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Open Source

Unless Open Source Evolves, HashiCorp CEO Predicts OSS-Free Silicon Valley (www.thestack.technology) 84

Slashdot reader Striek remembers Silicon Valley's long history of open source develoipment — and how HashiCorp "made the controversial decision to change licenses from the Mozilla Public License to MariaDB's Business Source Licesne. The key difference between these two licenses is that the BSL limits its grant to "non-production use".

HashiCorp's CEO is now predicting there would be âoeno more open source companies in Silicon Valleyâ unless the community rethinks how it protects innovation, reports The Stack: While open source advocates had slammed [HashiCorp's] license switch, CEO Dave McJannet described the reaction from its largest customers as "Great. Because you're a critical partner to us and we need you to be a big, big company." Indeed, he claimed that "A lot of the feedback was, 'we wished you had done that sooner'" — adding that the move had been discussed with the major cloud vendors ahead of the announcement. "Every vendor over the last three or four years that has reached any modicum of scale has come to the same conclusion," said McJannet. "It's just the realisation that the open source model has to evolve, given the incentives that are now in the market."

He claimed the historic model of foundations was broken, as they were dominated by legacy vendors. Citing the case of Hadoop, he said: "They're a way for big companies to protect themselves from innovation, by making sure that if Hadoop becomes popular, IBM can take it and sell it for less because they are part of that foundation." The evolution to putting open source products on GitHub had worked "really, really well" but once a project became popular, there was an incentive for "clone vendors to start taking that stuff." He claimed that "My phone started ringing materially after we made our announcement from every open source startup in Silicon Valley going 'I think this is the right model'."

He said the Linux Foundation's adoption of Open Tofu raised serious questions. "What does it say for the future of open source, if foundations will just take it and give it a home. That is tragic for open source innovation. I will tell you, if that were to happen, there'll be no more open source companies in Silicon Valley."

Hashicorp also announced a beta using generative AI to produce new module tests, and HCP Vault Radar, which scans code for secrets, personally identifiable information, dependency vulnerabilities, and non-inclusive language.
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Unless Open Source Evolves, HashiCorp CEO Predicts OSS-Free Silicon Valley

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  • It reminds me of 15 years ago when Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov was claiming [slashdot.org] that "Free Software should have never existed" because it "destroys the market."

    • by ToasterMonkey ( 467067 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @04:04PM (#63942481) Homepage

      Everyone that has ever had a thought about selling software has thought this, twenty, thirty years ago, at least.

      A classic Ballmer quote:
      https://www.zdnet.com/article/... [zdnet.com]

      Has anything changed? Or are we all still in denial. It's not like the goal of eliminating proprietary software was exactly a secret all these years. Microsoft figured it out, nobody* wants Linux, they just want a place to run their software for free. Which they will rent to you, on Azure.

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Saturday October 21, 2023 @05:25PM (#63942611)

        Don't worry. With AI able to ingest photos, videos, movies, books, and text and spit it back out copyright-free, the proprietary software vendors will just do the same.

        Have Mr. ChatGPT take in all the open source code you hate, then have it spew it out again free of copyright, thus letting you use all of open source without the pesky licenses.

        I mean, that's why everyone is against those authors and music companies suing OpenAI and others for gobbling up copyrighted works. I mean, if the work it spits out isn't copyrighted because it's not derivative, why can't the same be true for source code? Gobble up open source code, spit out nice proprietary code doing the same thing.

        AI solves everything!

        • by pacinpm ( 631330 )

          How is it different from programmer learning from other's code and "spitting" out new code? If human can do it legally so can AI.

          • by Nugoo ( 1794744 )
            If ChatGPT works just like humans, why can't you train ChatGPT on ChatGPT's output?
    • Free softy and open source are not one and the same. Let&#226;&#8364;(TM)s get rid of OSS, there still will be free software practitioners.
  • bye bye leaches.

  • So (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @02:45PM (#63942381)
    Who is Hashicorp and why should I care?
    • Re:So (Score:5, Funny)

      by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @03:07PM (#63942397)

      They don't even make hash. False advertising I claim.

      • Re:So (Score:5, Funny)

        by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @03:08PM (#63942405)
        They smoke a lot of it, though.
        • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

          The very last sentence confirms:

          Hashicorp also announced a beta using generative AI to produce new module tests, and HCP Vault Radar, which scans code for secrets, personally identifiable information, dependency vulnerabilities, and non-inclusive language.

          So the AI is going to make sure that words like blacklist, whitelist, master, slave, guys, sir, madam, gendered pronouns, sanity, sane, crazy, insane, blind, crippled, dumb, kill, grandfather, handicap, and disable(d) aren't in your source code, because:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Re:So (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Striek ( 1811980 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @03:33PM (#63942443)

      Who is Hashicorp and why should I care?

