this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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What does this mean?π€
Given I was recently involved in minimising the impact of Lightbend's similar move earlier this year, AFAIU it means their products will be conditionally open source. They'll be free to use for non-commercial use but you'd need to pay for anything else.
There is no such thing as "conditionally open source." The license terms you describe are just "not open source."
If they actually gave a shit about commercial entities contributing back, they should've gone AGPL3. This is just a money grab and yet another example of how permissive licensing isn't good enough and everything should be copyleft.
It basically means you can view the code, which is the literal by-the-word definition of open source. It's not the common understanding of open source, which would be free-to-use (with some minor restrictions like attribution or publishing derivatives under the same license).
Only the latter definition is valid!
Its still open source. You can still view the source code. That's what open source is. The change here is the restriction on providing Terraform as a service in the form of a Terraform Cloud competitor. This seems to be a very direct response to Amazon introducing a service for hosting terraform modules, storing terraform state, and applying changes.
I don't love this, but they're also not restricting anyone's comercial ability to develop products using terraform like a banking app, a link aggregator, or a e-commerce platform. All you're restricted on is providing an IaC service where you directly profit from running someone else's terraform for them. This is the same license the MariaDB creators came up with when they felt burned by Oracle but did want people to be able to build closed source products using their database without profiting from providing their db as a service (this is why many self hosted projects use Maria instead of MySQL) which is why AWS can't offer maria RDS instances.
AGPL wouldn't help them keep developing terraform the way BSL would because their business problem isn't that no one is contributing back to the code, their problem is a $1T market disruptor just turned their Sauron eye towards Hashicorp's $5B shire and offered their own shire for less money behind the black gates. All after for many years directly benefitting from Hashicorp's existence and giving them white glove treatment as a result. And yes I'm aware that in this analogy Hashicorp is probably one of the Nazghul being corrupted.
Like I said. I don't love this license change. But like I said. Hashicorp doesn't have a code contributions to Terraform problem. They have a funding their business and development problem
"Open Source" does not, and has never only meant, "you can view the source code". This is the Open Source Definition: https://opensource.org/osd/
Relevant excerpt:
The Open Source Definition is very specific, and this license does not meet it. This license is, as it calls itself, "source-available".
If the OSI had obtained that trademark in 1999 on "Open Source", it would be abundantly clear what software really is and is not open source https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.php/
No, it's not. It only counts if it provides the four freedoms listed here:
And before you say "but that's the definition of 'Free Software', not 'Open Source'," even the latter, misguided as it is, at least still requires freedom 0!
Those are definitions for free software not open source. Open source does not mean free and open source (FOSS). This is still open source (you can see the code) , it's no longer FOSS (you can't freely use the code).
Generating revenue with products they're developing, the sheer audacity
You're conflating FOSS and open source. This is open source just not FOSS anymore
This is plainly incorrect, please see the other responses.
FOSS stands for "free and open source software", but they functionally mean the same thing. So what you're saying is:
You're cherry picking a definition to support your agenda.
So your claim is that the open source definition by the Open Source Initiative which is battle tested and widely used by distributions, major git hosts and legal enitities is a cherry-picked definition?
Sounds like you're cherry-picking your definition to hide that you simply have no idea :)
This is plainly incorrect but I won't bother saying why either.
I don't get what you're trying to say here. All terms used have a clear definition and other comments pointed that out already. The definition on open source is very clear.
There's no need to AFAIU when their FAQ explains all the detail, which is that commercial production use is fine as long as you're not using it to build a competitor product to Hashicorp.
Which is described in ambiguous terms that they can change their minds about at any time. They can decide down the road you are competing, or they can develop a product that competes with you and then use it against you.