HashiCorp Abandons Open Source for Business Source License
thenewstack.io
Like many other companies, HashiCorp has dropped the open source approach that gave its products their start for the source-available Business Source License (BSL).
  • HashiCorp is moving its products previously licensed as Open Source away from it to Business Source License (BSL) moving forward
  • Terraform is a popular Infrastructure as Code tool used for provisioning cloud resources like AWS, Azure among others
  • Terraform version 1.5.5 and earlier are still open source
  • there is a push for a community maintained open source fork if this decision is not reversed, OpenTF

Gruntwork response on the problem with BSL

  • @jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    12•11 months ago

    For the people who continue to work on the open source fork of terraform, can HashiCorp pull their commits into their closed source BSL fork?

    I would assume not, but I am curious if there’s some weird workaround of their previous license that they still own contributions

    • @robyoung@beehaw.orgEnglish
      5•11 months ago

      The integrations with other services are implemented in plugins which are separate programs, that are installed separately, and communicate with the core over RPC. I would imagine these plugins can continue to be licensed however their owners choose. I think this license change just applies to core.

      • NaNEnglish
        2•11 months ago

        When Canonical originally had such a CLA to contribute to Ubuntu it was pretty controversial (I don’t think it was common at all at the time), this situation with HashiCorp perfectly demonstrates why.

    • NaNEnglish
      4•11 months ago

      I’m not as familiar with MPLv2 but I don’t think they can with contributions to the fork. Since those contributions won’t be part of the original “we own all your work” agreement they couldn’t simply close source those contributions.

      • @jarfil@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1•11 months ago

        From the BSL FAQ:

        Q: I have written a code patch to a BSL project and would like the BSL vendor to maintain the code as part of the BSL project. How do I contribute it?

        A: License your code using the “new BSD” license or dedicate it to the public domain. Code contributions under “new BSD” is compatible with BSL. See BSD on Wikipedia.

        That would seem to rule out the MPLv2.

        • NaNEnglish
          2•11 months ago

          That is for continuing contributions to the commercial project, the fork should be using the old license not the BSL.

          If HashiCorp is unwilling to switch Terraform back to an open source license, we propose to fork the legacy MPL-licensed Terraform

          The question was if HashiCorp could take contributions to the fork and put them into their commercial product.

          • @jarfil@beehaw.orgEnglish
            1•11 months ago

            That means HashiCorp could only take contributions licensed under the BSD or public domain, or under a CLA. The fork would be none of those.