      If you don't know who they are, you probably shouldn't care.

      If, on the other hand, you've built a company's infrastructure using their tools (they are a major player and the de facto standard de jour in the infrastructure-as-code space), this change suggests, if you read the BSL verbatim, that you are now in violation of the license. Don't worry though, unless you directly compete with them, they pinky swear to not come after you for it!

      It's a bait-and-switch. Now they're butthurt because people won't take them at their word and a competing open source project has been forked.

      • So it's all good then. Forking was the built in solution to these things. Not perfect, but better than any of the other alternatives on offer anytime soon. Joke is kind of on them hey?
      • Re:So (Score:5, Interesting)

        by sfcat ( 872532 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @08:32PM (#63942769)
        They are often the only vendor (or at least the first vendor) of a lot of types of cloud tools. Their most of their software is truly awful, even though its mostly devops automation stuff which should be pretty easy to get right. Some of it is OK (for instance tools that package cloud containers), most of it is sorry. They OpenSource their software mostly because their customers are devops engineers and because nobody would have a hard time recreating it. And most of their customers find problems with it and having their software be OpenSource makes support easier and cheaper. They aren't a very good example of an OpenSource vendor for these reasons, they exist in weird niches with a small and very specific customer base. Also, they are only still in business because their market just isn't valuable enough for others to go into it plus their business models are all consulting based so good software isn't really in their best interest. They want to push garbage so you have to pay their consultants to configure it for you. Because since their are OpenSource, people associate their software with good packages from other vendors instead of the less than ideal packages they publish.
    • They make terraform, vault, and other pieces of popular software that make me consider never working in IT again.

    • Exactly. I come to /. for a meaningful small set of hopefully interesting news and opinions. If I wanted every random company's or person's opinion, I would have X or Facebook or TikTok or Instagram or ... (my list is probably out of date, as I use neither of these services) for that. If I wanted even more false facts and misinformation there are chatbots which can feed me that at the rate of a few words per second all day.

      Slashdot has like 10-20 daily articles ("features"? "stories"? "posts"?). That is a s

    • Re:So (Score:4, Informative)

      by swilver ( 617741 ) on Sunday October 22, 2023 @08:48AM (#63943405)

      They make a product that an annoyed developer could replace in an afternoon of hacking.

  • Funny! (Score:4, Informative)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @02:47PM (#63942383)
    "HashiCorp CEO Predicts" who cares?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21, 2023 @02:48PM (#63942385)

    The problem is these business people.

    If your goal is to give something away for free, you have two options:
    1) The wrong choice - to sell it
    2) The right choice - to give it away for free

    Likewise, if your goal is to sell something for money, you have a very similar two options:
    1) The wrong choice - to give it away for free
    2) The right choice - to sell it for money

    These business people are broken in the brain to such an extent, even after having this pointed out repeatedly, something that should be obvious to even a ham sandwich, yet they still can't comprehend it.

    Before you think I am just being insulting for no reason, look at exactly what I had to type out.
    HashiCorp's CEO literally took SEVEN years to finally understand something so direct and basic as is comparable to "water is wet." Seven (7) years!

    This is basic 3-4 year old human brain development level stuff. "Broken brain" is the only possible explanation for such an impossible misunderstanding of reality.

    • The problem is these business people.

      If your goal is to give something away for free, you have two options:
      1) The wrong choice - to sell it
      2) The right choice - to give it away for free

      Likewise, if your goal is to sell something for money, you have a very similar two options:
      1) The wrong choice - to give it away for free
      2) The right choice - to sell it for money

      These business people are broken in the brain to such an extent, even after having this pointed out repeatedly, something that should be obvious to even a ham sandwich, yet they still can't comprehend it.

      Before you think I am just being insulting for no reason, look at exactly what I had to type out.
      HashiCorp's CEO literally took SEVEN years to finally understand something so direct and basic as is comparable to "water is wet." Seven (7) years!

      This is basic 3-4 year old human brain development level stuff. "Broken brain" is the only possible explanation for such an impossible misunderstanding of reality.

      No. The problem here is that they originally decided to give the software away for free and then charge consulting fees to manage and configure it. They aren't making enough money doing that so now they want to sell the software, but somebody forked it first and now anybody can get the software for free. It was just a poor business model mixed with bad management from the beginning and this is their last grasp at survival..

      • by tattood ( 855883 )
        You are correct that they wanted to make money by selling consulting, support and hosting services for their product.

