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This is probably going to get a lot flake but what did we expect when big tech started eating up open source solutions and competing with the companies who star

by gobins 3y ago

This is probably going to get a lot flake but what did we expect when big tech started eating up open source solutions and competing with the companies who started the work . MongoDB and AWS is a good example. Hashicorp probably realised that they should preemptively change the licensing before bigger players started using the products to directly compete with them. I want Hashicorp to survive and be profitable. Fact is, for the majority of the users who use terraform, the change in licensing does not impact them.

galenmarchetti 3y ago
True...it's just difficult to draft a license that says something along the lines of "If you're Big Tech, we have the right to go after you, if you're small startup, you're safe". I think there's a swath of Terraform users (likely minority) who find themselves in a legal gray area, or a legal black-and-white area, where they're directly at risk. Even if Hashicorp never intended to target small startups with this, the wording of the license unfortunately applies and is enough to make anyone nervous. I think MongoDB had a similar issue when they went source-available, they seemed to intend to only protect themselves from big tech but unfortunately a lot of smaller players got spooked. I think (?) it's fine now though
- woah 3y ago
  yea, that makes all the difference. If it was almost all Hashicorp, the open source was a marketing gimmick and I don't blame them for not risking the entire business on it. If there was heavy involvement from external contributors, then removing open source is more of a rug pull.
- solomatov 3y ago
  > True...it's just difficult to draft a license that says something along the lines of "If you're Big Tech, we have the right to go after you, if you're small startup, you're safe". Take a look at the license of LLAMA2 by FB. It has a clause just like this. I.e. limit by number of users.
  - galenmarchetti 3y ago
    wow, didn't know about this. very cool + would be interesting to see this in more places. Just checked it out. for those lazy: "If, on the Llama 2 version release date, the monthly active users of the products or services made available by or for Licensee, or Licensee's affiliates, is greater than 700 million monthly active users in the preceding calendar month, you must request a license from Meta, which Meta may grant to you in its sole discretion, and you are not authorized to exercise any of the rights under this Agreement unless or until Meta otherwise expressly grants you such rights."
- derobert 3y ago
  I don't know if it'd really be hard (you could list them, or have various limits on users or total revenue among all related companies). You could broadly include all subsidiaries, contractors working for Amazon, companies effectively under their control, etc. (Ultimately it'll be interpreted by a judge, not an algorithm, that probably makes it harder to get around.) There is nothing illegal about offering a license to everyone except Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. But none of those licenses would be open source licenses. That's the problem with doing it — you can't do that in an open source license. The no discrimination clauses are a requirement of the open source definition, not the law. (The law of course does have some non-discrimination requirements, not sure how many of those apply to copyright licenses. But none of the normal ones would prohibit "everyone but Amazon may use this".)
arianvanp 3y ago
AGPL it. Big tech hates it and bans it outright. Which means it's the correct choice.
- Znafon 3y ago
  It's not just big tech that hates AGPL. If Terraform was under AGPL a lot of companies might have to release their source code as AGPL too because of its virality. Where it stops is not exactly clear from the license.
  - jen20 3y ago
    Where AGPL stops is actually very well defined.
    - Znafon 3y ago
      The AGPL defines "Corresponding Source" as "all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities". Then in section 13 it says that "your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge". Isn't "scripts to control those activities quite vague? Under those terms wouldn't AWS Proton, IBM Schematics, Env0, Digger, Spacelift, etc. be required to open-source a very large part of their product as well?
      - galenmarchetti 3y ago
        I think, if Terraform was licensed under AGPL, then not only would all of those folks would have to also open-source their products, but also that would be the intent of the license in the first place
    - eduction 3y ago
      Not really. The lawyer Kyle Mitchell said of the agpl,“Inebriated aliens might as well have beamed it down from space as a kind of practical joke.” Even lawyers have trouble understanding when its provisions are triggered. https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL Use OSL3!
jzb 3y ago
Why isn’t the AGPL sufficient here? Also, should we be rethinking adopting vendor-led projects overall?
wongarsu 3y ago
offtopic, but it's "getting a lot of flak". As in "heavily being fired on by German anti-air guns" (called FlaK, short for Flugabwehrkanone, literally anti-aircraft cannon)
dragonwriter 3y ago
> This is probably going to get a lot flake but what did we expect when big tech started eating up open source solutions and competing with the companies who started the work Big tech started doing that when open source as fairly young, and it was never a problem, because no one was launching a business centered around making open source software and being better than big established firms at selling services around it. What actually created the crisis is when, a couple decades later, people started to launch VC backed startups with the growth demands that involves and business plans that centered around creating open source software and selling hosted access to it.
- xign 3y ago
  Fair enough, but it was never a problem because most software like Terraform would not have been open source to begin with in the good old days. So in a way yes, what you said is true, but I don't think the takeaway is "open source used to work just fine", but rather "sometimes a non-open-source license is really what works in this scenario".
- gobins 3y ago
  Even for VC backed startups, I think it was never a problem until cloud providers started competing with them. It is not a level playing field if your competitors are big players like Amazon who can take away a lot of your possible customers.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Even for VC backed startups, I think it was never a problem until cloud providers started competing with them. Cloud providers (and SaaS providers before the dynamic provisioning for which “cloud” was coined existed) have been offering commercial hosted OSS solutions since before there were VC-backed “our whole business model is developing OSS and selling hosted access to it” startups. The thing that changes was the startups trying to trade on OSS' cultural impact with a business model that made no sense, not the practices of cloud providers.
bewo001 3y ago
I am working for a Big Corp. I have see many instances where we made expensive contracts with small companies maintaining open source solutions. It fits existing processes and we have somebody who will fix stuff. Most of the time, it would be much more expensive to keep a team to maintain the software ourselves.

