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HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

hashicorp.com

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Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#41

Post by toomuchtodo »

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…

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 maintained in tension, not an equilibrium to be reached.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#42

Post by kodablah »

adoxyz wrote: post #5

Nothing wrong with this imo. I actually hope more open source projects start with a business source license if their ultimate goal is to become a SaaS platform. I think we've seen time and time again large enterprises abusing the spirit of open source for their own monetary gain, contributing nothing back, and just acting in bad faith.

> abusing the spirit of open source for their own monetary gain

For many, the spirit of open source is to allow it to be used in any way, commercially or otherwise. I don't consider it acting in bad faith at all to use what's out there and made available, and I am happy to give things away as in beer. Otherwise it's not open source (which is also fine, not all software has to be open source).

To abuse the spirit of open source, make arbitrary rules about its use.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#44

Post by toenail »

LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #23
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…

> Like, has anyone of any significance used a Hashicorp product to meaningfully compete with Hashicorp? Just because nobody has tried yet doesn’t mean that it won’t ever happen. Companies are doing this precisely because companies like Amazon abuse FOSS licenses to stand up their own hosted versions of open source projects.

If you call that abuse.. using "open source" as a marketing gimmick to attract developers and users is abuse as well.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#45

Post by jamestanderson »

LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #23
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…

> Like, has anyone of any significance used a Hashicorp product to meaningfully compete with Hashicorp? Just because nobody has tried yet doesn’t mean that it won’t ever happen. Companies are doing this precisely because companies like Amazon abuse FOSS licenses to stand up their own hosted versions of open source projects.

> companies like Amazon abuse FOSS licenses to stand up their own hosted versions of open source projects

This is not an abuse of FOSS licenses. If developers have a problem with this, there are open source licenses that would make this use case less attractive for Amazon, like the AGPL.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#47

Post by webmobdev »

kdmccormick wrote: post #14
webmobdev wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't want "free"loaders using your software why is it "free" in the first place?

Because they want it to be developed collaboratively, in the public eye, and for the good of all contributors. In other words, free as in freedom, but not free as in beer.

Then it is a question of choosing the right license - AGPL.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#48

Post by LapsangGuzzler »

toenail wrote: post #25
adoxyz wrote: post #5

Nothing wrong with this imo. I actually hope more open source projects start with a business source license if their ultimate goal is to become a SaaS platform. I think we've seen time and time again large enterprises abusing the spirit of open source for their own monetary gain, contributing nothing back, and just acting in bad faith.

Abusing the spirit of open source, what? If somebody doesn't want any competitors they should have read the licenses and understood them, and not simply used open source as a buzzword for marketing purposes.

> If somebody doesn't want any competitors they should have read the licenses and understood them, and not simply used open source as a buzzword for marketing purposes.

One should always read software licenses before installing a dependency, regardless of how a particular project is marketed. This would still be necessary even if companies weren’t using the term “open source” to refer to this type of license.

People make it sound like companies are out to confuse you by calling it “open source”. If you’re the kind of developer that blindly uses a piece of software because someone claimed it was open source without doing due diligence on how it can be legally used, then you deserve whatever consequences may arise.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#49

Post by Pet_Ant »

I always thought that OSS was supposed to be a loss-leader. By being the author you have more credibility for offering services. Sure someone else can do it, but are they really gonna know how to offer support in some rare crazy edge case that is blowing up production right now?

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#50

Post by chunk_waffle »

yellowapple wrote: post #17
wmf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like there are companies selling Terraform with a wrapper on top and not paying Hashicorp anything.

I know of precisely zero such companies, and I can't imagine how such a company would even have customers in the first place when Terraform already has a $0 pricetag. I could maybe understand this for Consul or Vault, since those are actual hostable services that could probably be resold - but I don't know of anyone reselling those, either.

Maybe Gruntwork.io, makers of Terragrunt, I think?

I always just stuck to vanilla Terraform but recall coming across them at some point.

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