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HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

hashicorp.com

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Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#61

Post by reilly3000 »

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 think Upbound’s Crossplane is the best positioned here. It’s an easy migration path and far more sane way to manage state.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#62

Post by madeofpalk »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #49

I always thought that OSS was supposed to be a loss-leader. By being the author you have more credibility for offering services. Sure someone else can do it, but are they really gonna know how to offer support in some rare crazy edge case that is blowing up production right now?

loss-leader for what?

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#63

Post by not_a_bot2890 »

yellowapple wrote: post #39
LapsangGuzzler wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, has anyone of any significance used a Hashicorp product to meaningfully compete with Hashicorp? Just because nobody has tried yet doesn’t mean that it won’t ever happen. Companies are doing this precisely because companies like Amazon abuse FOSS licenses to stand up their own hosted versions of open source projects.

> Just because nobody has tried yet doesn’t mean that it won’t ever happen. That nobody has tried suggests paranoia at best. > Companies are doing this precisely because companies like Amazon abuse FOSS licenses to stand up their own hosted versions of open source projects. The AGPL exists and already fully addresses that.

> That nobody has tried suggests paranoia at best.

That's hardly paranoia. Why wait until you need to change it under pressure from one of the big CSPs (a la Elastic/AWS)? It is proactive at best.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#64

Post by fasterik »

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…

>Which is fine. But just go closed source, then, and own that, instead of trying to have it both ways.

This seems too black and white. Don't their customers get value from having source code available, even if there are restrictions on how that source code can be used?

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#65

Post by LambdaComplex »

webmobdev wrote: post #47
kdmccormick wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they want it to be developed collaboratively, in the public eye, and for the good of all contributors. In other words, free as in freedom, but not free as in beer.

Then it is a question of choosing the right license - AGPL.

Yeah, it always confuses me when people release something under e.g. the BSD or MIT license and then complain about "freeloaders."

It's totally understandable to not want companies to profit off of proprietary, closed-source forks of your software. I get it! But there are licenses that you can use to stop that from ever happening (namely [A]GPL). Why not use one of those?

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#66

Post by phatfish »

yellowapple wrote: post #19
mavelikara wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free as in freedom, not beer.

Except that the BUSL is the literal opposite: free as in beer, not freedom.

It does guarantee transition to a free as in freedom open source license after a set period. Seems to be (at most?) 4 years.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#67

Post by Barrin92 »

toenail wrote: post #51
Barrin92 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 effectively means distributing resources from people who do everything to people who do nothing.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#68

Post by 094459 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #59
version_five wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sp…

Yup this is how I see things evolving too. It’s a long game though and I suspect there will be a few twists yet to come.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#69

Post by [deleted] »

hashtag-til wrote: post #54
version_five wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

[deleted]

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#70

Post by yellowapple »

chunk_waffle wrote: post #50
yellowapple wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of precisely zero such companies, and I can't imagine how such a company would even have customers in the first place when Terraform already has a $0 pricetag. I could maybe understand this for Consul or Vault, since those are actual hostable services that could probably be resold - but I don't know of anyone reselling those, either.

Maybe Gruntwork.io, makers of Terragrunt, I think? I always just stuck to vanilla Terraform but recall coming across them at some point.

I wouldn't call them a competitor by any stretch; more like a partner. A Terragrunt codebase just wraps Terraform, with the same exact backends (including Hashicorp's SaaS offerings) and the same exact providers and everything.
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