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HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

hashicorp.com

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Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#451

Post by asymmetric »

cmiles74 wrote: post #60
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…

As they mentioned, this is what the AGPL license is for. No one is suggesting that the people at HashiCorp should not be paid for their work. https://fossa.com/blog/open-source-software-licenses-101-agp...

If they made their tools AGPL, they themselves couldn’t build a cloud offering with additional, closed-source features.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#452

Post by foobiekr »

scarface_74 wrote: post #324
LambdaComplex wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not weird at all to go public before profitability, that was even the standard in tech for the longest time. The IPO was a _fundraising_ event, not a dump-the-company-on-the-public-and-move-on event.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#453

Post by Xylakant »

paulddraper wrote: post #422
adrr wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elasticsearch is based off lucene so they are making money off another open source project.

Technically true, but practically different. Lucene is the core piece but %-wise the minority of the ES product. There's no Lucene "competitor" to Elasticsearch.

> There's no Lucene "competitor" to Elasticsearch.

Apache Solr, which existed long before Elasticsearch was conceived.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#454

Post by sanderjd »

JohnFen wrote: post #155
pessimizer wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I argue the window is moving as to what “open source” means out of survival. I don't think this is happening at all. Open source means the same thing it's always meant. Some people are just retreating from open source. Which is fine, they should be writing Free Software anyway if they want the world to have it, or use proprietary licenses if they don't. Otherwise very wealthy people will live on your back.

I agree. But there are an awful lot of younger devs who really do seem to confuse "open source" with "source available". It's worth educating people about this.

So, I don't think this is a generational thing. I think most people of all ages and generations have mostly just not thought about this. But the reason more people are thinking about it now is that the distribution model has changed on a way that has highlighted an existential weakness with this model.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#456

Post by piaste »

kmeisthax wrote: post #405
randmeerkat wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's pretty disappointing. From the article: “End users can continue to copy, modify, and redistribute the code for all non-commercial and commercial use, except where providing a competitive offering to HashiCorp.” Literally nothing has changed, this isn’t disappointing, it’s smart, they’re protecting themselves against cloud providers that have repeatedly abused the goodwill of the open source community.

Adding a non-compete clause to your license is not "literally nothing" - in fact, it might be extremely problematic for a large number of downstream users. As for "abusing the goodwill of the open source community", that's kind of the point of FOSS. Free riding is not stealing. That's proprietary world logic, and everyone saying we need to stop people from free riding FOSS is calling for the enclosure of the commons.…

> Let me be perfectly clear: there is no license condition you can put on software that will let everyone use it as if it were in the commons but prevent Amazon Web Services from hosting it.

"The following licence is granted to everyone except the following entities: Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle"

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#457

Post by arianvanp »

manojlds wrote: post #151
arianvanp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they don't out-compete them in any shape or form. I'd call it healthy competition. Pulumi made Hashicorp build Terraform CDK. Which is a great result. And the only reason Hashicorp was able to build CDK quickly is because they built it on top of Amazon's open source Amazon CDK. Another competitor.

Calling Amazon a competitor because they have CDK is ridiculous.

Could you be more constructive than just saying it's ridiculous? If you're an Amazon shop CDK/CloudFormation definitely is a competitor.

Also Terraform now directly integrates with CDK. So apparently Hashicorp felt the heat .

Looks like competition to me.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#458

Post by sanderjd »

riffraff wrote: post #432
toomuchtodo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I argue the window is moving as to what “open source” means out of survival. Source available is the new open source, and what young technologists will grow up grinding on. You’ll have folks complain about it during the transition (as happens with any Overton window sort of event), but they’ll move on eventually and a new crop of tech industry will grow up with this as the new normal. Change is inevitable, broadly sp…

The window can't move, as there is an official version of what "open source" means, the Open Source Definition, which does not restrict you from reselling stuff. We've had "source available" for a long time, which means something else. I don't disagree that people may still use SA software more as time goes by, but I would argue that when possible people will prefer open source controlled by entities that keep it suc…

This is not how language works. The phrase "open source" will mean what people think it means. An organization with a lot of credibility and mindshare can affect that meaningfully by maintaining and explaining the official definition from their perspective, but they can never be guaranteed success in convincing people that their definition is what those words will mean forever.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#459

Post by preisschild »

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.

Just don't sign CLAs. Then the company needs to ask you if you are ok with the license change.

https://drewdevault.com/2023/07/04/Dont-sign-a-CLA-2.html

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#460

Post by laserbeam »

This is the first time I hear of BSL. So here's my problems with it (and the article).

1. The article doesn't link to the actual text of the BSL in use. Link it please!

2. In my understanding, all BSL 1.1 are different, and differ by 2 factors: Additional Use Grant and Change Date. Those are both reasonable ideas but I wish they went a step further and the license would be formatted like Creative Comons. That one also provides versions that differ from use to use but you can instantly tell from the title which version is applied. I wish there was an official "BSL 1.1 4year non-compete" name for this with a good general definition of "non-compete" (and a few other common commercial uses to be granted).

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