        The problem was, that other companies can also sell consulting, support and hosting services for software that they did not produce. That is what their license change means. If you run Terraform in your own company, and do not sell that as a service, then the license change would not affect you.
  • by aergern ( 127031 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @02:56PM (#63942387)

    Folks like this guy are fine with sucking in the labor of others to build their software empire but once they have a name for themselves and a code foundation .. they start talking this shit. And once they do, a lot of folks stop using their offerings. It's hypocrisy at its finest.

  • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @03:04PM (#63942393)

    Nobody says, "Thank you sir for making your license more restrictive!" unless they're in a position to profit off it. Customers buying support packages for a product are not.

    This guy is so full of shit you could liquefy him and fertilize the nation's farms for a year.

  • Want to go back to Compu$erve and AOHell, then cheer on proprietary software. Even Microsoft went open source for most of their internet stuff.
    • I realize the past 25 years of my life could/would have been very different.....

      But I wonder just what the internet would be like today if we still had AOL and CompuServe gateway'd off into their own little areas?

  • by LindleyF ( 9395567 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @03:20PM (#63942423)
    And I still have no idea what it's trying to say. I don't know what this company makes, or why their license switch matters, or what kind of evolution of OSS is being suggested.
    • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @03:34PM (#63942445)

      Basically, a midsized Silicon Valley company switched its product licensing away from FOSS two months ago and the CEO is apparently feeling the need to defend that decision.

    • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      Ditto. He's claiming they did something different that is better in some way for some reason. But I'll be damned if he says what is supposedly better about it or why. And I have no clue what the apps mentioned have to do with anything or even what they are besides mariadb.

      And then randomly he says something was given to a foundation which took it over and apparently the evil of the statement was supposed to be somehow self-explanatory... how is that bad?

      Is this supposed to be complaining about forking maybe

      • Apache Hadoop is a big data project based on Google's papers about MapReduce and GFS. He's saying that foundation sponsors like IBM (and Yahoo, who helped fund the creation of Apache Hadoop) encourage FOSS licenses so that they don't need to fund development (does...does he not know what "sponsor" means?) and can just take what they want if it becomes successful.
        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          Ummm... well, yeah and so can anyone else. That is pretty much the point. But those companies contribute back a lot in the process.

  • So why the change (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Squiff ( 1658137 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @03:21PM (#63942427)
    Rights or wrongs of the situation aside (and I do greatly disagree with McJannet), the elephant in the room is 'if Open Source is so terrible, why did you produce and market software under an open source license and why do you continue to do so?". It's worth noting that only Terraform itself has the new BSL license- the providers are all still MPL. The answer of course is that Terraform would never have got the traction it did if it had been a proprietrary product from the beginning. It would not have had the credibility and assurance amongst users, and it would not have had the contributions from both individuals and from organisations producing their own terraform providers. This situation is not a new thing, we've seen companies try to close off previously open products over and over. I can't readily think of any where the closed version went on to be successful but the open version was not
    • by tbuskey ( 135499 )

      Oracle managed to obliterate OpenSolaris. I'd argue Solaris is more successful than OpenSolaris.

      They were not able to do it with ZFS. OpenZFS seems to be more successful than the ZFS in Solaris.

      • Re:So why the change (Score:4, Informative)

        by BadDreamer ( 196188 ) on Sunday October 22, 2023 @04:29AM (#63943207) Homepage

        That's because OpenSolaris never was fully open. It contained lots of binary drivers and libraries. This also lead to stability problems. It never got to the point where the main users of Solaris and its specific features could use OpenSolaris instead, and when it was abandoned it was in a state where a huge amount of work was left to get to that point.

        So it never actually was an open source, much less Free, version of Solaris. It was a much more limited version which meant it didn't have much to compete with Linux and *BSD with.

        An OpenSolaris which was stable and actually provided the throughput and excellent virtualization on a wide range of generic hardware would have been a game changer.

        Instead we have a Solaris which is being maintained with a skeleton crew, and a few OpenSolaris forks futilely competing with FreeBSD, and Linux starting to catch up on features and performance. Solaris is basically dead at this point.

      • by jd ( 1658 )

        Ish. OpenIndiana still exists.

        • So does SmartOS/Illumos. I haven't used it in a while, but as far as I know, it's still really good for hosting VMs and containers.
  • by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @03:21PM (#63942429) Homepage

    Isn't it lucky that open-source / Free Software can continue to thrive without any corporations?

