written guidance for open-source in the company I work for, along the lines “for GPL-like licenses, that’s a ‘no’ by default, unless you follow this very complicated process to get approvals from many people”.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#120

Post by pessimizer »

davorak wrote: post #105
kodablah wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> abusing the spirit of open source for their own monetary gain For many, the spirit of open source is to allow it to be used in any way, commercially or otherwise. I don't consider it acting in bad faith at all to use what's out there and made available, and I am happy to give things away as in beer. Otherwise it's not open source (which is also fine, not all software has to be open source). To abuse the spirit of o…

> To abuse the spirit of open source The main way I think about this and how I often see people act are that actions which undermine the long term success and sustainability open source community is abusive. So you take a behavior and say if a non-trivial number of people emulated/copied this behavior will the open source community survive long term, if the answer is no, then the behavior is abusive. Of course people…

Then I'd say that the abusive behavior is to imply there are terms in the license that aren't actually there, and to use that implication to attract developers and customers to your project. If your open source has a soul, write it into the license. Note that after you do that, it will not be an open source license.
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