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HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

hashicorp.com

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Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#201

Post by api »

paxys wrote: post #171

At this point if you are actively spending time and effort contributing to any open source project while not being affiliated with (and getting paid by) the company that manages it, know that you are being taken for a ride. Your contributions are eventually going to be moved under a non-open license so the company in question can secure their revenue stream and you can do nothing about it.

It's ironically happening because if you make open source and you use a liberal license you will be taken for a ride by competitors using your code to compete with you.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#202

Post by pydry »

Macha wrote: post #198
pydry wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these projects should just dual license as AGPL and BPL/EPL. That way all the "it's not really technically open source" complainers couldn't day that its not technically open source. It wouldnt substantively change anything of course, but that's somewhat the point. BPL/EPL/SSPL was always fully within the spirit of open source, it just pissed off the same large corporations who also can't stand the AGPL.

I'm way more fine with AGPL (without CLA). That's perfectly within the spirit of open source, as it doesn't privilege one group of users over another. BPL, EPL, SSPL are all "not open source", and AGPL+CLA is "we're setting up for a bait and switch with not open source versions".

I find it curious that Microsoft doesnt get more shit for demanding a CLA, especially given that embrace, extend, extinguish is in their DNA.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#203

Post by Rapzid »

davorak wrote: post #139
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 purely a way for HashiCorp to ensure they are the only ones who can commercialize these formerly open source projects. Which is fine. But just go closed source, then, and own that, instead of trying to have it both ways. Pragmatically I would rather bsl than closed source and I am more likely to use a product that is bsl, with reasonable transfer time and license, than a 100% closed source product.

I wish I could give you more upvotes.

I'd also much rather have "open source" with commercialization restrictions than closed source.

It's still in most people's best interest to contribute to these projects if they were before, or would have before. Many businesses(and this is where most of the contributions get funded from, let's be real) rely on these projects and have no intention of selling them or competing with HashiCorp services.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#205

Post by candiddevmike »

mfer wrote: post #111
toomuchtodo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

If this doesn't move the needle expect more increases to their licensing. Though I don't know how it could become more expensive.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#206

Post by api »

version_five wrote: post #11
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.

I'll never understand this attitude. Are some people contributing to open source principally for a kind of quid-pro-quo? I think it's nice when people contribute back, but it's certainly not a motivation for me to open source stuff - other than to set an example. People can do what they want with the software, that's the whole point. Full disclosure, I'm a shitty open source contributor, but I have some projects on g…

It's not so much quid-pro-quo as freedom. I like creating open source to give users freedom, not to contribute to billion dollar companies jailing everyone's data in SaaS and creating a surveillance dystopia.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#207

Post by PoignardAzur »

ignoramous wrote: post #190
PoignardAzur wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your contributions are eventually going to be moved under a non-open license so the company in question can secure their revenue stream and you can do nothing about it. I think what you say is factually correct, but maybe misrepresents the situation a bit. The license automatically converts to full open-source after 4 years. Maybe this isn't ideal, but it isn't "big company takes your code and locks it away forever…

4 years is an eternity in software; a slap on the face, it isn't a concession.

It's a metaphorical eternity, not a literal eternity. Four years ago is 2019; I use plenty of software from then.

And if I understand the license correctly, you're perfectly free to use the software in your own open-source projects, and your commercial projects unless they're a re-packaging of Hashicorp's own, etc. We shouldn't act like this is an evil business decision, or like this is morally equivalent to proprietary software that does stay proprietary forever with no apology or caveats.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#208

Post by joeduffy »

paulgb wrote: post #195
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I am a paying Pulumi user. Their tool integrates with a cloud platform and we pay per resource managed by Pulumi. Pulumi is one of several products where I like that it’s open source in case I need to move off their cloud, but hope that I don’t have to (Plausible is another).

[Joe, Pulumi Founder here.]

Said well (and thank you for being a customer and valuable member of our community!)

The analogy I draw sometimes is that our open source infrastructure as code SDK ("Pulumi") is like Git, and our commercial offering ("Pulumi Cloud") is like GitHub.

Like GitHub, the Pulumi Cloud offers valuable features that go beyond the open source project for teams looking to manage lots of projects securely at scale, but we definitely love our open source community and want folks to have the choice to use Pulumi however makes the most sense for them.

This approach also has the nice consequence that we can be fully transparent with our community at all times while also building a strong, long-term business. If a new feature is part of the infrastructure as code SDK, it's open source and free; if it's part of the Pulumi Cloud SaaS, it's part of our commercial offering. This avoids needing to do things like artificially hold back features (like open core) or violating our commitment to the open source community (like Hashi's new license).

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#209

Post by jen20 »

trashburger wrote: post #196
paxys wrote: post #171

At this point if you are actively spending time and effort contributing to any open source project while not being affiliated with (and getting paid by) the company that manages it, know that you are being taken for a ride. Your contributions are eventually going to be moved under a non-open license so the company in question can secure their revenue stream and you can do nothing about it.

Literally just don't sign CLAs. I made the mistake of signing a CLA for a piece of software which shortly after switched to a non-Free license, and will never ever sign a CLA again.

It will be fun to do a search on the next release of Terraform for code which I have written while not under contract with HashiCorp (I am still the #8 all time contributor according to GitHub, despite not having worked on it since ~2017-8, when non-employed maintainers were summarily removed from projects by a middle manager).

I have not and will not sign anything which assigns copyright for OSS (even to the FSF), so it will be interesting to see whether all of that code has been rewritten.

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