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So they just added a new FAQ because their license was unclear, it's got a "last updated" date under every single entry. What assurances do we have that these b

by yebyen 3y ago

So they just added a new FAQ because their license was unclear, it's got a "last updated" date under every single entry. What assurances do we have that these binding statements won't be changed in the future? It looks as though they have definitely made changes to this page at least 4 times since it was published, in only two weeks. https://www.hashicorp.com/license-faq#future-competitive-products https://www.hashicorp.com/license-faq#future-competitive-pro... If in the future HashiCorp creates an offering then they will exempt me from action under the BSL according to this section. What is the likelihood of this changing later on? What is my recourse if it does? All of these questions, you can ask yourself (and your lawyers, again and again each time) now of any open source project that makes contributors sign a CLA. Since there was nothing stopping HashiCorp from doing this, what will stop others? This is a terrible thing for Open Source IMO. Competition is good, but I understand HashiCorp have some competitors that are leveraging their good will against them and costing them deals. I hope that Hashi don't use this new license to squash their competitors and stamp out Open Source. But I won't take that as foregone conclusion, it's up to HashiCorp how they pursue these changes and up to the rest of us how to react when they do. I've got my fingers crossed for good.

fishnchips 3y ago
> leveraging their good will against them and costing them deals Spacelift co-founder here. I keep seeing this argument, and I'm puzzled. What good will are we talking about, and how are we leveraging it against anyone? Is building a good commercial product that folks love on top of an open source ecosystem somehow unethical? And if so - why? I used every opportunity to try and help Hashi build something better on top of core TF, both personally (applied for a job on their TFE team back in 2018, talked about many ideas that then went into Spacelift instead) and as a company (we tried VERY hard to partner). All to no avail. On the other hand, for 9 years non-Hashi folks (including ourselves here at Spacelift) spent countless hours, for the first years contributing to Terraform core, and more recently when PRs were no longer accepted they were still busy building providers, modules, tooling, courses, tutorials, cheatsheets, they've been running local meetups, all powered by the open source ethos and the common good. Not really sure who is leveraging whose good will here.
- bcantrill 3y ago
  This is a great comment -- there's a lot of wisdom in here for anyone contemplating repeating Hashi's mistakes!
  - verdverm 3y ago
    We do t know if it was a mistake, only time can answer that. We for one have no impact or intention to stop using Hashi products
    - jsjdjd37 3y ago
      [flagged]
- chaboud 3y ago
  To me, this is the core bait and switch problem. It’s not just that expectations and commitments are suddenly unilaterally changed. Is that the core subject of the license (an open-source codebase) has quite often been built collaboratively with the agreement and contribution of entities outside of the organization unilaterally claiming domain over the underlying work. If this is somehow permissible under the original license, it points to needing licenses that offer more consistency and protection. If I contribute to your project, I want to make sure that you can’t close the door on the codebase whenever you feel that you’ve harvested enough value from me, value that you’re now going to go monetize with others.
  - verdverm 3y ago
    Would you want outsiders dictating how your projects evolve? What if someone came along and monetized your project and didn't give any money back? Every project, company, contributor, and community get to decide this for themselves. There are no easy or correct answers
    - fishnchips 3y ago
      When you've had thousands of hours of free external contributions to the ecosystem, where is the actual ownership? Is it still "your project"? And if so, to what extent? What are your obligations to the community members and/or external contributors? On the monetization question - do you need to give others the opportunity to give money back? If so, who should assess the size and "adequacy" of these contributions? If you don't provide the opportunity for others to sponsor the project, does it change your rights and obligations? These are not easy questions, and now our entire industry is trying to work out the answers. OP's is one voice in this discussion, and an important one given GitLab's prominence and the fact that they took a different path, which seems to be working well for them. It's also a way more complex problem for software like Terraform that explicitly depends on the work of others for its core functionality than for something that works perfectly fine standalone, like Hashi's Vault, or indeed GitLab itself.
verdverm 3y ago
> What assurances do we have that these binding statements won't be changed in the future? Companies change their Toss and other legal docs all the time, this is just another one, though not typical. Their FAQ now has legal obligations for both parties, unlike how we see most FAQs

by yebyen 3y ago

fishnchips 3y ago

> leveraging their good will against them and costing them deals Spacelift co-founder here. I keep seeing this argument, and I'm puzzled. What good will are we talking about, and how are we leveraging it against anyone? Is building a good commercial product that folks love on top of an open source ecosystem somehow unethical? And if so - why? I used every opportunity to try and help Hashi build something better on top of core TF, both personally (applied for a job on their TFE team back in 2018, talked about many ideas that then went into Spacelift instead) and as a company (we tried VERY hard to partner). All to no avail. On the other hand, for 9 years non-Hashi folks (including ourselves here at Spacelift) spent countless hours, for the first years contributing to Terraform core, and more recently when PRs were no longer accepted they were still busy building providers, modules, tooling, courses, tutorials, cheatsheets, they've been running local meetups, all powered by the open source ethos and the common good. Not really sure who is leveraging whose good will here.

bcantrill 3y ago
This is a great comment -- there's a lot of wisdom in here for anyone contemplating repeating Hashi's mistakes!
- verdverm 3y ago
  We do t know if it was a mistake, only time can answer that. We for one have no impact or intention to stop using Hashi products
  - jsjdjd37 3y ago
    [flagged]
chaboud 3y ago
To me, this is the core bait and switch problem. It’s not just that expectations and commitments are suddenly unilaterally changed. Is that the core subject of the license (an open-source codebase) has quite often been built collaboratively with the agreement and contribution of entities outside of the organization unilaterally claiming domain over the underlying work. If this is somehow permissible under the original license, it points to needing licenses that offer more consistency and protection. If I contribute to your project, I want to make sure that you can’t close the door on the codebase whenever you feel that you’ve harvested enough value from me, value that you’re now going to go monetize with others.
- verdverm 3y ago
  Would you want outsiders dictating how your projects evolve? What if someone came along and monetized your project and didn't give any money back? Every project, company, contributor, and community get to decide this for themselves. There are no easy or correct answers
  - fishnchips 3y ago
    When you've had thousands of hours of free external contributions to the ecosystem, where is the actual ownership? Is it still "your project"? And if so, to what extent? What are your obligations to the community members and/or external contributors? On the monetization question - do you need to give others the opportunity to give money back? If so, who should assess the size and "adequacy" of these contributions? If you don't provide the opportunity for others to sponsor the project, does it change your rights and obligations? These are not easy questions, and now our entire industry is trying to work out the answers. OP's is one voice in this discussion, and an important one given GitLab's prominence and the fact that they took a different path, which seems to be working well for them. It's also a way more complex problem for software like Terraform that explicitly depends on the work of others for its core functionality than for something that works perfectly fine standalone, like Hashi's Vault, or indeed GitLab itself.

verdverm 3y ago

> What assurances do we have that these binding statements won't be changed in the future? Companies change their Toss and other legal docs all the time, this is just another one, though not typical. Their FAQ now has legal obligations for both parties, unlike how we see most FAQs