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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

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 have the right to commercialize any arbitrary project. But :shrug: I guess different people care about different things, is what I've realized watching these discussions unfold. 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?

orra 3y ago
> 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.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  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.
  - orra 3y ago
    > 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. No, they say open source needs to evolve, the implication this is an evolution (not devolution) of open source. Their announcement talks about how they spoke to OSS experts. That's not relevant: the experts would simply have said: that's not open source. Hashicorp several times say the BSL is permissive. Permissive is a well established term in software licensing. No, the BSL is not. The BSD and MIT and Apache licenses are permissive. Finally there is this claptrap from their FAQ: > 17. Does HashiCorp still believe in open source? > > Yes. [...]
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      > the implication this is an evolution (not devolution) of open source. "implication" > the experts would simply have said: that's not open source. Presumably the experts did tell them that it is not an open source license, which is why they chose not to claim that it is. > Permissive is a well established term in software licensing. No, the BSL is not. I think BSL easily fits the bill for the word "permissive". It's just all so much gatekeeping, and it's really tiring.
davidgerard 3y ago
> why bother with this fight? Because companies keep bringing this fight.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  No, companies keep making services with code I can read and modify for my own use, and people in the community keep bringing this fight to them because they're peeved that other companies can't commercialize that software that they didn't build. Companies will naturally conclude they should just make proprietary software, which doesn't require a big fight. And I think that's a shame.
  - cthalupa 3y ago
    The problem is these companies almost universally could not exist without open source software that allowed them to commercialize things. It is impossible for the vast majority of companies to ever "give back" as much to open source as they profit off of it - from the Linux kernel, all the GNU stuff, the nginx or apache webservers hosting webpages and API access, the haproxy load balancers, the corosync/pacemaker they're using to keep things online, etc. etc. etc. How many of these companies could exist if all these projects underpinning their own swapped to the SSPL, BSL, etc? And I don't mean now - once you reach a certain size, if you have to replace a bunch of dependencies, you have the resources to do it. But when these companies were smaller, would they have been able to create their own implementation of all these dependencies and still get their product to market? Would they have had the resources to commit to all of it? Would they have had the money to pay for non-FOSS options? How many of these projects would still exist if the community couldn't commercialize them? We're not even talking about whether or not they ultimately end up contributing code back, etc., because it's not like these licenses give you some threshold of code contribution after which you can commercialize it. Sure, the possibility exists of some special private licensing agreement being struck, but that's possible with proprietary code, too. Source available might sound fine from a personal use perspective, but it ignores the fact that the environment that made all of this possible would not have been possible under that model.
    - 3y ago

orra 3y ago

> 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.

sanderjd 3y ago
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.
- orra 3y ago
  > 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. No, they say open source needs to evolve, the implication this is an evolution (not devolution) of open source. Their announcement talks about how they spoke to OSS experts. That's not relevant: the experts would simply have said: that's not open source. Hashicorp several times say the BSL is permissive. Permissive is a well established term in software licensing. No, the BSL is not. The BSD and MIT and Apache licenses are permissive. Finally there is this claptrap from their FAQ: > 17. Does HashiCorp still believe in open source? > > Yes. [...]
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    > the implication this is an evolution (not devolution) of open source. "implication" > the experts would simply have said: that's not open source. Presumably the experts did tell them that it is not an open source license, which is why they chose not to claim that it is. > Permissive is a well established term in software licensing. No, the BSL is not. I think BSL easily fits the bill for the word "permissive". It's just all so much gatekeeping, and it's really tiring.

davidgerard 3y ago

> why bother with this fight? Because companies keep bringing this fight.

sanderjd 3y ago
No, companies keep making services with code I can read and modify for my own use, and people in the community keep bringing this fight to them because they're peeved that other companies can't commercialize that software that they didn't build. Companies will naturally conclude they should just make proprietary software, which doesn't require a big fight. And I think that's a shame.
- cthalupa 3y ago
  The problem is these companies almost universally could not exist without open source software that allowed them to commercialize things. It is impossible for the vast majority of companies to ever "give back" as much to open source as they profit off of it - from the Linux kernel, all the GNU stuff, the nginx or apache webservers hosting webpages and API access, the haproxy load balancers, the corosync/pacemaker they're using to keep things online, etc. etc. etc. How many of these companies could exist if all these projects underpinning their own swapped to the SSPL, BSL, etc? And I don't mean now - once you reach a certain size, if you have to replace a bunch of dependencies, you have the resources to do it. But when these companies were smaller, would they have been able to create their own implementation of all these dependencies and still get their product to market? Would they have had the resources to commit to all of it? Would they have had the money to pay for non-FOSS options? How many of these projects would still exist if the community couldn't commercialize them? We're not even talking about whether or not they ultimately end up contributing code back, etc., because it's not like these licenses give you some threshold of code contribution after which you can commercialize it. Sure, the possibility exists of some special private licensing agreement being struck, but that's possible with proprietary code, too. Source available might sound fine from a personal use perspective, but it ignores the fact that the environment that made all of this possible would not have been possible under that model.
  - 3y ago