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HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

hashicorp.com

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Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#91

Post by riku_iki »

jabbany wrote: post #74
riku_iki wrote: post #20

how this works from the point of view of current license? They can't just take MPL code and modify license terms in my reading of FAQ (Q9 in https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/FAQ/ )?..

> on all future releases of HashiCorp products Anything before the change is still MPL and can be forked and built on top of freely.

> Anything before the change is still MPL and can be forked and built on top of freely.

per my reading of FAQ if you fork and modify old MPL it still have to be MPL, so if hashicorp fork old MPL code they need to release it under MPL.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#92

Post by Pet_Ant »

madeofpalk wrote: post #62
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?

For support contracts, services, consulting, and customisation.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#93

Post by yellowapple »

phatfish wrote: post #66
yellowapple wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a pretty weak guarantee. If it's possible to switch to the BUSL, then it's just as possible to switch to something even further from FOSS later.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#94

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

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.

> As much as I love open-souce, I get the point that there are a bunch of freeloaders using stuff and not contributing back.

Freeloaders like HashiCorp using other people's compilers and libraries?

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#95

Post by pessimizer »

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.

The opposite of open source isn't closed source, the opposite of open source is restrictive. You're not forced to refuse to let people see the source when you're not open source. You're not forced to eliminate everything that OSI-approved licenses must have if you're not OSI-approved. There are no OSI cops that bust proprietary vendors for using a subset of their characteristics.

Of course it would be better if it were Free software, but it would be better if all software were Free software. They're doing them.

edit: My objection comes when people pretend licenses are open source when they are not OSI-approved and couldn't be. HashiCorp is not claiming to have remained open source: they're now "source-available."

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#96

Post by danw1979 »

I’m really loosing faith in Hashicorp recently.

Moving away from the easy-to-predict flat rate Team pricing and to a new model based on number of managed resources ($0.000004 per resource per month or something like that) was just wacky…

… and now this “you can’t make money from the software you helped write” BS.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#97

Post by theLiminator »

jamestanderson wrote: post #78
theLiminator wrote: post #15

Did they have to get signoff from all contributors to relicense? I can't imagine this was a popular move for the people who contributed outside of hashicorp.

I believe they require contributors to sign their CLA: https://cla.hashicorp.com/ That CLA grants HashiCorp full license over your Copyright, and explicitly allows them to sublicense your contributions[1]. Drew Devault's blog posts[2][3] on this topic are extremely relevant. [1] > Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to HashiCorp and to recipients of soft…

Sounds like contributors should create a community fork then. Yeah, it sure does give away a lot of your rights when you sign a CLA...

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#98

Post by A1kmm »

I don't know if I've ever seen so many useful Open Source software products go proprietary at once; Vault, Consul, Terraform are all useful parts of many people's stacks, that they chose specifically because of their licence.

Hopefully they all get forked (or existing forks take off), and it is just a matter of the community converging on the winner that we all use in the future.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#99

Post by hashtag-til »

kodablah wrote: post #27
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 also work on open source full time. I personally am happy to give my work away unconditionally to both freeloaders and contributors and fortunately my employer feels the same way (I am often a freeloader myself on unrelated projects). Ideally your moneymaker can compete on its own without being dependent upon gatekeeping how the open source part is used. But with project ownership means you can change the rules for…

I find it brave we had this generation of companies creating open-source business models.

It’s a shame it didn’t work out for them due to bad actors.

The trend I see is for the next generation of good open-source great ideas to be much more protective around their intellectual property. Such a loss, again, due to bad actors.

Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License

#100

Post by falcolas »

rcme wrote: post #76
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…

Source-available is still hugely beneficial to users, even if it’s not open source.

Closed source can (and does, see Windows) provide source to customers too.
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