HashiCorp is successful because it solved problems for enterprise companies who were willing to pay for support.
To claim it solely exists because of open source is a falsehood. Companies that can’t make money don’t exist.
To claim it solely exists because of open source is a falsehood. Companies that can’t make money don’t exist.
It's clear where Terraform et al. are now that they don't need to be open source (hence why they are switching off of open source licenses without fear) but what is not well-supported by any evidence is that it would've gone the same way if it had started as shared source or closed source.
By holding smaller companies to this OSS purity yardstick, we're allowing the Amazons of the world to clone them wholesale and reap all of the benefits.
The world needs more small companies, not big ones. This is the right way for small companies to protect themselves.
That’s pure Free Software, and it would require Amazon to publish their changes or not offer the service. In reality they would probably choose the latter.
I don't have the same complaints about many open source business models, because they do not involve deception. If you contribute to Gitlab CE, it is still properly open source even if it may benefit Gitlab EE customers. BSL is not an open source license though, so Terraform is no longer an open source project. Does that matter to enterprises? Nope. Does that matter to me? I think you know the answer to that.
But it's yet another harsh lesson that you should never, ever sign a CLA outside of stuff you contribute as a result of your job. If you ever sign a CLA for work you're not being paid for, you're clearly getting scammed in slow motion.
And if abusing the goodwill that comes with open source (or maybe came with, at this point, since now we all see where this is headed from here on out) is the only way for not every company to be Amazon, maybe there's some much larger problem going on there.
It does matter to the sysadmins in those corporations, e.g. me. We happily pay vendors, but not to be baited and switched.
> To claim it solely exists because of open source is a falsehood. Companies that can’t make money don’t exist.
This is a logical fallacy. Saying that something wouldn't exist if it weren't for something is not the same as saying it solely exists because of that thing. I wouldn't exist if it weren't for my mom. Obviously that's true and very different than saying I solely exist because of my mom. The former points out something that contributed to existence but is silent on any other contributions. The latter would be big news.