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As a regular end-user of Terraform, what difference does BSL vs MPL make to me? From reading this article it seems not very much? Perhaps I'm misreading this.
As a regular end-user of Terraform, what difference does BSL vs MPL make to me? From reading this article it seems not very much? Perhaps I'm misreading this.
As a regular end-user of Terraform, what difference does BSL vs MPL make to me? From reading this article it seems not very much? Perhaps I'm misreading this.
As a regular end-user of Terraform, what difference does BSL vs MPL make to me? From reading this article it seems not very much? Perhaps I'm misreading this.
These tools are not going to be able to be used with users using new Terraform versions (though they can always use the current or any previous versions, or can use their fork these companies are jointly supporting).
Then there are open source tools that don't directly compete with Hashicorp that are in a bit of a gray area, but I've seen Atlantis, Pulumi, OTF, and other tools all claim that this does not affect them. I would presume this could also apply to things like Terratest, Terragrunt, etc. but I don't know. I am not a lawyer.
And if none of these company/product names are familiar to you, then you shouldn't have any noticeable difference :)
As a regular end-user of Terraform, what difference does BSL vs MPL make to me? From reading this article it seems not very much? Perhaps I'm misreading this.
If any Hashicorp people are reading, can you please tell your middle and senior management that this decision has deeply soured my entire DevOps cohort on continuing to use Terraform in the future. We're already exploring alternatives. Future client projects may not use Terraform at all. Languages and frameworks must remain open or they will wither and die.
- MPL is a weak-copyleft license, which allows companies to grab and run Terraform codebase, provide it as-is (as Terraform), or as white-labeled Terraform compatible feature/layer. This is alright (because license allows this).
- These people also contribute their own fixes upstream, which is great, and maintain their own patches if Hashicorp decides to reject them (which is fine, too, this is how ecosystem works).
But, HashiCorp says that, the thing we develop (i.e. Terraform) is used by others and generate revenue for them, this is great, but we can't generate enough revenue from it to keep the company afloat and continue providing TerraForm development, and sell it as a product at the same time.
What should they do? I'd advocate AGPL, but xGPL licenses are avoided like a plague, because Free Software is not "closed forks" friendly, and companies hate to open everything like that.
BSL is neither Free nor Open, which we all hate, but it allows HashiCorp to survive to a degree (this is not a fact, this is what HashiCorp is thinking).
So, just because people adapted it, and HashiCorp cannot survive, should they say, we're closing shop, it's all MIT now, do whatever you want, bye!?
Weak copyleft licenses are not designed for software that big. Or they assume that the developing party is untouchable. Strong copyleft solves this, but companies hate it because its unrelenting transparency.
What should we do?
P.S.: I neither endorse, nor support BSL, or HashiCorp's decision (or any company treads the same path).
Edit: I mistyped MPL as permissive instead of weak-copyleft. Corrected, sorry.
As a regular end-user of Terraform, what difference does BSL vs MPL make to me? From reading this article it seems not very much? Perhaps I'm misreading this.
Long term? Possibly less adoption (teams may elect to go with Pulumi or some other alternatives), less 3rd party tooling available (what if Hashicorp decides your tool is their competitor?), etc.
It seems very similar to the spat that community had with Red Hat with how 3rd party captures too much value from their own internal offering and leadership responds by changing the license model and makes things less open-source-y. Perhaps this will become the new normal for OSS/former OSS? IDK.
As a regular end-user of Terraform, what difference does BSL vs MPL make to me? From reading this article it seems not very much? Perhaps I'm misreading this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine a future CTO trying to pick the IaC tools for their company. They see Terraform as an option, but then learn there are multiple forks, licensing questions, and a big battle happening in the community. What do they do? I truly believe that a CTO who sees Terraform as an option and who isn't scared off by the BSL, but then has all of these other concerns, exists only in fantasy.
Lots of people still using elastic, mongo, and redis. What's different about this one?
You may make production use of the Licensed Work, provided such use does not include offering the Licensed Work to third parties on a hosted or embedded basis which is competitive with HashiCorp's products.
On the other hand, if I build a product with HashiCorp-owned BSL'd code, then HashiCorp releases/acquires a product that competes with mine, then my license is void.
As a regular end-user of Terraform, what difference does BSL vs MPL make to me? From reading this article it seems not very much? Perhaps I'm misreading this.
IANAL but it doesn’t seem like much, unless you’re planning on building a terraform-as-a-service company to compete directly with hashicorp. Honestly I’m not surprised given hashicorp’s enterprise offering are basically just… hosting the .tfstate file for you? I still can’t figure out what their upsell is.
I see the use case for it if you don't want to use a 3rd party or open source tool (Atlantis) but the pricing seems prohibitive.