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> details about the project, dubbed OpenBao. Oh interesting, I wonder who did it. > co-founder and CEO of DevOps automation biz Scalr and one of the organizer

> details about the project, dubbed OpenBao. Oh interesting, I wonder who did it. > co-founder and CEO of DevOps automation biz Scalr and one of the organizers of OpenTofu, a fork of Terraform Yeah, alright then. Does nobody else find it even slightly on-the-nose that the guy behind the TF fork just happens to also run a devops company himself? > Blatantly take someone else’s work > mobilise the community by calling them hostile because of licensing > spin up a business to build on the community > make bank Now I’m not saying that what’s happened, but I am saying it sure does smell funny.

bogantech 3y ago
[flagged]
TAForObvReasons 3y ago
This seems to ignore the first part of the story, where Hashicorp builds up a community around an open source project and relicenses the project. OpenTofu and now OpenBao wouldn't have happened if Hashicorp didn't relicense in the first place.
- bogantech 3y ago
  The license change wouldn't have happened without the leeches either
- FridgeSeal 3y ago
  You don’t think that the licence changes were intended exactly these scenarios? Because it sure seems to me that they were. The vast majority of users were, and are, completely unaffected by the licence changes. You’re really only affected if you are selling TF services commercially.
  - evv 3y ago
    Welcome to Open Source, where being actually open is a competitive advantage! If you want users of your software to have the brightest future, you need to accept the fact that others can make money and services with your code. If you try to shut that down, people will fork the most recent version of your code that has an OSI compatible license. Of course, they could have chosen a license like AGPL in the first place, which prohibits services with non-AGPL changes. But then, the product would have been less likely to have the viral growth that HC products enjoyed.
  - jzb 3y ago
    “The vast majority of users were, and are, completely unaffected by the licence changes.” Only true if you believe that the new license is safe to use, and that HC can be trusted to stop with this change. The license they adopted isn’t well understood and if I were a corporate lawyer I’d be hesitant to approve it. Defining “competitive” use is basically up to HC, so that makes the license real iffy. They’ve poisoned the well for contributions going forward, so HC as an upstream is much less attractive now.
- maronato 3y ago
  I don’t really understand the critics here. Just as Hashicorp should have understood that the license they chose allows people to use the code as they please, contributors should have understood that Hashicorp could change the license at any time. If we decide that building companies on top of commercialized open source projects is moral, then we must agree that changing the license is too.
gostsamo 3y ago
Is the code open source? Then, please, use it according to the license, and if you don't want to do it yourself, now you can pay either this guy or HC. What's the problem?
mschuster91 3y ago
> Does nobody else find it even slightly on-the-nose that the guy behind the TF fork just happens to also run a devops company himself? Someone always has to pay for the development in the end.
toenail 3y ago
What smells funny is hashicorp pretending to be open source to win market and mind share, and then doing a rug pull. Everything that follows is a reaction to that.
- lijok 3y ago
  There was no rugpull. The product is MIT licensed up until the commit that introduced the BUSL license.
  - candiddevmike 3y ago
    What is your definition of a rug pull?
  - geerlingguy 3y ago
    lolwut The license change is the very definition of "rugpull": Use permissive license, build up a community of open source users and people who use your product because of its open code base. Once it stops suiting your business desires, revoke that permissive license, and switch to one that excludes a (significant) portion of your code's user base.
    - lijok 3y ago
      The permissive license was not revoked. The license change is not retroactive. You can continue using the product under MPL license, up to the commit in which the license was changed.
      - growse 3y ago
        Meanwhile, hashcorp gets to profit off the contributions of others, whilst denying everyone else the opportunity to do the same.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
surgical_fire 3y ago
> Now I’m not saying that what’s happened Even if it was what happened, it doesn't really matter. Why do companies that pick open source licences get annoyed when someone else profits from their work? I am all for open source, but it is a lot harder to profit from your own open source product when the bulk of the development cost is yours. It will be a lot easier for a third party to do so.
viraptor 3y ago
> Does nobody else find it even slightly on-the-nose that the guy behind the TF fork just happens to also run a devops company himself? Needs way more context. You're basically asking if it's suspicious that a person with high interest in X invests in tools for X. No, it's not, unless there's something more to the story and the position is abused in some way. I'd find it more suspicious if someone with no interest in DevOps/infra did it.
cipherboy 3y ago
> Yeah, alright then. As far as I'm aware, Scalr is not directly participating in or precipitating the fork at this time [0]. This was started by groups working on OpenHorizon and EdgeX Foundary (two Linux Foundation projects under the LF Edge umbrella) which both use Vault internally and are offered by other organizations commercially. This made them incompatible with the BUSL (for both open source and commercial variants) which necessitated the fork. [0]: https://wiki.lfedge.org/display/OH/OpenBao+%28Hashicorp+Vault+Fork+effort%29+support https://wiki.lfedge.org/display/OH/OpenBao+%28Hashicorp+Vaul...
basique 3y ago
>make software open source >people use it under the license >"you're literally taking my work" >change license >people are mad that software isn't open source anymore I really don't get these arguments that the businesses that supported OpenTofu "blatantly stole" Hashicorp's work, as if Terraform wasn't licensed under a permissive license
- pxc 3y ago
  > as if Terraform wasn't licensed under a permissive license It wasn't. MPL is a (relatively weak) copyleft license, not a permissive license. Also, forking under the original license (what OpenTofu did) in no way requires a permissive license anyway.
amazingman 3y ago
>Does nobody else find it even slightly on-the-nose that the guy behind the TF fork just happens to also run a devops company himself? Not even a little bit. Yours is a really strange take, in fact. Of course it's the DevOps ecosystem forking widely used OSS DevOps tools when those tools' owners decide to move to a non-OSS license. >> Blatantly take someone else’s work How does one "take" open source software? >> mobilise the community by calling them hostile because of licensing The license change caused that mobilization. >> spin up a business to build on the community >> make bank Again, what a strange take. TF and Vault are tools. These businesses are selling stuff built with/for these tools, not the tools themselves. > Now I’m not saying that what’s happened, but I am saying it sure does smell funny. Honestly it reads a lot like you are casting aspersions for no discernible reason.