    • by dcooper_db9 ( 1044858 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @04:21PM (#63942509)

      Setting aside the shill for a moment and focusing on your statement. I don't think open-source is thriving, at least in any way that is meaningful to most people. The problem is that all the open-source software is locked inside hardware that we can't modify. Today's personal computer is the cell phone, and most phones these days cannot be rooted. Back in the 1990's kids like me were running BBS's, building computers from parts, and writing little programs in basic. Computers were exciting and the opportunities were endless. We supported open-source software because we thought that would give us the keys to the kingdom. Hardware companies have turned that upside-down by locking down root access. Today's young people sit in front of their phones and swipe through videos. We've turned the interactive relationship with computers of my youth into one where people produce and consume content.

      Tech companies keep running to the government complaining that they can't get people with the skills they need. I don't think that's going to change as long as they prevent people from experimenting.

      • You seem to be comparing what you did as a niche activity with what the masses are doing today. Iâ(TM)m sure there are also kids today, like you in your day, who are in a niche doing something completely different to the masses.

        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          The millions who engaged in those niche activities built the technological world around you. Initially it was a handful of electronics/cs grads from technical universities who started playing with things in their garage but by the 90's we were at a critical mass of kids who fell in love with the idea of hacking leading a technological revolution.

      • by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @06:16PM (#63942679)

        Tech companies keep running to the government complaining that they can't get people with the skills they need. I don't think that's going to change as long as they prevent people from experimenting.

        This, a thousand times. We have a whole generation or more of people for whom the hardware is a black box which, except occasionally in a crude modular sense, can't even be repaired, much less modified.

        When curiosity and self-determination are consistently thwarted, people stop being interested. Even if you try to train them, at that point you're training followers instead of leaders. Followers tend to be less innovative and less tenacious.

        • "This, a thousand times. We have a whole generation or more of people for whom the hardware is a black box which, except occasionally in a crude modular sense, can't even be repaired, much less modified."

          This is more due to desire than lack of opportunity. I mean sure we no longer have well stocked Radio Shacks in every mall selling breadboards and capacitors and such.... But I grew up with them like that and I never cared about the circuits, etc. Well, I did care enough to start wondering "how computers

          • I get what you're saying, and agree to a point. But when I was growing up I was fascinated by electrical and electronic hardware, literally by the time I was crawling. My 5th birthday present was an old radio to take apart, and I remember that as if it was yesterday. If not for radios and walkie-talkies and junked TV's on trash day, my life might have turned out very differently, and not for the better. In the face of a little opportunity to explore by taking things apart and fixing stuff, I think my desire

      • by dskoll ( 99328 )

        To some extent, I agree that computers are more locked down and buttoned-down than when I first encountered them in the 1980s. On the other hand, we have SBCs like the Raspberry Pi and others as well as microcontrollers like Arduino and others, and a pretty thriving maker community.

        So I think the unlocked, freedom-driven computing environment is there if you are willing to look for it.

        Even on a standard X86_64 PC with a fair number of hardware encumbrances, running Linux or some other open-source operati

  • by Dracos ( 107777 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @03:43PM (#63942455)

    Apparently he thinks FOSS licenses are about restricting rights to IP, but they're not.

    FOSS licenses are about assuring authors always get the credit they deserve, then perhaps some say in how their product is used.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Yes to the first, but no to the second. The only restriction a FOSS license can place on a product is on somebody else selling it. A FOSS license _cannot_ place restrictions on the use of a piece of software or it is not a FOSS license.

    • by Shaitan ( 22585 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @05:30PM (#63942615)

      FOSS license are about restricting rights to IP but doing so to accomplish an inverse objective. FOSS license are about using the IP rights to make sure nobody can ever deny others access to the IP.

  • Business Source License minus the business /s
  • Huh, I didn't realize mariadb was not foss. I thought the whole point of Debian switching to that was over foss concerns. BSL seems more oracle than even oracle is doing with MySQL.
  • Just another idiot that thinks because he is a CEO, the world revolves around him and the rules do not apply to him. How pathetic.

  • My dog says "invest in crypto." No matter what we say he insists it's an "investment" and it's a "good thing."
    I guess he's just a stupid dog.

    Like Hashi.

  • Whoa, the Hashicorp CEO likes money? I like money too. We should hang out.
    • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      I also like money but I don't want to hang out with you two. You'd both be trying to slurp the money out of orbit and all the monies should obviously be going to me.

  • by Njovich ( 553857 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @04:29PM (#63942529)

    Hashicorp has some cool tech, but blaming open source here is a little wild. Open Source brought them massive success. They got a ton of support because of it (combined with a good idea and good products) and it's really one of the main reasons lots of companies use their product. This brought them over 300mln in sales last year alone and for the tools they make that should be plenty to keep it alive... 300mln in sales for having a slightly nicer version of tools than what other free offerings deliver is pretty good, they should be happy with it. however they managed to spend so much that they still made 300mln in losses. Ouch. Honestly the value of a company losing money that quickly is very low. Especially since they realistically are quite easy to replace. They just offer some backend side tooling.

