HashiCorp adopts Business Source License • Hacker News Board

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#521

Post by acatton » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 8:31 AM UTC

elnygren wrote: post #518

Why are people so hostile towards BSL? Paying/asking money for great products is fine and if the product's source code is in git, the better. Not everything has to be _free_. The major benefit of OSS for many is that you can read the source code. The major benefit of paid SaaS is that things just work and you pay for that. BSL can be the perfect combination of these.

I can't speak for other people. I'm not hostile to the BSL, if a company wants to license their products under BSL, I don't care, I will just not use it.

The main issue I have with the BSL is opensource-washing were companies basically release an open source product which become popular because it is open source, and then do a bait-and-switch and relicense it under the BSL restrictive license, but still claim "it is open source" which is a lie.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#522

Post by _odey » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 8:32 AM UTC

Considering this change I want to remove consul from my adoption strategy but I would still like to know of a replacement.

Does anyone know of a similar tool?

I'm interested only in the ability to manage environment variables with a web UI, and have processes restart gracefully on change, everything else consul provides is not of use to me.

Any suggestions?

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#523

Post by cultureulterior » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 8:35 AM UTC

Yeah, time to fork terraform. I'd contribute.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#524

Post by JimDabell » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 8:35 AM UTC

asymmetric wrote: post #487

mperham wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thanks, I stand corrected. How does this play with third-party contributions? Others might be the copyright-holders of a sub-section of the code.

You ask contributors to sign a copyright assignment before accepting their changes.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#525

Post by growse » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 8:36 AM UTC

elnygren wrote: post #518

Why are people so hostile towards BSL? Paying/asking money for great products is fine and if the product's source code is in git, the better. Not everything has to be _free_. The major benefit of OSS for many is that you can read the source code. The major benefit of paid SaaS is that things just work and you pay for that. BSL can be the perfect combination of these.

They're not hostile to the BSL. Other projects that started out under the BSL (e.g. Cockroach) don't draw the ire.

The anger is at a company that trades on the benefits of open source, and then shuts that down when it becomes inconvenient. People think they're free-loading on the contributions of others.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#526

Post by JimDabell » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 8:37 AM UTC

pydry wrote: post #202

Macha wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm way more fine with AGPL (without CLA). That's perfectly within the spirit of open source, as it doesn't privilege one group of users over another. BPL, EPL, SSPL are all "not open source", and AGPL+CLA is "we're setting up for a bait and switch with not open source versions".

I find it curious that Microsoft doesnt get more shit for demanding a CLA, especially given that embrace, extend, extinguish is in their DNA.

Even GNU projects ask people to sign a CLA.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#527

Post by duckmysick » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 8:37 AM UTC

asymmetric wrote: post #487

mperham wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thanks, I stand corrected. How does this play with third-party contributions? Others might be the copyright-holders of a sub-section of the code.

Projects can have a Contributor License Agreement (CLA). It gives the owner of the project a right to republish (or copyright) the contributions. You can't contribute to the project without signing it.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#528

Post by jupp0r » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 8:38 AM UTC

alexandre_m wrote: post #370

redeux wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. OSS doesn't mean that you have to accept any PRs that showed up in your repo, nor does it mean that you have to let a competitor steer your project simply because you're building i…

You have to acknowledge that all these OSS projects officially backed by a corporation don't want you to contribute certain features that are part of their enterprise offering. As soon as there's an "enterprise" tier, contributions are not only based on their merit, but also evaluated as a threat to their business model. Sometimes it's not even obvious for external contributors, but there may be some small overlap wi…

Of course, but the major difference is that if I don't like the maintainers, I can create a fork, build a community around it and happily run it in production. Imagine where nodejs would be right now if they had been BSL licensed in the iojs times.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#529

Post by Vespasian » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 8:40 AM UTC

piaste wrote: post #456

kmeisthax wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

"Today Amazon introduces the AWS Partnered Software Supplier Programm. Selected companies are invited to offer their products as deeply integrated AWS services.

The first announced Parter are: Not-at-all-amazon-for-hashicorp inc, Not-at-all-amazon-for-mariadb inc."

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#530

Post by BoorishBears » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 8:48 AM UTC

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.

I hate OpenSearch with a passion, an absolutely horrid lagging project that can't get basic autocomplete working (https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch-Dashboards/...)

but still manages to suck the air out of the room when you want Elasticsearch because AWS already has the company's billing details and no one wants to figure out paying another provider.