4 ms·

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 t

by 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]
- evanelias 3y ago
  > profit off the contributions of others But Hashicorp's business hasn't turned a profit to date. And they rarely merge external pull requests. If the company maintained the previous ZIRP-era permissive license status quo and then eventually went bankrupt, wouldn't that be a worse outcome for everyone?
  - growse 3y ago
    > But Hashicorp's business hasn't turned a profit to date. And they rarely merge external pull requests. When they started out, they had enormous traction in the community because they were open source. People actively contributed to what they thought was an open ecosystem in a collaborative spirit. Without that, their products would just be another expensive, marginal proprietary piece of softwarewthat most people ignored. Now they're trying to profit off that without reciprocating (their competence at being able actually show a profit is irrelevant). > If the company maintained the previous ZIRP-era permissive license status quo and then eventually went bankrupt, wouldn't that be a worse outcome for everyone? No. It'd be a worse outcome for Hashicorp's investors, sure, but the rest of us would have the code, the comunity, and a little less poison in the well.
    - evanelias 3y ago
      > they had enormous traction in the community because they were open source. People don't adopt software only because it is open source. It also has to be useful high-quality software. Attributing the entirety of their success to a permissive open source license is nonsensical. > Now they're trying to profit off that without reciprocating Their products are still free to use and you can still read the code. They continue to improve the products. In what way are they not reciprocating? And considering this is a publicly-traded for-profit enterprise, why shouldn't they be able to profit off their work? Unless your business is directly competing with them, how does the license change directly affect you? > the rest of us would have the code, the comunity, and a little less poison in the well At the cost of losing the creator and primary contributor of these projects, which tends to be a death blow to the software's long-term viability!
      - growse 3y ago
        > People don't adopt software only because it is open source. It also has to be useful high-quality software. These things are symbiotic. It's a virtue circle. People find it useful, they contribute, other people then find it useful, it grows in popularity, people contribute etc. It's pretty clear that Hashicorp hoped to take advantage of this to build popularity when they open sourced their product code. If you don't think this is true, why do you think they released it under an OSS license? > In what way are they not reciprocating? Reciprocating would mean allowing others to build businesses on software they have also contributed to. > And considering this is a publicly-traded for-profit enterprise, why shouldn't they be able to profit off their work? It's not all their own work. No-one's saying it's not ok to profit from it, it's about screwing over and denying that right to others who built the product to what it is today. > Unless your business is directly competing with them, how does the license change directly affect you? The license is badly written, andtherefore risky for any business to use. For example, the word "competing" is not defined. If I build a system to store secrets in MySQL and put an API in front of it, am I competing with vault? What if I sell a managed database service and Oracle buys Hashicorp, am I now competing? It's badly written on purpose, because Hashicorp don't want anyone (with $$ and a competent legal department) to take their silly license, they want to sell them a contract. > At the cost of losing the creator and primary contributor of these projects, which tends to be a death blow to the software's long-term viability! If it's useful high-quality software, history shows us that such projects continue to thrive regardless of the status of the 'creator' (e.g. Jenkins).
dangus 3y ago
If OpenSSL was taken closed source, I'd still have access to the product under the previous open source license, but its utility would evaporate since it's a security product. I would have to migrate to something else, eventually.

by 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]
evanelias 3y ago
> profit off the contributions of others But Hashicorp's business hasn't turned a profit to date. And they rarely merge external pull requests. If the company maintained the previous ZIRP-era permissive license status quo and then eventually went bankrupt, wouldn't that be a worse outcome for everyone?
- growse 3y ago
  > But Hashicorp's business hasn't turned a profit to date. And they rarely merge external pull requests. When they started out, they had enormous traction in the community because they were open source. People actively contributed to what they thought was an open ecosystem in a collaborative spirit. Without that, their products would just be another expensive, marginal proprietary piece of softwarewthat most people ignored. Now they're trying to profit off that without reciprocating (their competence at being able actually show a profit is irrelevant). > If the company maintained the previous ZIRP-era permissive license status quo and then eventually went bankrupt, wouldn't that be a worse outcome for everyone? No. It'd be a worse outcome for Hashicorp's investors, sure, but the rest of us would have the code, the comunity, and a little less poison in the well.
  - evanelias 3y ago
    > they had enormous traction in the community because they were open source. People don't adopt software only because it is open source. It also has to be useful high-quality software. Attributing the entirety of their success to a permissive open source license is nonsensical. > Now they're trying to profit off that without reciprocating Their products are still free to use and you can still read the code. They continue to improve the products. In what way are they not reciprocating? And considering this is a publicly-traded for-profit enterprise, why shouldn't they be able to profit off their work? Unless your business is directly competing with them, how does the license change directly affect you? > the rest of us would have the code, the comunity, and a little less poison in the well At the cost of losing the creator and primary contributor of these projects, which tends to be a death blow to the software's long-term viability!
    - growse 3y ago
      > People don't adopt software only because it is open source. It also has to be useful high-quality software. These things are symbiotic. It's a virtue circle. People find it useful, they contribute, other people then find it useful, it grows in popularity, people contribute etc. It's pretty clear that Hashicorp hoped to take advantage of this to build popularity when they open sourced their product code. If you don't think this is true, why do you think they released it under an OSS license? > In what way are they not reciprocating? Reciprocating would mean allowing others to build businesses on software they have also contributed to. > And considering this is a publicly-traded for-profit enterprise, why shouldn't they be able to profit off their work? It's not all their own work. No-one's saying it's not ok to profit from it, it's about screwing over and denying that right to others who built the product to what it is today. > Unless your business is directly competing with them, how does the license change directly affect you? The license is badly written, andtherefore risky for any business to use. For example, the word "competing" is not defined. If I build a system to store secrets in MySQL and put an API in front of it, am I competing with vault? What if I sell a managed database service and Oracle buys Hashicorp, am I now competing? It's badly written on purpose, because Hashicorp don't want anyone (with $$ and a competent legal department) to take their silly license, they want to sell them a contract. > At the cost of losing the creator and primary contributor of these projects, which tends to be a death blow to the software's long-term viability! If it's useful high-quality software, history shows us that such projects continue to thrive regardless of the status of the 'creator' (e.g. Jenkins).

dangus 3y ago

If OpenSSL was taken closed source, I'd still have access to the product under the previous open source license, but its utility would evaporate since it's a security product. I would have to migrate to something else, eventually.