by gobins 3y ago

galenmarchetti 3y ago

True...it's just difficult to draft a license that says something along the lines of "If you're Big Tech, we have the right to go after you, if you're small startup, you're safe". I think there's a swath of Terraform users (likely minority) who find themselves in a legal gray area, or a legal black-and-white area, where they're directly at risk. Even if Hashicorp never intended to target small startups with this, the wording of the license unfortunately applies and is enough to make anyone nervous. I think MongoDB had a similar issue when they went source-available, they seemed to intend to only protect themselves from big tech but unfortunately a lot of smaller players got spooked. I think (?) it's fine now though

woah 3y ago
yea, that makes all the difference. If it was almost all Hashicorp, the open source was a marketing gimmick and I don't blame them for not risking the entire business on it. If there was heavy involvement from external contributors, then removing open source is more of a rug pull.
solomatov 3y ago
> True...it's just difficult to draft a license that says something along the lines of "If you're Big Tech, we have the right to go after you, if you're small startup, you're safe". Take a look at the license of LLAMA2 by FB. It has a clause just like this. I.e. limit by number of users.
- galenmarchetti 3y ago
  wow, didn't know about this. very cool + would be interesting to see this in more places. Just checked it out. for those lazy: "If, on the Llama 2 version release date, the monthly active users of the products or services made available by or for Licensee, or Licensee's affiliates, is greater than 700 million monthly active users in the preceding calendar month, you must request a license from Meta, which Meta may grant to you in its sole discretion, and you are not authorized to exercise any of the rights under this Agreement unless or until Meta otherwise expressly grants you such rights."
derobert 3y ago
I don't know if it'd really be hard (you could list them, or have various limits on users or total revenue among all related companies). You could broadly include all subsidiaries, contractors working for Amazon, companies effectively under their control, etc. (Ultimately it'll be interpreted by a judge, not an algorithm, that probably makes it harder to get around.) There is nothing illegal about offering a license to everyone except Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. But none of those licenses would be open source licenses. That's the problem with doing it — you can't do that in an open source license. The no discrimination clauses are a requirement of the open source definition, not the law. (The law of course does have some non-discrimination requirements, not sure how many of those apply to copyright licenses. But none of the normal ones would prohibit "everyone but Amazon may use this".)

arianvanp 3y ago

AGPL it. Big tech hates it and bans it outright. Which means it's the correct choice.

Znafon 3y ago
It's not just big tech that hates AGPL. If Terraform was under AGPL a lot of companies might have to release their source code as AGPL too because of its virality. Where it stops is not exactly clear from the license.
- jen20 3y ago
  Where AGPL stops is actually very well defined.
  - Znafon 3y ago
    The AGPL defines "Corresponding Source" as "all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities". Then in section 13 it says that "your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge". Isn't "scripts to control those activities quite vague? Under those terms wouldn't AWS Proton, IBM Schematics, Env0, Digger, Spacelift, etc. be required to open-source a very large part of their product as well?
    - galenmarchetti 3y ago
      I think, if Terraform was licensed under AGPL, then not only would all of those folks would have to also open-source their products, but also that would be the intent of the license in the first place
  - eduction 3y ago
    Not really. The lawyer Kyle Mitchell said of the agpl,“Inebriated aliens might as well have beamed it down from space as a kind of practical joke.” Even lawyers have trouble understanding when its provisions are triggered. https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL Use OSL3!

jzb 3y ago

Why isn’t the AGPL sufficient here? Also, should we be rethinking adopting vendor-led projects overall?

wongarsu 3y ago

offtopic, but it's "getting a lot of flak". As in "heavily being fired on by German anti-air guns" (called FlaK, short for Flugabwehrkanone, literally anti-aircraft cannon)

dragonwriter 3y ago

> This is probably going to get a lot flake but what did we expect when big tech started eating up open source solutions and competing with the companies who started the work Big tech started doing that when open source as fairly young, and it was never a problem, because no one was launching a business centered around making open source software and being better than big established firms at selling services around it. What actually created the crisis is when, a couple decades later, people started to launch VC backed startups with the growth demands that involves and business plans that centered around creating open source software and selling hosted access to it.

xign 3y ago
Fair enough, but it was never a problem because most software like Terraform would not have been open source to begin with in the good old days. So in a way yes, what you said is true, but I don't think the takeaway is "open source used to work just fine", but rather "sometimes a non-open-source license is really what works in this scenario".
gobins 3y ago
Even for VC backed startups, I think it was never a problem until cloud providers started competing with them. It is not a level playing field if your competitors are big players like Amazon who can take away a lot of your possible customers.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Even for VC backed startups, I think it was never a problem until cloud providers started competing with them. Cloud providers (and SaaS providers before the dynamic provisioning for which “cloud” was coined existed) have been offering commercial hosted OSS solutions since before there were VC-backed “our whole business model is developing OSS and selling hosted access to it” startups. The thing that changes was the startups trying to trade on OSS' cultural impact with a business model that made no sense, not the practices of cloud providers.

bewo001 3y ago

I am working for a Big Corp. I have see many instances where we made expensive contracts with small companies maintaining open source solutions. It fits existing processes and we have somebody who will fix stuff. Most of the time, it would be much more expensive to keep a team to maintain the software ourselves.