HashiCorp adopts Business Source License • Hacker News Board

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#391

Post by thayne » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 3:21 AM UTC

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 mostly agree. But I also think it is a jerk move to change the license like this after accepting many external contributions, even if it is legal due to CLAs.

At least they admit it isn't open source in the FAQ and are calling it the community version instead of the open source version.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#392

Post by Coryodaniel » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 3:22 AM UTC

Macha wrote: post #242

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.

Also, "What if their dependencies adopted the same attitude?" Like https://github.com/hashicorp/vault/blob/main/go.mod#L25

Maybe we'll see the whole team at [Axiom](https://github.com/hashicorp/vault/blob/0b12cdcfd17278d7cca2...) riding around in Maseratis.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#393

Post by Proven » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 3:26 AM UTC

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.

[dead]

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#394

Post by Proven » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 3:28 AM UTC

ris wrote: post #175

comprev wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reviewing those PRs require engineer time from a HashiCorp employee - how many resources should be diverted to it?

> Reviewing those PRs require engineer time from a HashiCorp employee No it doesn't. There's nothing stopping them delegating that task to community members apart from the desire to retain corporate control.

[dead]

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#395

Post by thayne » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 3:30 AM UTC

unknownian wrote: post #315

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…

>like the AGPL? As I explained in an earlier thread, MongoDB tried using AGPL. AGPL is not a barrier for Amazon, they still will resell your product without contributing. MongoDB ended up using a variant of AGPL that is even stricter (requiring the entire tech stack to be under the same license) but is no longer considered FOSS. Until the attitude changes around what FOSS is, this will keep happening.

Um. Mongodb changed its license before AWS offered a mongodb compatible service. And since I can't get the source code for documentdb, either it isn't actually using a fork of mongodb, or Amazon isn't complying with the AGPL. I think the latter is pretty unlikely.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#396

Post by NathanFlurry » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 3:34 AM UTC

We built our OSS company (Apache 2.0) with Nomad at its core. We provide game server orchestration with a handful of services around it, which could be misconstrued to be considered providing a "competitive offering to HashiCorp." Needless to say, we'll be freezing our Nomad version at the last MPL version because of how vague the license is (intentionally).

We also use CockroachDB which uses BSL, but we're not providing a remotely competitive offering.

I'll likely continue to recommend HashiCorp products (Nomad, Consul, Terraform, and Packer) to anyone who asks my advice, but it's disappointing to hear this change.

We maintain a rudimentary SBOM for anyone curious: https://github.com/rivet-gg/rivet/blob/main/docs/infrastruct...

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#397

Post by ec109685 » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 3:35 AM UTC

quacker wrote: post #147

yellowapple wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's so simple, Pulumi could have done this themselves. Why didn't they? Because that would be a waste of time unless there's some specific case where an existing provider is insufficient. > Would Pulumi have been as successful without leveraging the vast ecosystem of existing Terraform providers? Now they are a growing Terraform competitor. Pulumi itself is free software, just like Terraform was (and hopefully…

Are you pretending they aren't a competitor profiting off that work though? Pulumi is free, except you pay for the features that aren't free: https://www.pulumi.com/pricing/ . So, Pulumi has grown their directly competing product partially on top of the Terraform ecosystem - and I'd argue they'd be half as successful without reusing Terraform providers - and make money off of that product. It's at least understandabl…

Are you asserting that Terraform would be as widely adopted if the third party authored TF providers didn’t exist?

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#398

Post by ec109685 » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 3:37 AM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #12

> As a result, we believe commercial open source models need to evolve for the ecosystem to continue providing open, freely available software. To imply that a non-open-source license like the BUSL is part of such an evolution of "open source" models (commercial or otherwise) betrays either severe confusion or a deliberate attempt to mislead. Like, has anyone of any significance used a Hashicorp product to meaningful…

Fly.io was built off of nomad for a while. That wouldn’t be allowed in this new world.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#399

Post by thayne » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 3:39 AM UTC

quacker wrote: post #137

yellowapple wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TF providers are just wrappers around other APIs - and the vast majority ain't even developed by Hashicorp in the first place. If Pulumi - another open-source infra-as-code tool (that ain't even a fork of any Hashicorp product AFAICT) - is really the thing scaring Hashicorp away from open source, then that doesn't really do Hashicorp any favors here.

> TF providers are just wrappers around other APIs If it's so simple, Pulumi could have done this themselves. Why didn't they? Would Pulumi have been as successful without leveraging the vast ecosystem of existing Terraform providers? Now they are a growing Terraform competitor.

Would terraform have been successful without the ecosystem of providers provided by third parties, and many, many external contributions to providers they do manage?

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#400

Post by ec109685 » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 3:41 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #130

sytse wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Inevitable end for every open source company since the free money ended." I think the only way to prevent this is changing the company charter https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2022-10-preventing-the-bai... "Then after 2 years Terraform Cloud catches up" Really good point, company scopes change.

So if a company is losing money they should just fail with no chance to change direction?

Hashicorp has a billion dollars in the bank and is growing 48% YoY, so they aren’t in danger of failing. They may be in danger of not justifying their $5 billion valuation.