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HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

hashicorp.com

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Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#51

Post by toenail »

Barrin92 wrote: post #40
toenail wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A lot of people start open source businesses under the good faith assumption that competitors will be fair and that the people who do the actual work capture the value, and that people genuinely contribute back. License technicalities don't matter. If people use permissive licenses as an excuse to justify an ecosystem that is parasitic any such system will die out, it cannot sustain itself.

If your business can't succeed using an open source license you made poor business choices. Own it, don't blame the license or the open source community.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#52

Post by madeofpalk »

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…

ctrl+f for "open source", and note where they stop using it. Note that they describe this change to maintain "open, freely available products", not open source.

I think they're being more honest than others in not saying that changing their license is not to remain "open source". It's evident they know the pushback they would get from calling this "open source".

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#53

Post by malyonsus »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #34

From https://www.couchbase.com/blog/couchbase-adopts-bsl-license/ it says: > BSL provides a Change Date usually between one to four years in which the BSL license converts to a Change License that is open source, which can be GNU General Public License (GPL), GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL), Apache, etc. So to me the most important question is what is the change license and how long does it take? If it's 1 y…

https://www.hashicorp.com/license-faq#What's-the-difference-...

Four years, MPL2.0

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#54

Post by hashtag-til »

version_five wrote: post #11
hashtag-til wrote: post #4

I’m a full time engineer, working on OSS for more than a decade. As much as I love open-souce, I get the point that there are a bunch of freeloaders using stuff and not contributing back.

I'll never understand this attitude. Are some people contributing to open source principally for a kind of quid-pro-quo? I think it's nice when people contribute back, but it's certainly not a motivation for me to open source stuff - other than to set an example. People can do what they want with the software, that's the whole point. Full disclosure, I'm a shitty open source contributor, but I have some projects on g…

It’s not quid-pro-quo. At the same time, does that seem ethical (even if it is legal) to build some dysfunctional business models exploiting somebody’s open source for profit and not contributing back?

There are many motivations such as mindshare, not reinventing the wheel and creating standards that motivate people and companies to contribute to open-source. Ripping-off other’s work - even when legally ok - is not right.

The system is designed to foster collaboration and not to enable shitty business models.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#55

Post by LambdaComplex »

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…

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)

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#56

Post by version_five »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #41
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…

> Ideology is great until people need to eat. That’s what revenue is for

That sounds like what the GP comment is saying. If someone said "turns out open source doesn't work for our business model" it's hard to argue with. If instead they talk about "evolving open source models" and whatnot, it feels like they want the best of both worlds. It's been happening a lot recently that companies pretend they are "open sourcing" something for the PR but really use a much more restrictive license.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#57

Post by reilly3000 »

jrsdav wrote: post #29
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…

I haven't looked to see what licenses are involved, but Pulumi makes liberal use of Terraform providers[1]. And I would definitely consider them to be a Hashicorp competitor. [1]: https://www.pulumi.com/docs/concepts/vs/terraform/#:~:text=U... . > Pulumi is able to adapt any Terraform Provider for use with Pulumi, enabling management of any infrastructure supported by the Terraform Providers ecosystem using Pulumi pr…

They used to do that but now also have their own providers created by API catalog introspection.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#58

Post by yellowapple »

jrsdav wrote: post #29
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…

I haven't looked to see what licenses are involved, but Pulumi makes liberal use of Terraform providers[1]. And I would definitely consider them to be a Hashicorp competitor. [1]: https://www.pulumi.com/docs/concepts/vs/terraform/#:~:text=U... . > Pulumi is able to adapt any Terraform Provider for use with Pulumi, enabling management of any infrastructure supported by the Terraform Providers ecosystem using Pulumi pr…

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.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#59

Post by toomuchtodo »

version_five wrote: post #56
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…

> Ideology is great until people need to eat. That’s what revenue is for That sounds like what the GP comment is saying. If someone said "turns out open source doesn't work for our business model" it's hard to argue with. If instead they talk about "evolving open source models" and whatnot, it feels like they want the best of both worlds. It's been happening a lot recently that companies pretend they are "open sourci…

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 speaking.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#60

Post by cmiles74 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #41
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…

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...

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