Hello @dbd ,
Thanks for your question, we’ve updated our FAQ with more information.
If HashiCorp creates an offering in the future that is competitive with a product you are already offering in production, your continued use of the hosted or embedded HashiCorp product will not be considered a violation of the HashiCorp BSL license.
On Tech X, formerly known as Tech Twitter, it was discussed that there are a number of things are mentioned in your FAQ but not necessarily reflected in the license itself. For example: HashiCorp
26. What if HashiCorp releases a new product or feature in the future that makes my project competitive?
If HashiCorp creates an offering in the future that is competitive with a product you are already offering in production, your continued use of the hosted or embedded HashiCorp product will not be considered a violation of the HashiCorp BSL license.
What protects startups/users from a sudden change to the FAQ?
Hello HashiCorp Team,
I manage an online service that allows users to log in and access resources for their work. This service is hosted on a prominent cloud provider, and I rely on Terraform to deploy and manage the infrastructure for this service across multiple environments. With the recent changes in your licensing arrangements, I wanted to inquire if my specific setup and usage would be impacted in any way.
Hello @venkatamutyala ,
One of our goals with the new BSL license is to keep the language in that document as simple and understandable as possible, while resolving community questions in this forum and in the FAQs. We view those FAQs as our binding guidance and have no intention of changing that interpretive guidance.
If you have questions about the FAQs or your specific use case, feel free to reach out to licensing@hashicorp.com!
Hello @mmethw2003 ,
Please reach out to licensing@hashicorp.com with more details on your online service.
In general, if you are using Terraform in a production environment and your online service does not compete with HashiCorp’s commercial offerings, you are not impacted by the license change.
Hi @joatmon08 it appears there have already been changes to the FAQ. Please see: https://archive.is/https://www.hashicorp.com/license-faq
Can you folks version the document and publish it more formally? Today this document appears to be a moving target.
Also, is binding guidance the same as a binding agreement?
Hi
in your blog post and also in the FAQ you are referring in several places to “outside of your organization”.
Could you define more in detail what you would consider the boundaries of an organization?
Examples 1: 2 departments in the same company
Department A provides services to Department B. Compensation is via internal budget transfer.
Example 2: parent company to 100% subsidiary
Parent company provides services to a 100% subsidiary.
Compensation is via actual money transfer from subsidiary to parent
Example 3: 2 majority holdings within same overarching corporate
majority holding 1 provides services to majority holding 2. Both are “owned/controlled” by the same Group/Holding company.
Compensation is via actual money transfer from majority holding 2 to majority holding 1
It would be great if you could provide input which of these scenarios would still be considered as “inside the same organisation”.
Thanks a lot for your support!
Without this, all Hashicorp-owned software is off limits to anyone creating a service today and in the future.
You can’t build a product/service today and then see Hashicorp enter your market with a competing offering just to see them exercise the BSL terms on you.
Anyone building a business today is better off not touching any Hashicorp software.
The level of uncertainty that this licensing change brings to the whole ecosystem is immense.
Additionally, anyone contributing to Hashicorp “source available” project would be working for free to increase their revenue baseline.
I understand the reasons why Hashicorp is doing this and I won’t comment on the merits but certainly they understand they are going the proprietary route. They certainly must think they own most of the market and migrating is too hard for users (which might be the case today).
Hashicorp, do not expect the good will that the market has shown you until today. Prepare to operate as a traditional proprietary software company and accept the consequences (bad or good).
Hashicorp has no integrity. That’s a bug…
Open Source and HashiCorp
When Mitchell and Armon created their first automation tool projects, they had no idea they would eventually build a company around their ideas. They learned the theory of computer science through university, but the practice of building software and communities through open source software, so making their projects open source was a natural choice. Over time, however, they found a powerful range of additional benefits. In fact, as they built HashiCorp, open source began impacting huge swaths of enterprise computing, and the first few large, profitable open source companies began to emerge. Over the past few years, major innovation in the industry has shifted to open source becoming the dominant way forward for infrastructure providers. We remain committed that the core of our technology will always remain open source.
Hello @venkatamutyala ,
Thanks for your feedback. We updated our FAQs to include updated dates for each question.
If you have an inquiry regarding versioning or guidance of a specific question, do reach out to licensing@hashicorp.com.
Thank you all for your questions and feedback. I am now closing this post. If you have further questions, please check out our FAQ . If you have specific questions about how this license change may affect your use case, please send an email to licensing@hashicorp.com.