211–220 of 392 posts
Actually, can we just kill Terraform? Please? Terraform has a bad design. It's a configuration management tool, first and foremost, and configuration management tools need to do one thing well: fix things. Not just "change state", but functionally, actually fix some software to make it work again. Terraform is really bad at this. It's difficult to configure, difficult to operate, and it likes to find any reason at al…
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Smells like the end of Chef. Management doesn't understand how much it takes to maintain the open source project and is just pouring resources into sales and marketing and products that they can charge for, and don't see how that erodes goodwill and the technological foundation of the company.
I also saw that parallel with Chef. I think its the story of all VC funded software that attempts to be "Open Source". For them, Open Source means "You can read the source code, and potentially fix a bug", for us, it means community, transparency, and fixing bugs beyond those your paying customer has. I looked at github /chef/chef and github /inspec/inspec and its the same as it was shortly after I left. The only cha…
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I think it's not only the issue with terraform but also the underlying infrastructure. AWS should've never have imperative APIs in the first place. Or at least it's time for AWS V2 APIs
Do you consider cloudformation as imperative APIs?
“Internal error? The #$@! does that mean?”
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Why would Hashicorp give the slightest worry to losing thousands and thousands of non-paying customers? Because it goes hand in hand with losing hundreds of unpaid developers, testers, bug-reporters and evangelists. If I wrote an open letter decrying Salesforce for not open sourcing their codebase, nobody would take me seriously. But we expect better from Hashicorp for some reason. Because the community contributed t…
I think that once you have more than X customers, you don't really need OSS testers and bug-reporters that much – your customers will be the first ones to file a ticket if anything is wrong. And as we saw with CentOS Stream, OSS users are not generally keen to be beta-testers. Ditto for earnings: once your company is publicly traded or at least lands in a Gartner report, you don't need evangelists that badly anymore.…
In this case the customers they're losing (as well as the devs, testers, reporters, etc) aren't end users but companies who have built software offerings on top of Terraform. That's the class of user principally impacted by the change to the license. OSS users aren't stoked about testing, but developers who build on top of Terraform in order to eat will submit bug reports and PRs all day.
Perhaps if they went down the certification strategy it would've been a safer gamble. Certified Hashicorp Terraform Practioner. 650 a cert, probably would've saved their arse.
Actually, can we just kill Terraform? Please? Terraform has a bad design. It's a configuration management tool, first and foremost, and configuration management tools need to do one thing well: fix things. Not just "change state", but functionally, actually fix some software to make it work again. Terraform is really bad at this. It's difficult to configure, difficult to operate, and it likes to find any reason at al…
Actually, can we just kill Terraform? Please? Terraform has a bad design. It's a configuration management tool, first and foremost, and configuration management tools need to do one thing well: fix things. Not just "change state", but functionally, actually fix some software to make it work again. Terraform is really bad at this. It's difficult to configure, difficult to operate, and it likes to find any reason at al…
Everything from Kubernetes to various Colocation technology leverage it because it codifies the ability to deploy a tech stack.
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As a Free Software advocate and supporter, I'm thinking about the answer to this question: - 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 patc…
> 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? Suck it up, open source Terraform under a non profit foundation, find a new source of revenue. Or stop dev…
No. It was not a rhetorical device.
> you just don't like the implications.
I don't know which implications you're talking about, it was a question without prejudice or load.
> People somehow think that a business which started an open source project "deserves" to profit from it.
I do not agree. I don't hold a position stating that "TF should stay open, and companies should profit from it while giving it patches if you feel like it". I'm the opposite, and I find the approach to permissive licenses as "Ooo... Free tool to build a new product on and profit" as unethical to begin with. I put anything and everything I put out as A/GPLv3 or GFDL, because I produce that code for myself, on my free time, and I don't have a secret desire for it to be forked and closed down for internet cookie points.
If you want to use my tool for any reason (which are not very sophisticated to begin with), comply with GPL, or roll your own. I. Don't. Care.
I also pay for tons of things. Docker, cloud storage, programming fonts I use, anything I deem worth the money they're asking for.
I also use Vagrant a lot, share my Vagrantfiles (again under GPLv3), and if they begin to charge like Docker, I'll pay for it, if I deem it's worth the money they ask for.
However, at the end of the day, I'm a Free Software advocate. I use Free Software to the extent possible, and develop my software as Free Software. Not Open Source software under some permissive license to be grabbed and forked to death.
As an end-user, not competing with HashiCorp, this change doesn't worry me. According to their FAQ [1]: 10. What are the usage limitations for HashiCorp’s products under BSL? All non-production uses are permitted. All production uses are allowed other than hosting or embedding the software in an offering competitive with HashiCorp commercial products, hosted or self-managed. 24. Can I host the HashiCorp products as a…
As an end-user, not competing with HashiCorp, this change doesn't worry me. According to their FAQ [1]: 10. What are the usage limitations for HashiCorp’s products under BSL? All non-production uses are permitted. All production uses are allowed other than hosting or embedding the software in an offering competitive with HashiCorp commercial products, hosted or self-managed. 24. Can I host the HashiCorp products as a…
Here's the kicker though... before the change to BSL, the future of Hashicorp didn't really matter as much, since somebody could fork their projects and keep them going. But with this licensing change, if Hashicorp shuts down one day, nobody could create a fork for several years.
So to me, whether or not I can use the software as currently licensed isn't the biggest issue. I want the ability to have an "escape hatch" should Hashicorp continue its downward trajectory or shut down completely.