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HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

hashicorp.com

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Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#461

Post by _cenw »

Honestly, I've been pretty disappointed with HashiStack for a while. It always seemed like they didn't really take any minor contributions unless requested from a customer (i've been waiting for terraform to support a 2-3 year old vault PKI keys for a while). They also dark patterned their website recently to make download links and documentation hard to find.

I've seen one quote when we wanted to buy Vault Enterprise for peace of mind (we did not need namespaces), and well, it was completely out of reach. Moon prices. No wonder people turn to someone else hosting these products for them.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#462

Post by sanderjd »

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.

What? Why? I don't get this at all. Like, the direct pragmatic benefits of being able to read and modify source code are just enormous. The benefits of maintaining this pure definition of open source are amorphous at best, in comparison.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#463

Post by _cenw »

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.

This is why for the past 2 or so years, I've been pushing to use more projects either in the Apache Foundation or the CNCF for our developer platform. No chance of corporate interests preventing anything competing with the owners from getting merged and no chance of needing to reevaluate licenses or maybe even hard fork.

Currently moving from Traefik to APISIX.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#464

Post by JoshTriplett »

sanderjd wrote: post #462
JoshTriplett wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What? Why? I don't get this at all . Like, the direct pragmatic benefits of being able to read and modify source code are just enormous. The benefits of maintaining this pure definition of open source are amorphous at best, in comparison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)

If we don't have a common definition, everyone has their own, and there's no common understanding of what rights you have for a piece of Open Source software. That commons has far far more value than any one or ten pieces of software.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#465

Post by gkbrk »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #346
JoshTriplett wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I argue the window is moving as to what “open source” means Only if we let it, and stop shouting about it and finding alternatives every time a company does this. This isn't a new thing; companies have been trying to play "almost open source" games for decades, and they'll continue playing those games as long as it either works or doesn't have sufficiently large penalties for trying. (Much as companies will continu…

> The best possible response to a company doing this is that someone forks the code, starts or expands a competitor, and the original company's revenue drops massively as a deterrent. Example of the last time this worked?

ElasticSearch? A lot of people moved to open source forks.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#466

Post by bostik »

thayne wrote: post #395
unknownian wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Mongo also offers a hosted, paid product (Atlas) directly on AWS. Which I think is pretty smart of them.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#467

Post by mperham »

asymmetric wrote: post #451
cmiles74 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A license controls what OTHERS can do with your source. You, the copyright holder, can do anything you want.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#468

Post by deno »

asymmetric wrote: post #451
cmiles74 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only if you accept contributions without a license grant CLA.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#469

Post by glenngillen »

myroon5 wrote: post #449
glenngillen wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

previous quarter: https://ir.hashicorp.com/node/8351/pdf Cloud: $16.5M (+88% YoY) Subscriptions: $133.6M (+35% YoY) ProServ: $4.4M (+75% YoY)

Cloud revenue is a subset of Subscription revenue, and Subscription revenue is mostly Support ($101.9M). In fact, 3/4 of their total revenue is Support

I don’t think Support is what you think it is here. Ask any Vault or Terraform Enterprise customer how much they pay and what it’s for.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#470

Post by sebastianz »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #385
PoachedEggs wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many sustainable open source companies. What are some examples?

SUSE, Canonical, Prisma (though their dashboard is closed source), Gitlab, pretty much every crypto company in the blockchain/web3 space. And Hashicorp + Red Hat managed to make it work as open source companies for >10 years also There are many more "open core" companies, like TimescaleDB, Docker, etc, who then sell proprietary services on top of the open source software

Why do you think "open core", which most of those are, is somehow better than BSL?

> pretty much every crypto company in the blockchain/web3 space

The entire "space" has yet to prove to be sustainable. Most of these are hype-driven borderline scams, I would not list them in a _sustainable open source business_ context :)

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