bogantech 3y ago

[flagged]

TAForObvReasons 3y ago

This seems to ignore the first part of the story, where Hashicorp builds up a community around an open source project and relicenses the project. OpenTofu and now OpenBao wouldn't have happened if Hashicorp didn't relicense in the first place.

bogantech 3y ago
The license change wouldn't have happened without the leeches either
FridgeSeal 3y ago
You don’t think that the licence changes were intended exactly these scenarios? Because it sure seems to me that they were. The vast majority of users were, and are, completely unaffected by the licence changes. You’re really only affected if you are selling TF services commercially.
- evv 3y ago
  Welcome to Open Source, where being actually open is a competitive advantage! If you want users of your software to have the brightest future, you need to accept the fact that others can make money and services with your code. If you try to shut that down, people will fork the most recent version of your code that has an OSI compatible license. Of course, they could have chosen a license like AGPL in the first place, which prohibits services with non-AGPL changes. But then, the product would have been less likely to have the viral growth that HC products enjoyed.
- jzb 3y ago
  “The vast majority of users were, and are, completely unaffected by the licence changes.” Only true if you believe that the new license is safe to use, and that HC can be trusted to stop with this change. The license they adopted isn’t well understood and if I were a corporate lawyer I’d be hesitant to approve it. Defining “competitive” use is basically up to HC, so that makes the license real iffy. They’ve poisoned the well for contributions going forward, so HC as an upstream is much less attractive now.
maronato 3y ago
I don’t really understand the critics here. Just as Hashicorp should have understood that the license they chose allows people to use the code as they please, contributors should have understood that Hashicorp could change the license at any time. If we decide that building companies on top of commercialized open source projects is moral, then we must agree that changing the license is too.

