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HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

hashicorp.com

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Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#501

Post by growse »

Barrin92 wrote: post #67
toenail wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I have to pay developers, operate a business, allocate time and money to create value and take the risk that comes with it, and you come and take my work unchanged, strip all atribution and mereley resell it, then I can't succeed by definition. The most talented businessman on earth cannot. If that's what you think open source is, it'll vanish. No commercial system can exist like that and it should not because it…

If you're not able to come up with a business plan that involves open sourcing your software, that's fine!

Building a business off the open source model and community good-will before realising it doesn't work is either incompetence or dishonesty.

> If that's what you think open source is, it'll vanish. No commercial system can exist like that and it should not because it effectively means distributing resources from people who do everything to people who do nothing.

This is a weirdly hyper-capitalist take. You're saying that the successful businesses built off open source "should not" exist?

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#502

Post by orra »

sanderjd wrote: post #448
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.

My perspective is more like the parent's. As someone who has grown up along with open source, I've found it surprising recently how up in arms people are about how critical the ability for anyone to commercialize a project is for the definition of open source. To me, I care a lot about whether I can see how software is implemented, and modify it for my own use, but it has never really occurred to me that I need to ha…

> But I do think this purist perspective on open source is just going to result in more Snowflakes and fewer Hashicorps, because why bother with this fight?

Orgs like Hashicorp clearly think they benefit by pretending to be open source.

They could simply stop being disingenuous about their source available proprietary software, and nobody would stop them.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#503

Post by growse »

kdmccormick wrote: post #331
deadbunny wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is some software we made. Use it however and for whatever you like. Wait not like that.

Yes, literally this, but without the smug. Have you ever set lenient guidelines, people took advantage of them in a way you didn't like, so you were forced to tighten your guidelines in a way you didn't originally want to? eg: a professor establishes a generous late homework policy, which most students use reasonably, except a few who decide to turn in everthing on the last day of the term and make the TA's lives hel…

For this analogy to work, it also needs to include the professor advertising their course and attracting good-will primarily on the basis of their generous policy, and then bait-and-switching involved participants when they later decided they didn't like it.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#504

Post by dragonwriter »

pessimizer wrote: post #109
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…

> 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.

The OSI Open Source Definition and the FSF Free Software Definition are for most practical purposes identical (and most licenses meet both or neither); historically, the Open Source and Free Software communities have somewhat different reasons for preferring the same thing, but the things are the same.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#505

Post by pjmlp »

gkbrk wrote: post #465
toomuchtodo wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

From where I am standing, no one cares they exist.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#506

Post by pjmlp »

riffraff wrote: post #433
toomuchtodo wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Jenkins/Hudson? Oracle decided to make Hudson commercial, it was forked and Jenkins is still around but Hudson is dead.

Meanwhile Cloudbees has several product to sell you on.

Turns out Jenkins development needs to be sponsored somehow.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#507

Post by afiori »

riffraff wrote: post #440
afiori wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is 100% in the spirit of open source That is the spirit of Free Software (ie restricting users as little as possible) Open Source is much smaller in scope.

The open source definition explicitly says that there must be no restrictions on reselling. So restricting competitors is as much against the OS spirit as it is against the FS spirit.

touché

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#508

Post by _cenw »

joeduffy wrote: post #122
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…

Pulumi Founder/CEO here. The blog post is disingenuous. We tried many times to contribute upstream fixes to Terraform providers, but HashiCorp would never accept them. So we've had to maintain forks. They lost their OSS DNA a long time ago, and this move just puts the final nail in the coffin. Thankfully over time, they already pushed responsibility for most Terraform providers back onto their partners, so I'm hopefu…

I'm not sure if open sourcing .NET is the best bit to put on your resume when Microsoft has been sabotaging the developer ecosystem to keep VS relevant. [1]

Not that I don't appreciate the effort. I'm sure what has been achieved involved a fair share of convincing too.

[1]: https://isdotnetopen.com/

Being in the Apache Foundation gives me all the assurance I need alone, though.

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