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HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

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Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#321

Post by LambdaComplex »

scarface_74 wrote: post #299
LambdaComplex wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on multiple previous employers of mine, it seems like software companies start noticeably going downhill about 1.5 years after they go public. Let's check Wikipedia and see how I did: > On 29 November 2021, HashiCorp set terms for its IPO ...I'm starting to think I'm onto something. (I do welcome anecdata that either helps or hurts my hypothesis)

How many of those companies were profitable before going public?

Are you implying that it's impossible for a company to be both profitable and have a good internal culture?

That's a scary thought.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#322

Post by mdaniel »

voganmother42 wrote: post #269

Wonder what this means for gitlab-managed terraform state

IANAL but I believe this change applies only to Hashicorp source code and not API compatible endpoints. So, had (and for clarity, they for sure did not) GitLab used terraform source code to implement such a state provider, yes, they'd run afoul and have to fork or relinquish their license of the source

But similar to the GitLab Sentry backend API (e.g. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/blob/v15.0.0-ee/lib/a... ) the Terraform state endpoints are also in Rails, just like all the rest of the Internet facing GitLab API: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/blob/v15.0.0-ee/lib/a...

as an additional "FWIW," the TF docs even claim they welcome alternative implementations of registry.terraform.io although I'm guessing one quick git commit and that language could disappear, too: https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform-docs-common/blob/e4cc...

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#323

Post by 38 »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #310
38 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been hacking on and off for a couple years on a side project I'd like to monetize OK so you want to use their software, make money off it, and give nothing back. if thats the case, you cant do that any more. you can either stick to personal use, or purchase a commercial license from them.

Seems like you missed the part where I literally typed "giving back." Or that I literally contributed part of the hashicorp codebase, specifically vault. And it's been hard continuing to do that at $DAYJOB consistently, so I've hacked on a side project in my spare time (also open sourcing plenty of useful tools during that hacking) as a means to the end of eventually finding ways to keep giving back directly and teac…

with all due respect, unless "giving back" means giving them money, its probably not worth what you think its worth. I maintain some small projects, and most of the people "giving back" contribute such a tiny amount of code that its almost not worth mentioning.

that might not be your situation, but I know as a maintainer, in most cases I would much prefer a monetary contribution than a pull request. edit, 2015, ouch:

https://github.com/hashicorp/vault/commits?author=andrewstua...

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#324

Post by scarface_74 »

LambdaComplex wrote: post #321
scarface_74 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those companies were profitable before going public?

Are you implying that it's impossible for a company to be both profitable and have a good internal culture? That's a scary thought.

No I’m saying most tech companies went public without being profitable and that had more to do with the declining stock price.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#325

Post by candiddevmike »

mdaniel wrote: post #303
candiddevmike wrote: post #191

It's funny/sad that they require Terraform providers to be FOSS.

I was curious to find where they said that, and the specifics, and the closest I came was https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/tutorials/provider... which just states > To release and publish the HashiCups provider to the Terraform Registry, you must publicly host the source code in a GitHub repository you own. without the FOSS part. Do you have a different link?

https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/docs/partnerships#...

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#326

Post by davorak »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #320
davorak wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'd rather have proprietary than "almost open source". Both aren't useful, but only one attempts to damage the common understanding of what "Open Source" means.

I do not call anything under BSL open source. I would prefer if companies when presenting the BSL talk about their schedule to open source, the schedule being when the Change License takes effect, at least if the Change License is an open source one.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#327

Post by redeux »

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…

>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.

OSS doesn't mean that you have to accept any PRs that showed up in your repo, nor does it mean that you have to let a competitor steer your project simply because you're building in the open. Without further elaboration, what you're calling "upstream fixes" may have been considered "working as intended" at HashiCorp. As I'm sure you're well aware, every contribution has to be maintained and each increasing contribution comes with an additional burden. Responsible maintainers on large scale OSS projects must be selective about the code they let in.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#328

Post by evanelias »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #283
evanelias wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By any chance are you familiar with Little Free Library ( https://littlefreelibrary.org/ ), those public boxes for people to take or leave books? How would you feel if someone took ALL the books, repeatedly, and then sold them? Would you just shrug and say "well that's totally fine, why is it free in the first place?" This behavior is antisocial, and completely destroys the offering/concept for everyone. I have a boo…

> How would you feel if someone took ALL the books, repeatedly, and then sold them? Books are rivalrous and excludable goods. If you take all the books, then others can't enjoy them. Open source software is non-rivalrous and (mostly) non-excludable. This is the thing that makes free software possible. And it's also the thing that makes it unlike the book example. > decided to use one of my core open source libraries…

> If you take all the books, then others can't enjoy them.

Sure, and if your company takes a bootstrapped commercial open source product that it didn't develop or contribute to, and then pays several employees a salary to do things which actively reduce that product's ability to develop a sustainable revenue stream, then you definitely risk permanently destroying that open source product.

On a macro level, if many companies do this, the entire ecosystem of open source begins to falter. Hence all the moves to BSL, SSPL, Commons Clause, etc.

I was making an analogy to that. If some people keep taking all the books and selling them, the system falls apart, and people stop putting free books in the box.

> it seems like you deliberately chose a license that allowed and encouraged exactly the behavior you saw.

"Allowed", yes. But nothing in the license I chose (Apache License v2) actively "encourages" the behavior of using a project in a way that actively destroys the project. (Nor does it discourage it either.)

> You're trying to make your project appealing to businesses by telling them they can take it for free and give nothing back. But you're also saying that behavior is "antisocial" and "completely destroys the offering/concept for everyone."

I have no problems with businesses using a project for free and giving nothing back, on its own. I do have a problem with businesses taking a project, and profiting off it while also directly competing with it and/or forking the project in a way that directly kneecaps the project's revenue stream. That is what I am calling antisocial and destructive.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#329

Post by jkodroff »

ris wrote: post #262
jen20 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think encouraging people to write their infra configuration in a general purpose imperative language is quite possibly the worst idea I've ever encountered. Good news: Pulumi is also entirely declarative. The model is what matters in this regard, not the syntax used to express it.

This doesn't wash. The DOM is a declarative model, but that doesn't mean that a javascript program can't be a horror story of side effects and improperly grasped execution order.

Pulumi resources are immutable in the program after you declare them. I don’t think this analogy really works. It’s not like CDK - Pulumi does not compile down to an intermediate format.

When you write a Pulumi program you’re effectively creating a DAG in memory. The resources will be created in whatever order and with the maximum parallelization the dependencies allow.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#330

Post by mdaniel »

candiddevmike wrote: post #325
mdaniel wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious to find where they said that, and the specifics, and the closest I came was https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/tutorials/provider... which just states > To release and publish the HashiCups provider to the Terraform Registry, you must publicly host the source code in a GitHub repository you own. without the FOSS part. Do you have a different link?

https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/docs/partnerships#...

Ah, just for Partner certification. Still, yes, that's some "for thee not me" hypocrisy for sure

also, for future generations, the permalink(?) is https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform-docs-common/blob/e4cc...

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