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TLDR: - “Chef will move all of our product software development to an open source model with 100% of our product code available and licensed under Apache 2.0”

TLDR: - “Chef will move all of our product software development to an open source model with 100% of our product code available and licensed under Apache 2.0” - “Chef will produce a new distribution (release), Chef Enterprise Automation Stack, built for commercial users with new terms and conditions of use.”

mkesper 8y ago
From the FAQ (https://www.chef.io/bmc-faq/ https://www.chef.io/bmc-faq/): Q: What do I have to differently today than I had to do yesterday? For our existing commercial customers there is no action required. For existing customers using Chef for non-commercial purposes, experimentation, or individual use there is no change. For contributors to Chef OSS projects, non-profits, and other special groups we are still working on how we will partner with those communities around licensing Chef products. Stay tuned for more info. Everyone else can continue using our current releases in perpetuity – although they will be end-of-support in 12 months and no further bug fixes or security updates will be available for those versions without a commercial arrangement. Customers who choose to use our new software versions will be subject to the new license terms and will have an opportunity to create a commercial relationship with Chef, with all of the accompanying benefits that provides. Q: How will this impact existing customers? For existing customers this change will not impact their usage or contracts. Companies that already pay us for Chef Infra (formerly Chef), Chef Inspec, Chef Habitat and/or Chef Automate will continue to do so and we will continue to increase the value of their relationship with Chef. Users who do not pay Chef today (use our free open source binaries), and net new users, will have three options going forward: License our commercial software distribution. Take our open source code and create a software development org to build and manage their own distro (create their own downstream fork) or leverage a public free distribution (which may or may not exist). Stay on an older free distribution in perpetuity. For example, they could use Chef 14.7.17 forever but they would not receive security updates , bug fixes or support from Chef starting 1 year after Chef 15 is released. We will make licensing accommodations for individuals and significant community contributors to continue to use Chef Infra, Chef Inspec and Chef Habitat in the same way that they have been. In addition, we want to make it equally easy to experiment and self-learn with our various products. Finally, we will have a low cost “Essentials” suite of our commercial distributions that should satisfy the needs of smaller businesses.
- sytse 8y ago
  So on one hand all the software will be open source and on the other hand there will be no free as in beer distribution anymore. Sounds similar to the RedHat model. I wonder if the community is active enough to produce a CentOS like alternative distribution for Chef. The Essentials distribution is interesting, I wonder what is in it. I assume it will not have things like Role Based Access Control (RBAC).
  - geofft 8y ago
    They call out RHEL specifically as inspiration: > Beginning on April 2, we will be making all of our products open source under the Apache 2 license and we will begin to attach commercial license terms to our software distribution (binaries) with the next major release. This is very similar to the “open source product” model most effectively run by Red Hat®, where they develop software in the open while attaching enterprise license terms to the distribution of RHEL (Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®).
    - sytse 8y ago
      I missed that, thanks for posting.
  - holoway 8y ago
    Original author of Chef here (although no longer with the company day-to-day). I would not assume that - 100% of the software Chef produces is open source, so no reason to ever differentiate on features in licensing. So I doubt they would remove anything.
    - bgoldy 8y ago
      Correct - Essentials is just a low cost suite of Chef products. We offer two suites,. Effortless Infrastructure, focused on core config mgmt and security/compliance use cases and Enterprise Automation Stack which includes all of that plus a wide range of app automation capabilities including dependency mgmt, lifecycle mgmt, etc. see pricing for the suites at https://www.chef.io/pricing/ https://www.chef.io/pricing/

mkesper 8y ago

From the FAQ (https://www.chef.io/bmc-faq/ https://www.chef.io/bmc-faq/): Q: What do I have to differently today than I had to do yesterday? For our existing commercial customers there is no action required. For existing customers using Chef for non-commercial purposes, experimentation, or individual use there is no change. For contributors to Chef OSS projects, non-profits, and other special groups we are still working on how we will partner with those communities around licensing Chef products. Stay tuned for more info. Everyone else can continue using our current releases in perpetuity – although they will be end-of-support in 12 months and no further bug fixes or security updates will be available for those versions without a commercial arrangement. Customers who choose to use our new software versions will be subject to the new license terms and will have an opportunity to create a commercial relationship with Chef, with all of the accompanying benefits that provides. Q: How will this impact existing customers? For existing customers this change will not impact their usage or contracts. Companies that already pay us for Chef Infra (formerly Chef), Chef Inspec, Chef Habitat and/or Chef Automate will continue to do so and we will continue to increase the value of their relationship with Chef. Users who do not pay Chef today (use our free open source binaries), and net new users, will have three options going forward: License our commercial software distribution. Take our open source code and create a software development org to build and manage their own distro (create their own downstream fork) or leverage a public free distribution (which may or may not exist). Stay on an older free distribution in perpetuity. For example, they could use Chef 14.7.17 forever but they would not receive security updates , bug fixes or support from Chef starting 1 year after Chef 15 is released. We will make licensing accommodations for individuals and significant community contributors to continue to use Chef Infra, Chef Inspec and Chef Habitat in the same way that they have been. In addition, we want to make it equally easy to experiment and self-learn with our various products. Finally, we will have a low cost “Essentials” suite of our commercial distributions that should satisfy the needs of smaller businesses.

sytse 8y ago
So on one hand all the software will be open source and on the other hand there will be no free as in beer distribution anymore. Sounds similar to the RedHat model. I wonder if the community is active enough to produce a CentOS like alternative distribution for Chef. The Essentials distribution is interesting, I wonder what is in it. I assume it will not have things like Role Based Access Control (RBAC).
- geofft 8y ago
  They call out RHEL specifically as inspiration: > Beginning on April 2, we will be making all of our products open source under the Apache 2 license and we will begin to attach commercial license terms to our software distribution (binaries) with the next major release. This is very similar to the “open source product” model most effectively run by Red Hat®, where they develop software in the open while attaching enterprise license terms to the distribution of RHEL (Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®).
  - sytse 8y ago
    I missed that, thanks for posting.
- holoway 8y ago
  Original author of Chef here (although no longer with the company day-to-day). I would not assume that - 100% of the software Chef produces is open source, so no reason to ever differentiate on features in licensing. So I doubt they would remove anything.
  - bgoldy 8y ago
    Correct - Essentials is just a low cost suite of Chef products. We offer two suites,. Effortless Infrastructure, focused on core config mgmt and security/compliance use cases and Enterprise Automation Stack which includes all of that plus a wide range of app automation capabilities including dependency mgmt, lifecycle mgmt, etc. see pricing for the suites at https://www.chef.io/pricing/ https://www.chef.io/pricing/