HashiCorp's license change

Readers have been pointing us to HashiCorp's announcementthat it is moving to its own "Business Source License" for some of its(formerly) open-source products. Like other companies (example) that have taken this path, HashiCorpis removing the freedom to use its products commercially in ways that itsees as competitive. This is, in a real sense, an old and tiresome story.

The lessons to be drawn from this change are old as well. One is to bewareof depending on any platform, free or proprietary, that is controlled by asingle company. It is a rare company that will not try to take advantageof that control at some point.

The other is to beware of contributor license agreements. HashiCorp'sagreement usedto read that it existed "to ensure that our projects remain licensedunder Free and Open Source licenses"; the current version doesn't say thatanymore. But both versions give HashiCorp the right to play exactly thiskind of game with any code contributed by outsiders. Developers who werecontributing to a free-software project will now have their code used in arather more proprietary setting. When a company is given the right to takesomebody else's code proprietary, many of them will eventually make use ofthat right.