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As HashiCorp adopts the BSL, an era of open-source software might be ending (www.runtime.news)
submitted 1 year ago by jhulten@infosec.pub to c/devops@programming.dev
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Won't impact most users apparently.

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[-] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

From what I'm reading, this appears to be a very reasonable move. I'm a big proponent of FOSS but, the vendors competing are really taking the piss and profiting off of others' work without supporting it. It's the same sort of parasitism that's being seen in relation to LLMs and other ML tech being used to rip off the labor of writers, artists, and programmers and cause them financial harm.

Full disclosure: I do work as a software engineer but in a less-vulnerable segment.

[-] technom@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago

this appears to be a very reasonable move

There are a few problems with this:

  1. The company wasn't ready for the concessions it had to make when they started the project as open source. This though, may be the most forgivable issue. They couldn't have predicted that big parasitic SaaS and LLM players would make their business unviable.
  2. There may be some contributors who wouldn't have contributed if they knew this was going to happen. Generally speaking, never sign away your rights. CLA and copyright assignments should be avoided like plague. The maximum you should settle for as a contributor is a DCO.
  3. Hashicorp is still trying to pass this off as open source of sorts. They say nothing has changed. But this change puts them squarely outside the definitions put forth by either FSF or OSI. This will cause their ejection from several software repositories. They should just be honest about it.
[-] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

Very good points. Definitely disheartening to see this occurring as I'm finally pushing through the bureaucracy needed to make contributions to and release FOSS projects myself but, FOSS existed before the web and will keep going after it commercial interests have finished bleeding it dry for short-term gains.

this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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