It’s a traumatic birth for sure- but I think in the long run Hashicorp took the right approach. There’s already more FTE commitments from the community than Hashicorp actually had working on it.
Marcin here, co-founder of Spacelift, one of the members of the OpenTF initiative
I'm not sure. They voluntarily exchanged the throne of a benevolent ruler for an audience seat where they're one of many. I would personally think that this privileged position was worth more than the cost of the FTEs devoted to the project. But obviously I don't see the whole picture.
How did Hashicorp "take the right approach"? They wanted $$money$$, they didn't want Terraform to be bigger or better or to cede control of it to anyone else.
Having seen Spacelift, Pulumi, etc. over the last few years, I have little trouble envisioning them jumping to help with some alacrity if a Hashicorp that did want improvements did the work to move it to a software foundation themselves. But again: $$money$$.
100%. At Spacelift we have no beef with HashiCorp, and on a personal level many of us (me being the chief fanboy) admire their earlier work. We reached out to try and work together but the answer was a clear "no".
There is a difference between "making money" and "capturing the entire thing because our growth-addled brains cannot conceive of not allocating all of the money to us".
If you fire on the ecosystem, sometimes (not often enough, but sometimes) the ecosystem fires back.
> There is a difference between "making money" and "capturing the entire thing because our growth-addled brains cannot conceive of not allocating all of the money to us".
Trying to capture the entire thing, in a way that backfires and gets them a smaller piece of the pie. Which is, incidentally, and answer to the question: A business might be obligated to act in its own interest, but this is the kind of thing that can result in worse financial outcomes, not better.
> There is a difference between "making money" and "capturing the entire thing because our growth-addled brains cannot conceive of not allocating all of the money to us".
I feel like this post suggests a misunderstanding about how publicly traded, for profit companies work. Because it is literally their job to capture the entire thing and whatever else they can capture. That's why going public is not awesome for FOSS-oriented companies. We've been here before.
I mean, I understand it quite well. Through this understanding I am able to come to the conclusion that it bad.
Like, the very concept of a corporation is ordained by a society to provide benefit to the society, not (just) to the shareholders--otherwise there's no reason to enable its creation. Did Hashicorp's action better the society that granted its charter, or attempt to (and hopefully fail to) better its P&L?
I feel it is not unreasonable to simultaneously think that making some money in a sustainable fashion is a good thing--and at the same time also think that there is real value in expecting a functional moralism out of what are legally persons. I do realize that that is out of step with current (American) jurisprudence, but I also don't much care about that.
> it is literally their job to capture the entire thing and whatever else they can capture
Their job is to maximize shareholder value, and if attempting to capture the entire thing reduces shareholder value, which may occur in this case, they're not doing their job well.
When I read '$$money$$' I picture a cartoon character who starts excitedly staring at something with dollar signs in their eyeballs before embarking on some harebrained scheme.
I don't think it's supposed to indicate that profit seeking is somehow bad or unnatural for companies to pursue, but that Hashicorp got caught up in something foolish and shortsighted because of some excessive eagerness and carelessness.