<story><title>HashiCorp adopts Business Source License</title><url>https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/hashicorp-adopts-business-source-license</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>toomuchtodo</author><text>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 speaking.</text></item><item><author>version_five</author><text>&amp;gt;  Ideology is great until people need to eat. That’s what revenue is for&lt;p&gt;That sounds like what the GP comment is saying. If someone said &amp;quot;turns out open source doesn&amp;#x27;t work for our business model&amp;quot; it&amp;#x27;s hard to argue with. If instead they talk about &amp;quot;evolving open source models&amp;quot; and whatnot, it feels like they want the best of both worlds. It&amp;#x27;s been happening a lot recently that companies pretend they are &amp;quot;open sourcing&amp;quot; something for the PR but really use a much more restrictive license.</text></item><item><author>toomuchtodo</author><text>Ideology is great until people need to eat. That’s what revenue is for.&lt;p&gt;High level, times have changed. Source should be (my two cents, ymmv) about a mutually beneficial partnership between builders and users, not “give it all away for free or you’re not legit.” Users get to understand and extend what they’re running (via source), while the project steward&amp;#x2F;maintainer&amp;#x2F;owner can continue to do so.&lt;p&gt;It is a balance to be maintained in tension, not an equilibrium to be reached.</text></item><item><author>jamestanderson</author><text>All that I get from this is that HashiCorp is no longer an open source company.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; 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.&lt;p&gt;This is 100% in the spirit of open source. If this is a problem for them, why not adopt an open source license that compels developers to open source their code instead, like the AGPL?&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JoshTriplett</author><text>&amp;gt; I argue the window is moving as to what “open source” means&lt;p&gt;Only if we let it, and stop shouting about it and finding alternatives every time a company does this.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t a &lt;i&gt;new&lt;/i&gt; thing; companies have been trying to play &amp;quot;almost open source&amp;quot; games for decades, and they&amp;#x27;ll continue playing those games as long as it either works or doesn&amp;#x27;t have sufficiently large penalties for trying. (Much as companies will continue violating copyleft licenses as long as they either get away with it or the penalties for trying are simply an expected part of the risk.)&lt;p&gt;The best possible response to a company doing this is that someone forks the code, starts or expands a competitor, and the original company&amp;#x27;s revenue drops massively as a deterrent.</text></comment>
<story><title>HashiCorp adopts Business Source License</title><url>https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/hashicorp-adopts-business-source-license</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>toomuchtodo</author><text>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 speaking.</text></item><item><author>version_five</author><text>&amp;gt;  Ideology is great until people need to eat. That’s what revenue is for&lt;p&gt;That sounds like what the GP comment is saying. If someone said &amp;quot;turns out open source doesn&amp;#x27;t work for our business model&amp;quot; it&amp;#x27;s hard to argue with. If instead they talk about &amp;quot;evolving open source models&amp;quot; and whatnot, it feels like they want the best of both worlds. It&amp;#x27;s been happening a lot recently that companies pretend they are &amp;quot;open sourcing&amp;quot; something for the PR but really use a much more restrictive license.</text></item><item><author>toomuchtodo</author><text>Ideology is great until people need to eat. That’s what revenue is for.&lt;p&gt;High level, times have changed. Source should be (my two cents, ymmv) about a mutually beneficial partnership between builders and users, not “give it all away for free or you’re not legit.” Users get to understand and extend what they’re running (via source), while the project steward&amp;#x2F;maintainer&amp;#x2F;owner can continue to do so.&lt;p&gt;It is a balance to be maintained in tension, not an equilibrium to be reached.</text></item><item><author>jamestanderson</author><text>All that I get from this is that HashiCorp is no longer an open source company.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; 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.&lt;p&gt;This is 100% in the spirit of open source. If this is a problem for them, why not adopt an open source license that compels developers to open source their code instead, like the AGPL?&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pessimizer</author><text>&amp;gt; I argue the window is moving as to what “open source” means out of survival.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think this is happening at all. Open source means the same thing it&amp;#x27;s always meant. Some people are just retreating from open source. Which is fine, they should be writing Free Software anyway if they want the world to have it, or use proprietary licenses if they don&amp;#x27;t. Otherwise very wealthy people will live on your back.</text></comment>