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Comment by galenmarchetti | Hacker News Reader

haha...fair point!

One thing that I've been curious to see, and not sure if anyone has done it yet, is a quantification of contribution to Terraform, comparing amount of work done from external contributors to the work done by Hashicorp-internal contributors.

I know it's hard to make the comparison of what is "harder" work or "more" work in a software project from looking at commits alone, but would be interesting to see nonetheless.

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It's not just the work donated via the open source channel, it's also the associated credibility, enthusiastic coverage and referrals, and general good will, that accrues to such a project. None of which they would have enjoyed had they been a private project.

Also third party providers and modules.

definitely...and they get to keep that credibility and coverage. at least, as long as this move didn't totally alienate the folks that got on terraform back then

That credibility largely only applies to a certain group of people. The license change tanked that credibility with that group of people. Hashicorp did a classic misstep for open source based companies and as a may have lost the mindshare and marketshare for one of their most significant offerings. I'm actually not sure they'll survive this.

> The license change tanked that credibility with that group of people

tho a separate group of people who actually decide the finances of companies will not be in this same group. As old saying goes, "Nobody Gets Fired For Buying IBM".

When a senior engineer comes to that person and says. You can stop paying hashicorp money. We found a free alternative and are no longer using their product. That person will happily and joyfully jettison the contract. I've been that senior engineer before and the CTO and CFO have never pushed back on the idea that they don't have to spend any more money. Especially now when cutting costs is a concern everyone is being forced to care about.

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