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Oracle dumps Terraform for OpenTofu

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Re: Oracle dumps Terraform for OpenTofu

#171

Post by 8organicbits »

aragilar wrote: post #37
8organicbits wrote: post #20

We're seeing an uptick in open source projects getting relicenced to non-open licenses. Some projects are successfully forked and the userbase shifts, other times not. One theory of mine is that we can measure the risk that a project will be relicensed by looking at things like diversity of contributors, trademark ownership, contributor agreements, and license terms. Low risk projects include the Linux kernel (GPL, D…

I'm not sure how Kubernetes is high risk, given the CLA is to CNCF. Similarly, CLAs to the Apache Foundation, the FSF or similar are probably pretty safe (in that they have a long term interest to be good custodians for the IP), and could be safer than projects that lack a CLA but don't have (or only a few) outside contributors. To me, the obvious questions are who owns the IP, and what are their incentives to mainta…

This is a good critique. Measuring intent of an organization may be difficult to do methodically and impartially, so it's not currently covered. Personally I was surprised to see Redis change license after Redis Labs promised not to change the license. I think that promise was made with good intent but overwhelming financial pressure that emerged later on swayed them.

Re: Oracle dumps Terraform for OpenTofu

#172

Post by 8organicbits »

jamesrr39 wrote: post #156
8organicbits wrote: post #20

We're seeing an uptick in open source projects getting relicenced to non-open licenses. Some projects are successfully forked and the userbase shifts, other times not. One theory of mine is that we can measure the risk that a project will be relicensed by looking at things like diversity of contributors, trademark ownership, contributor agreements, and license terms. Low risk projects include the Linux kernel (GPL, D…

Regarding Kubernetes and the Apache license, Apache license 2.0 has to be one of the most business friendly licenses around? It's widely used and understood, no requirement to open source changes, automatic patent license for any patents the software uses included. If the corporate lawyer says no to that, what do they say yes to?

> Apache license 2.0 has to be one of the most business friendly licenses around?

Yes, in my experience it is.

Permissive licenses like Apache, MIT, and BSD are easiest for the corporate lawyers to approve but also easy for the project owner to relicense. Relicencing Monitor isn't measuring how easy it is for companies to use the software; risk is solely measuring how easy it is to relicense the software.

Copyleft licenses are lower risk than permissive licenses in this specific context as they are viral. A CLA or a very small number of contributors can negate that, as happened with Emby [1].

SourceGraph is probably the best example here (I need to add them still). They switched off Apache 2 and prompted this [2] helpful blog post.

[1] https://alexsci.com/relicensing-monitor/projects/emby/

[2] https://drewdevault.com/2023/07/04/Dont-sign-a-CLA-2.html

Re: Oracle dumps Terraform for OpenTofu

#173

Post by dijit »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #169
dijit wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm incredulous that you don't understand, but I'll humour you. Let's see; If I giving away a product because I think it's for the betterment of mankind, and definitely not an attempt to rug-pull or anything like that: no, just for developer good will. Then I am offered a free service, and I do not use it for fear that there could potentially be some rugpulling, despite having a reputation for that myself: and the pr…

This still doesn't make any sense to me. In order to use free software you need to make all your software free, is it that? I have no sympathy for oracle or their products but I fail to see the hypocrisy here. I think oracle is pretty consistent in their position over the years.

If I give you software, and tell you to trust me - but I will not use software given because I do not trust: surely I can read something into that.

Clearly Oracle are aware of the danger that they themselves ask people to ignore.

Re: Oracle dumps Terraform for OpenTofu

#174

Post by [deleted] »

sangnoir wrote: post #107
geodel wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not unexpected and neither is Oracle's approach unexpected still its worth talking about. Besides I made observation about people in community and not community itself as I did not say HN thinks software should not be paid for .

> Besides I made observation about people in community[...] Can you link any specific HN user who holds any 3 of those specific beliefs, or was this hypocritical strawman purpose-built to bolster your argument?

[deleted]

Re: Oracle dumps Terraform for OpenTofu

#175

Post by hitekker »

jayd16 wrote: post #90
geodel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats the way world works. Here in this forum so many software people asking for best possible salaries and perks, and when it comes paying a bit to good productivity software same developers are always full of excuses like. 1) Oh, I prefer open source alternative for ideological reason. 2) This software is not really worth that much. 3) Hectoring developers every single time in providing why their software should be…

It's important to remember that a community is not a single minded entity. It's members can hold many contradicting beliefs, while each individual is ideologically consistent. This shouldn't be unexpected and it's not an excuse to be dismissive to an imagined hypocrite. Not saying there aren't hypocrites in this world, just that we shouldn't treat members of a community as some kind of superset of everything in that…

It's the upvote where that opinion falls short. Sure, it may just be one hypocrite, but it sure is funny when a community raises scarcely concealed hypocrisy to the top comments or sub-comments. And then forgets about it 2 weeks later.

Re: Oracle dumps Terraform for OpenTofu

#176

Post by pxc »

pquki4 wrote: post #28
EspadaV9 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering, once IBM got Hashicorp, if they would reverse the license change for Terraform. Not been that long since the announcement, so still hoping they will.

Has there ever been notable instances of company regretting and reversing license change of a major project?

We're talking about an acquisition, not the original company making the reversal.

Red Hat used to routinely open-source acquisitions. Sun also did— that's how we got OpenOffice (and by way of it, LibreOffice). StarOffice was proprietary when Sun bought it.

Re: Oracle dumps Terraform for OpenTofu

#177

Post by Lockal »

skywhopper wrote: post #67
Lockal wrote: post #8

"Oracle’s move seems like a straightforward decision to ensure it is using the most permissive underlying IaC tool without having to worry about downstream license complications, no more and no less." Hm, with that logic they could dump MySQL in favor of MariaDB as well

Oracle owns the most permissive possible license to MySQL.

Ah, that flexible "COST license" - "contact our sales team" license

Re: Oracle dumps Terraform for OpenTofu

#178

Post by pxc »

datadeft wrote: post #21

I wish there was a type safe, algebraic data type using Terraform alternative.

Idk if the APIs look like what you want, but Scala has ADTs and there's a new Pulumi SDK for Scala that just entered public beta: https://virtuslab.github.io/besom/

There's also a first-party Pulumi SDK for F#: https://www.pulumi.com/docs/languages-sdks/dotnet/

If you're into Nix, you might enjoy using this to generate Terraform JSON. The language is inspired by Nix, so it feels familiar to Nixers, but it has a better type system that recently includes ADTs, at least on its master branch: https://github.com/tweag/tf-ncl

Re: Oracle dumps Terraform for OpenTofu

#180

Post by baobun »

dijit wrote: post #173
alexey-salmin wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This still doesn't make any sense to me. In order to use free software you need to make all your software free, is it that? I have no sympathy for oracle or their products but I fail to see the hypocrisy here. I think oracle is pretty consistent in their position over the years.

If I give you software, and tell you to trust me - but I will not use software given because I do not trust: surely I can read something into that. Clearly Oracle are aware of the danger that they themselves ask people to ignore.

Business is business. I wouldn't call Zuck a hypocrite for not exposing himself on TikTok.

(There may be other reasons to do so but that's not here nor there)

You are also committing the classic mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison.

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