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HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

hashicorp.com

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Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#611

Post by kdmccormick »

gravlaks wrote: post #512
fishnchips wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spacelift co-founder here - please don’t panic. We will make sure you can continue to use Spacelift :)

I don't know the details of BSL, but can HashiCorp now require compensation/$$$ from Spacelift, Scalr, Env0, etc? In that case, these products can be forced to offer similar pricing as Terraform Cloud.

IANAL but I believe the BSL restrictions only apply to new upstream code versions. All HashiCorp repos can and always will be usable under MPL as they were up until the moment immediately before the license change.

In other words: if you hard fork now, you don't need to pay.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#612

Post by sanderjd »

orra wrote: post #502
sanderjd wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

First of all, as is probably clear if you read my comments on this, I personally think it would be better if the definition of "open source" did not exclude this kind of re-sale limitation. I don't think it's intuitive at all that this is required to fit the definition of "open source". It seems to me like a tacked on ideological stance from the gatekeeper of the definition, that isn't present in or implied by the words themselves.

But while that's what I think, it isn't at all the view espoused here by Hashicorp. They aren't claiming this is open source. They are accepting the OSI definition and not claiming their new license falls within it.

They aren't being disingenuous. You're putting words in their mouth, and then getting mad at them about those words they didn't say.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#613

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

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…

> I argue the window is moving as to what “open source” means

perhaps according to Hashicorp's marketing team, otherwise I haven't seen any evidence this is the case

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#614

Post by kdmccormick »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #417
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…

Sure, OSS doesn't mean you have to take all PRs, but if your claim is that others are just taking your code and not giving anything back, one of the alleged leeches showing up to talk about how they've tried to give back is very much pertinent.

Having been on the upstream side of things, it's very he-said-she-said. HashiCorp code could be a PITA to contribute to, or maybe this particular provider was bad at contributing.

The only way to know for sure is to dive into the merged and unmerged PRs and see how they were handled.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#615

Post by sgt »

personomas wrote: post #597
sgt wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that? I've been considering Nomad recently and I didn't perceive it as dead at all. Their community seems pretty vibrant too.

TBH I don't know anything about Nomand. Feel free to use it. That might be good for you, I certainly don't want to deter you. All I meant was that I didn't think Nomad would survive in the Long Term a change of license from MIT to BSL, when there also exists Kubernetes. On the contrary, I think Terraform will survive in form or another. Either the BSL license will be lenient enough or people will fork Terraform and s…

Your statement was "Nomad is a dead product" without knowing anything about the product. That's something to consider next time you make such statements.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#616

Post by prmoustache »

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…

They pretend some companys do not follow the ethics and principles of open source by not contributing but Hashicorp hasn't adopted those principles in the first place. If you make people sign a CLA before contributing, you are not really a good open source player in the first place.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#617

Post by INTPenis »

ednxzu wrote: post #593
INTPenis wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very first lines of the license text say that you're permitted to use the software for "non-production use".

https://github.com/hashicorp/vault/blob/main/LICENSE#L8-L11 Clearly states that you can use it in a production setup.

Thanks for pointing that out, so this must have been added by Hashicorp then.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#618

Post by JeremyNT »

davorak wrote: post #139
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…

> 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.

Yeah, it's not binary. BSL is worse than open source, but it sucks way less than fully closed products. I'll at least consider using it.

My big gripe with the BSL is when companies switch from a proper open source license to the BSL, sometimes they try to sell it as a positive development, which is BS. The HashiCorp announcement is better than some in this regard, worse than others. Claiming it's the "evolution" of open source is weird spin, of course.

I also feel like any company switching from open source to BSL puts a stench of death / desperation on them, and it makes me worry for their future. If they have to make OSS -> BSL switch today, what's the next user hostile change going to be? Will they even survive?

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#619

Post by grudg3 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #604
Aeolun wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t think that was ever in doubt. You only need to use it for a very short time to find that the ergonomics are infinitely nicer than Terraform.

My biggest issue with terraform is concept of state file. It seems that Pulumi continues on this model. I wish someone came up with innovative idea of not needing state file.

Bicep does that, but it's Azure only, and you can't really 'destroy', just apply.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#620

Post by notnmeyer »

vbezhenar wrote: post #604
Aeolun wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t think that was ever in doubt. You only need to use it for a very short time to find that the ergonomics are infinitely nicer than Terraform.

My biggest issue with terraform is concept of state file. It seems that Pulumi continues on this model. I wish someone came up with innovative idea of not needing state file.

this is difficult for me to think about in the same way as trying to picture a 4th dimension.

surely, state needs to be tracked somehow. what would an alternative even be?

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