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HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

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Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#151

Post by manojlds »

arianvanp wrote: post #32
jrsdav wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't looked to see what licenses are involved, but Pulumi makes liberal use of Terraform providers[1]. And I would definitely consider them to be a Hashicorp competitor. [1]: https://www.pulumi.com/docs/concepts/vs/terraform/#:~:text=U... . > Pulumi is able to adapt any Terraform Provider for use with Pulumi, enabling management of any infrastructure supported by the Terraform Providers ecosystem using Pulumi pr…

But they don't out-compete them in any shape or form. I'd call it healthy competition. Pulumi made Hashicorp build Terraform CDK. Which is a great result. And the only reason Hashicorp was able to build CDK quickly is because they built it on top of Amazon's open source Amazon CDK. Another competitor.

Calling Amazon a competitor because they have CDK is ridiculous.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#152

Post by Macha »

buzer wrote: post #146
jamestanderson wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they require contributors to sign their CLA: https://cla.hashicorp.com/ That CLA grants HashiCorp full license over your Copyright, and explicitly allows them to sublicense your contributions[1]. Drew Devault's blog posts[2][3] on this topic are extremely relevant. [1] > Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to HashiCorp and to recipients of soft…

I don't know if they have required old commiters to sign it. I commited to one library that is now under Hashicorp back in 2015 and did not need to sign anything but it was MIT licensed back then. They have also rewritten affected lines as part of larger rewrite.

If it's MIT licensed then they don't need your consent as long as they include the text of the MIT license while your contributions are included.

It's stuff in the MPL period that is more questionable if they don't have contributor sign off.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#153

Post by kdmccormick »

pessimizer wrote: post #135
kdmccormick wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why did I leave Halloween candy on my porch if I wasn't okay with one jerk kid taking all of it for himself?" Because projects believ(ed) that the good will of their users would be enough to sustain their projects and businesses. Now that certain projects see that good will isn't working, they're switching to the legal system.

Open source licenses are the legal system. They're licenses. Changing your license isn't "switching to the legal system."

I must not be making myself clear.

Projects are free to choose permissive licenses like BSD.

Companies are then free to use the code however they like and not contribute back in any way.

Projects are then free to be annoyed by this because they hoped that companies would contribute time and/or resouces out their own good will.

Finally, projects are free to move to "business source" licenses because good will didn't work, so they need to utilize the legal system to ensure that large companies help sustain the project.

What part of this do you disagree with?

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#154

Post by manojlds »

nezirus wrote: post #24

Dunno about others, but I always ask myself where these companies would be if their software was under non free license from the start. This is hostile to end users, small people an companies, not just big megacorps wanting the "steal" the code and run it as a service. Be successful in running and using Hashicorp's software, and they decide to shut you down if you are deemed a competitor.

From what I know about BSL, nothing changes for me, except some notion what "true open source spirit" is and what not.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#155

Post by JohnFen »

pessimizer wrote: post #109
toomuchtodo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I argue the window is moving as to what “open source” means out of survival. Source available is the new open source, and what young technologists will grow up grinding on. You’ll have folks complain about it during the transition (as happens with any Overton window sort of event), but they’ll move on eventually and a new crop of tech industry will grow up with this as the new normal. Change is inevitable, broadly sp…

> I argue the window is moving as to what “open source” means out of survival. I don't think this is happening at all. Open source means the same thing it's always meant. Some people are just retreating from open source. Which is fine, they should be writing Free Software anyway if they want the world to have it, or use proprietary licenses if they don't. Otherwise very wealthy people will live on your back.

I agree. But there are an awful lot of younger devs who really do seem to confuse "open source" with "source available". It's worth educating people about this.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#156

Post by ris »

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.

> not contributing back

Have you ever looked at the number of unreviewed PRs on Hashicorp projects?

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#157

Post by Macha »

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…

You're free to decide open source isn't working for you. (Well, assuming you're not using any open source software that has decided on viral licenses because that's the payment _they_ expect)

You're not free to decide your source available model is open source and reap the marketing benefits of open source without the costs.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#158

Post by falcolas »

pessimizer wrote: post #112
falcolas wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Well then, according to the meaning you are assigning these words, Windows must be open source.

Which, of course, is obviously false. Which means the words have different meaning than what you ascribe to them.

Source available means you can view the source code, by abiding to the terms the owner of the code sets.

Closed source means you can’t change or redistribute that source, regardless of whether you are allowed to view it.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#159

Post by lifeisstillgood »

joeduffy wrote: post #122
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…

Pulumi Founder/CEO here. The blog post is disingenuous. We tried many times to contribute upstream fixes to Terraform providers, but HashiCorp would never accept them. So we've had to maintain forks. They lost their OSS DNA a long time ago, and this move just puts the final nail in the coffin. Thankfully over time, they already pushed responsibility for most Terraform providers back onto their partners, so I'm hopefu…

Can I ask where Pulumi gets revenue from? (Honest question first time I have heard of you, quick look seems to be a CentOS for hashicorp ?)

I love the ethos of open source and have spoken at and helped run conferences, and had the pleasure of being paid to develop it - but the productivity I had when paid ten hours a day to work on OSS compared to whenever I get a chance between work family and everything else, well, it's better for everyone to get paid and release code, than not get paid and not write the code.

I see these semi-commercial licenses as the equivalent of a legal "just don't take the piss".

Would be interested in your side of the question. How do we keep on developing the code as well as keeping it open?

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#160

Post by swyx »

> Why is HashiCorp making this change? > > We strongly believe in the value of openly sharing source code and enabling practitioners to solve their problems, building communities, and creating transparency. HashiCorp provides feature-rich products to the community for free, and that development is made possible by our commercial customers who partner with us. By shifting to this license, HashiCorp can better manage commercial uses of our source code and continue to invest in our thriving community of practitioners, many of whom are contributors, in a manner that will not impede their work.

i strongly appreciate the FAQ but this part felt weak/not the whole truth. What is not being said? who is hashicorp afraid of? there wasnt a doubt in my mind before and now there is.

indeed i just saw a startup demo today show off a feature that they admitted was just Vault in a wrapper (they even called their thing Vault haha) and that was it, but i would not have thought Hashicorp would mind them at all (its a very new startup)

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