    Changing the license is just them failing to have any ideas how to make up for their insane spending spree. If they want to get in the black, they should just stop spending money they don't have. Trying to reneg on giving out an open source product is bound to get their massive community to just give up on them. I sincerely doubt that is going to fix things for them.

  • by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Saturday October 21, 2023 @05:43PM (#63942639) Homepage Journal

    If he thinks BSD, GPL, and MIT will be non-players in a decade I'll take $10 on the other side.

    I guess he's betting all of his investors' money though, so that's much more bold than my $10 offer.

  • by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @06:17PM (#63942681) Homepage

    It seems to me that Hashicorp is being ambivalent about the term "open source" here. They seem to be flipping back and forth between two meanings:

    1. Commercial (or intended to be commercial) software whose source is released under open-source terms so it's creator can benefit from cost-free contributions from other developers and roll that into their commercial offering.

    Non-commercial software developed because someone needed it and then released under open-source terms so that others can benefit from the original work and improve on it, with the condition that they let other people benefit from their work on it in turn.

    Silicon Valley is definitely going to be free of the second form, because it can't be taken up and used for their financial benefit without causing blowback and potentially causing the license to be changed to a free-software license or other terms that prohibit them from taking unilateral advantage without contributing back. SV can only really work with the first sort of software, and even then they risk what happened to Hashicorp with Terraform: if they push too hard to monetize it the community will just fork it and go their own way leaving the creator without the cost-free development effort they depended on for their own success.

    My advice to any business thinking of using the open-source model to aid their commercial software offering? Don't ever expect to be able to get developer effort for free while making money off the results of that effort. It doesn't work in the long term. Either be prepared to pay those developers an honest wage for their work or to offer the results under open-source terms forever. If you can't make your business model work with one of those options or the other, then your business model isn't going to work.

  • by DeplorableCodeMonkey ( 4828467 ) on Saturday October 21, 2023 @06:22PM (#63942689)

    The big change in the market was when Amazon decided to just start rolling their own packaged versions of popular FOSS apps and doing minimal contributions (if any) back. Now the companies that make money with cloud and enterprise versions of FOSS apps are suddenly facing competition from companies like Amazon and Microsoft that are contributing little if anything back.

    I remember when Mongo and then Elastic moved away from the ASLv2 over this. They got hammered, but no one had a viable alternative for them. Amazon was literally competing with their core offerings and doing virtually nothing of value either in terms of code contributions or hiring contributors. I would say a fusion of LGPL and GPLv3 is the only license that can be somewhat permissive and hold the cloud providers accountable because of the latter license's restrictions that target cloud products.

    So he's not wrong that the status quo isn't working. If you're building using ASLv2, BSD or MIT you're just begging for Amazon to come in, slap some automation on your base product and then try to undercut you.

    • GPL is not enough to protect against cloud leechers. You need AGPL for that.

      So we are talking either adopting AGPL, or use a fusion of LGPL and AGPL here.

  • I want to know what the CEO of HashishCorp things.

  • ...monopolies. Doesn't it always seem to be every tech startup's ultimate goal, i.e. to be the last one standing in their particular niche?
  • I'm much happier using a software handled by the Apache foundation than one handle by a startup (where you can expect dick moves like a sudden change of license, but cannot know when it will happen).
    Teraform is dead for us, long life to OpenTofu!
  • Businesses should be read between the lines. Hashicorp is obviously not making a profit from its open source tools and turns it into closed source. It is an experiment and if it fails Hashicorp will loose interest in the products. In that case, the customers that actually paid for it is in trouble because a BSL product cannot live a healthy life if the original authors loose interest. Open source is good for customers not (just) because they are cheapskates, but because it makes sure that the product is ab
  • The only way this happens is if the humans actually become the impediment, to the degree that software alone outstrips humans plus software as developers. Otherwise, the genius of OSS is that it is powered by copyright. It is somewhere between difficult and impossible to attack it as a concept or as a body without doing damage to the whole idea of copyright itself.

    If the software can do just fine without human assistance beyond some limited and naive prompting, then sure you can have whole universes of uniq

  • Today on "This Day On Slashdot" I saw this article:

    Economic Crisis Will Eliminate Open Source [slashdot.org]

    That is, 15 years ago someone was predicting Open Source failure due to economic crisis.

    And here we are, Open Source is alive and kicking.

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