gostsamo 3y ago

Is the code open source? Then, please, use it according to the license, and if you don't want to do it yourself, now you can pay either this guy or HC. What's the problem?

mschuster91 3y ago

> Does nobody else find it even slightly on-the-nose that the guy behind the TF fork just happens to also run a devops company himself? Someone always has to pay for the development in the end.

toenail 3y ago

What smells funny is hashicorp pretending to be open source to win market and mind share, and then doing a rug pull. Everything that follows is a reaction to that.

lijok 3y ago
There was no rugpull. The product is MIT licensed up until the commit that introduced the BUSL license.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  What is your definition of a rug pull?
- geerlingguy 3y ago
  lolwut The license change is the very definition of "rugpull": Use permissive license, build up a community of open source users and people who use your product because of its open code base. Once it stops suiting your business desires, revoke that permissive license, and switch to one that excludes a (significant) portion of your code's user base.
  - lijok 3y ago
    The permissive license was not revoked. The license change is not retroactive. You can continue using the product under MPL license, up to the commit in which the license was changed.
    - growse 3y ago
      Meanwhile, hashcorp gets to profit off the contributions of others, whilst denying everyone else the opportunity to do the same.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]

surgical_fire 3y ago

> Now I’m not saying that what’s happened Even if it was what happened, it doesn't really matter. Why do companies that pick open source licences get annoyed when someone else profits from their work? I am all for open source, but it is a lot harder to profit from your own open source product when the bulk of the development cost is yours. It will be a lot easier for a third party to do so.

viraptor 3y ago

> Does nobody else find it even slightly on-the-nose that the guy behind the TF fork just happens to also run a devops company himself? Needs way more context. You're basically asking if it's suspicious that a person with high interest in X invests in tools for X. No, it's not, unless there's something more to the story and the position is abused in some way. I'd find it more suspicious if someone with no interest in DevOps/infra did it.

cipherboy 3y ago

> Yeah, alright then. As far as I'm aware, Scalr is not directly participating in or precipitating the fork at this time [0]. This was started by groups working on OpenHorizon and EdgeX Foundary (two Linux Foundation projects under the LF Edge umbrella) which both use Vault internally and are offered by other organizations commercially. This made them incompatible with the BUSL (for both open source and commercial variants) which necessitated the fork. [0]: https://wiki.lfedge.org/display/OH/OpenBao+%28Hashicorp+Vault+Fork+effort%29+support https://wiki.lfedge.org/display/OH/OpenBao+%28Hashicorp+Vaul...

basique 3y ago

>make software open source >people use it under the license >"you're literally taking my work" >change license >people are mad that software isn't open source anymore I really don't get these arguments that the businesses that supported OpenTofu "blatantly stole" Hashicorp's work, as if Terraform wasn't licensed under a permissive license

pxc 3y ago
> as if Terraform wasn't licensed under a permissive license It wasn't. MPL is a (relatively weak) copyleft license, not a permissive license. Also, forking under the original license (what OpenTofu did) in no way requires a permissive license anyway.

amazingman 3y ago

>Does nobody else find it even slightly on-the-nose that the guy behind the TF fork just happens to also run a devops company himself? Not even a little bit. Yours is a really strange take, in fact. Of course it's the DevOps ecosystem forking widely used OSS DevOps tools when those tools' owners decide to move to a non-OSS license. >> Blatantly take someone else’s work How does one "take" open source software? >> mobilise the community by calling them hostile because of licensing The license change caused that mobilization. >> spin up a business to build on the community >> make bank Again, what a strange take. TF and Vault are tools. These businesses are selling stuff built with/for these tools, not the tools themselves. > Now I’m not saying that what’s happened, but I am saying it sure does smell funny. Honestly it reads a lot like you are casting aspersions for no discernible reason.