[davorak]

> This is purely a way for HashiCorp to ensure they are the only ones who can commercialize these formerly open source projects. Which is fine. But just go closed source, then, and own that, instead of trying to have it both ways.

Pragmatically I would rather bsl than closed source and I am more likely to use a product that is bsl, with reasonable transfer time and license, than a 100% closed source product.

[Rapzid]

I wish I could give you more upvotes.

I'd also much rather have "open source" with commercialization restrictions than closed source.

It's still in most people's best interest to contribute to these projects if they were before, or would have before. Many businesses(and this is where most of the contributions get funded from, let's be real) rely on these projects and have no intention of selling them or competing with HashiCorp services.

[ramses0]

"Source Available" please.

[JeremyNT]

Yeah, it's not binary. BSL is worse than open source, but it sucks way less than fully closed products. I'll at least consider using it.

My big gripe with the BSL is when companies switch from a proper open source license to the BSL, sometimes they try to sell it as a positive development, which is BS. The HashiCorp announcement is better than some in this regard, worse than others. Claiming it's the "evolution" of open source is weird spin, of course.

I also feel like any company switching from open source to BSL puts a stench of death / desperation on them, and it makes me worry for their future. If they have to make OSS -> BSL switch today, what's the next user hostile change going to be? Will they even survive?

[JoshTriplett]

I'd rather have proprietary than "almost open source". Both aren't useful, but only one attempts to damage the common understanding of what "Open Source" means.

[LexiMax]

Why? To me, the BSL comes off as a good faith attempt at a compromise between the letter of "Open Source" and the realities of not wanting to give free labor to your competition.

The actual text of the BSL mandates - under threat of infringing on BSL's trademark - that in at most four years the code will be available under a GPL 2.0 compatible license. In practice, the BSL license is usually a traditional open source one with caveats. The BSL FAQ also states and restates many, MANY times that it is not an open source license according to the OSI's definition.

I can't help but feel like the outcry over this is just a tempest in a teapot. I have a hunch that "Open Source" will do just fine without us having to carry water for it. After all, the list of OSI's corporate sponsors is quite illustrious: https://opensource.org/sponsors/

[selestify]

I can’t believe you’re the only one in the thread who’s mentioned that it’ll revert to traditional open source licensing in four years. That changes everything, imo. It’s so much better than software staying closed source forever, possibly because the company went out of business.

[sanderjd]

What? Why? I don't get this at all. Like, the direct pragmatic benefits of being able to read and modify source code are just enormous. The benefits of maintaining this pure definition of open source are amorphous at best, in comparison.

[JoshTriplett]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)

If we don't have a common definition, everyone has their own, and there's no common understanding of what rights you have for a piece of Open Source software. That commons has far far more value than any one or ten pieces of software.

[sanderjd]

> That commons has far far more value than any one or ten pieces of software.

I don't think so.

I suppose I can understand why people who feel strongly that the OSI definition is perfect (or at least extremely good) are very intent on protecting it, whereas I see it as flawed and am thus less concerned about this fracturing. So I understand your perspective upon reflection, though I honestly have a lot of trouble imagining holding it myself.

A lot of people in this thread have been saying stuff like "just go full proprietary, that's better", and it sounds ridiculous to me every time I read a variant of it

[JoshTriplett]

I don't think that the OSD is perfect, at all; I will readily acknowledge its problems. (And OSI more so.)

I think it's a common shared understanding and a focal point, and there's huge value in preserving that. Having a different common understanding might be acceptable, and might even be an improvement, but only if people agree on it. Having no common understanding would mean something of great value was lost.

Right now, many different groups who may not all agree on all goals nonetheless gain value by sticking to Open Source, and not a dozen slight variations on additional restrictions. In the absence of that, we'd have the "non-commercial" group, the "educational use" group, the "don't compete with us" group, the "don't use for military applications" group, the "don't use for nuclear reactors" group, the "don't use to develop proprietary software" group, the "don't redistribute unmodified versions" group, the "don't distribute outdated versions" group, a dozen variations on "don't distribute if you disagree with our values" groups, the "don't distribute if you're a large company" group, the "don't distribute if you're a specific company" groups...

Every one of those is a license term I've seen advocated. Every one of those violates the OSD, so it thankfully stays obscure and unpopular, because enough people prefer using and contributing to software with less unusual licensing.

