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Comment by Pannoniae | Hacker News Reader

It also shouldn't mean "everyone leeches off our software for free, they get the profit while we get the maintenance burden"

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Except you can't say they're "leeching" when they're using the software on the terms you offered it to them.

I'd also love to know how much Hashicorp chips in to maintain the projects they build upon. For example, I'd bet the vast majority of Terraform usage is on Linux. Do they support Linux development? Do they support Go language development? It seems like the companies complaining about "leeches" (eyeroll) aren't the ones actually paying people to work on upstream FOSS projects.

The major difference here is that they are not making a directly competing product to Go, Linux, etc. I find the word "leeching" appropriate because here, it's not simply someone building on Terraform to sell something else, they are selling a direct competitor to hashicorp's products.

In another era "building on X to sell something else" would be still considered "embrace, extend, extinguish" (in the actual, originally intended sense), depending on the market power of the players involved.

At least if the "something else" isn't free software.

I get what you're saying, but on a strictly legal standpoint, everything Hashicorp is doing is by the books...all previous versions of Terraform will remain under the old license and everyone can still use Terraform without fearing a future lawsuit, as long as they stick to those version. So no one made any legal missteps here, neither the users nor Hashicorp.

I think its the ethical side, rather than the legal side, thats more complicated...the contributions from the community contributed to the Terraform "brand" that got bigger and bigger, and now Terraform is attempting to secure their monopoly on capitalization of the brand when previously there was an implicit understanding that the "brand" was open-source.

However, you might also argue that there was an implicit understanding on Hashicorps side that the community wouldn't build directly competitive projects when they held the lions share of the funding on the contribution/maintenance side...

I think the whole thing is pretty complicated - is Hashicorp leeching off of the contributors or are the competitive contributors leeching off of Hashicorp? Honestly I see both sides.

The beautiful thing is that its totally legal and acceptable for OpenTF to do their own thing and continue Terraform under their own terms...so either way we get to see this play out :)

I agree that it seems to be an ethical issue rather than a legal one.

I'm coming down strongly on the side of the users, though. Hashicorp chose the original license, and the one they picked is perfectly fine with the idea of someone else building off it. I mean, it was written by the Mozilla folks. They want people to build off their projects and make a nicer Internet!

Hashicorp could've used a different license if they wanted to. They deliberately chose one that gives users the rights to build on Hashicorp's work -- and yes, even to profit off it at a competitor. What I don't think HC has is the right to act shocked when others use the software under the terms they were allowed to use it.

Could you explain how and why Hashicorp "get the maintenance burden"?

Surely, if maintaining it was such a burden, Hashicorp could just stop maintaining it?

There is a difference between maintaining something, and maintaining something for your competitors. The second one can reasonably be described as a burden IMO.

if your principles on FOSS change when someone uses your software in a way you don't like, you never had any principles in the first place

I do have principles but they aren't really aligned with the OSI or anything like that. They didn't suddenly change, they are just not aligned with this aspect of FOSS anymore.

Also, when FOSS was created, these concerns were simply non-existing. Times have changed massively in 30 years, "leeching" like this simply didn't exist when those licences were drafted. So no, I don't lack principles, the world simply changed.

the "leeching" in question is Hashicorp leeching off open source developers before closing the source

FOSS generally allows competitors to use your product to compete against you, and always has (the "free" in FOSS refers to freedom), so either you were never okay with FOSS, or you were okay with it and then abandoned those principles to not be okay with it, but having a "principle" that only holds true until you don't like the result is unprincipled

have times changed in a way that justifies abandoning FOSS principles, which include being okay with your competitor using your FOSS software to compete against you? I don't think so.

well, today's society is much more polarised, for example. (see the entire discussion lol)

and also, the whole ecosystem didn't exist when FOSS was created such as selling your software AND a cloud offering for it. If you created let's say an office suite and made it open, your competitor couldn't sell SaaS based on it 20 years ago because SaaS just didn't exist as a concept.... they could try to sell the same product debranded but that's not a very good business strategy.

hashicorp made a good decision here by being FOSS while it made sense, and when the leeches appeared, they decided to restrict future versions. This kind of leeching is the next m$-like EEE (extend, embrace, extinguish) - steal FOSS, host it and capture all the profits, while not maintaining or improving the software at all.

This kind of rent-seeking was simply unimaginable in the 90s when FOSS became a thing.

Also, hashicorp didn't leech off anyone (they didn't make the licence change retroactive, it's only future versions) because their contributions remain available under the same licence - it only applies to future hashi commits. Why shouldn't hashicorp have the freedom to commit in the fuiture with a different licence?

the "leeching" in question is Hashicorp leeching off open source developers before closing the source

the "rent seeking" in question is Hashicorp seeking rent, here, now

FOSS generally allows competitors to use your product to compete against you, and always has (the "free" in FOSS refers to freedom)

also, nobody leeched off Hashicorp, they used the software as the license and Hashicorp intended, until Hashicorp changed their mind on being FOSS. Why shouldn't they have the freedom to use software in accordance with the license?

In a similar way, why shouldn't Hashicorp have the freedom to use a different licence going forward? They didn't leech off anyone, the software was under MPL previously, under which people contributed. Now it is not anymore, you can decide whether you want to contribute under BSL or not.

"FOSS generally allows competitors to use your product to compete against you, and always has" Sure, I know, but I don't think that's viable when you are running a business. You have to take some freedoms away if you want to have a viable product.

In a similar way, why shouldn't software users have the freedom to use Hashicorp's software in a way both Hashicorp and the license intended? Such users didn't leech off anyone.

> I don't think that's viable when you are running a business. You have to take some freedoms away if you want to have a viable product.

I don't agree with this opinion, but even if it were true, it raises the question of why, then, Hashicorp chose that path in the first place, when they knew what FOSS meant?

If they didn't like the freedom part of FOSS, they didn't have to embrace it, but they did, and they did

Allowing what you call “leeching” is a well-considered, purposeful choice on the part of the people who created these licenses. So yes, it should mean that, and if anybody doesn’t like it then they can use a different license. They shouldn’t use a license that is specifically designed for this purpose and then complain when it is used for that purpose.

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