| > These complaints were only justified, if the company had promised open source forever and had anchored altruism and minimizing profits as their reason of existence. And if they had done that, who would have believed it and would the company been able to achieve its goals? The answer is obviously: No, non-profits don’t get venture capital (VC) funding, and VC funding is critical to building the software in the first place. So close to getting it right... Consider the countercase, where the company says up front that the product is only open source temporarily. Would anyone use them? Maybe, but they'd have a way harder time getting any buy-in. > The complaint is usually not about a company providing open-source software, but rather about (a) withholding the closed complement and (b) eventually dropping the open source license for future development. Again, without the closed complement there wouldn’t be the commercial open-source software in the first place, so complaining about it is pointless. On the contrary, pulling a bait-and-switch is actively harmful to the ecosystem because it steals oxygen from would-be competitors: > Let it sink in: Without VCs, there would be no Terraform, and without Terraform, there would be no OpenTofu. Or, without Terraform, there would be other options instead of TF having been very nearly the option until they decided to shoot their own foot off. (Yes, there are still other options, but it's telling that ex. pulumi uses TF providers) > Most commentators view the licensing away from open source as a negative event. I’d like to argue that it is a milestone to celebrate. By licensing away the company signals that the product has achieved a mature state and that the help of an open source strategy is not needed any longer: The company has proved to the world that the software can be built and that the economy at large cares and thinks this software is a good idea. This is an important achievement! The switch to rent-seeking mode can mean that they think they've succeeded, but actually it's more likely to mean that they've realized they aren't making enough money, so... no, even if we were willing to celebrate other people succeeding when that means them pulling the rug, it's not actually true. |
You cannot retroactively remove the open source license, so what the vendor is doing is to stop supporting and developing the open source version. If the software is relevant then, as we can see, those who can still exploit it for commercial purposes (hyperscalers and distributors) are likely to come in, fork it, and pay for its continuation.