[sanderjd]

> Having no common understanding would mean something of great value was lost.

Yeah I guess this just seems like hyperbole to me. It seems good to me that there's a pretty widely agreed upon definition, sure, but I just don't think it matters all that much, in the scheme of things.

Agree to disagree I suppose!

[aragilar]

What would you change then? Practically only the 4th criteria would be one I'd change (but presumably it's there for a reason): "Integrity of the author's source code: The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software."

As for the commons, you are aware that the OSD comes from the Debian Free Software Guidelines (it's the same thing but for some minor working changes)? That is the commons that's been talked about, and it's deployed on far more systems than any BSL code is. So moving to completely propriety (note that this doesn't mean it's not Source Available) means that everyone is upfront about what the state is, whereas something like the BSL is leaning into the halo effect under the justification that the code will be open source at some future point.

[sanderjd]

Yes, I don't think it makes sense that the definition of "open source" requires that people can arbitrarily re-sell it. Like, just the words themselves, in my view, clearly don't imply that. I'm happy to stipulate that this is what was meant when the term was invented and that there is a single gatekeeper of the official definition in order to keep it this way. I'm just telling you that I (and I think many people) find this to fall outside what the words directly evoke. So to me "source available" just sounds like a slightly more awkward synonym. But I don't mind using the official language, because I know people care a lot about this (to me) extra ideology, and I think they're entitled to advocate for that.

But this second part of the argument I just don't grok at all. These licenses like BSL provide significantly more of what I want in software I use than proprietary software does. (Namely, the ability to read, modify, and self-host the software of I choose to.)

I think what must be going on is that when you see a license like this you think "there is no point to something like that besides a PR stunt trying to imply proprietary software is open source", and I think "oh this seems like a really useful compromise that allows commercial enterprises to create software with code that I can read, modify, run myself, and contribute to if I want to, without a different company that did none of the work on the software making all the money from it". Just totally different perspectives.

[rowanseymour]

> Both aren't useful, but only one attempts to damage the common understanding of what "Open Source" means

We have a messaging flow building platform which is BSL. Anyone who wants to run their own instance is welcome to and people do and thus find it useful. The idea that the world would be better off if we made it closed source and prevented that... is just nonsense.

[cthalupa]

> Anyone who wants to run their own instance is welcome to and people do and thus find it useful. The idea that the world would be better off if we made it closed source and prevented that... is just nonsense.

How does making something closed source automatically mean someone can't run their own instance of it, even for free? Closed source does not mean 'You can only download this if you pay us', just as open source does not mean 'You can download this for free'

[rowanseymour]

Closed source doesn't preclude developers distributing it for free, BSL isn't claiming to be Open Source.. but it's silly to insist that that software that is *publically available* to anyone to download and run.. describe itself as "closed source".

[cthalupa]

It's source available. Which is not the same thing as open source.

[rowanseymour]

I don't think anyone is arguing that BSL is capital O Open Source, and even the BSL licence stressses that it is not an Open Source licence. But both "closed source" and "source available" feel like poor descriptors for a project that is developed in the open and takes PRs from outside contributors.

[pxc]

Enclosed-within-glass software

[rowanseymour]

But it's not just visible... you can submit a PR if you like, and people do.

[davorak]

I do not call anything under BSL open source. I would prefer if companies when presenting the BSL talk about their schedule to open source, the schedule being when the Change License takes effect, at least if the Change License is an open source one.

[notpushkin]

Under BSL, change license is required to be open source. I haven't seen any precedents yet, but MariaDB owns the BSL trademark, so they can enforce that.

[pxc]

Source available is proprietary. Decades ago, it was not unusual for proprietary Unix software to be distributed in source form, and installed by first compiling it on the target system. Merely distributing source is not and has never been the key difference between open-source and proprietary software.

[CrimsonRain]

You do realize that it is people like you who are turning FOSS in to OSS, then claiming BSL (and non-OSI Stuff) are not OSS and blaming others for damaging understanding?

[davidgerard]

they literally aren't. These are jargon terms with precise meanings.

[thayne]

I mostly agree. But I also think it is a jerk move to change the license like this after accepting many external contributions, even if it is legal due to CLAs.

At least they admit it isn't open source in the FAQ and are calling it the community version instead of the open source version.

[gus_massa]

And that's why I disñike CLA.