@@ -178,8 +178,8 @@ The Linux Foundation noted (\otsurl{https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/how-ope
that several prominent projects switched away from open-source licenses
from 2018 to 2023. Not all of these adopted DOSP licenses, but those that did
so adopted BUSL.
These included CockroachDB, Couchbase, Terraform, and ArangoDB. The most prominent of
these BUSL adopters was HashiCorp, which wrote
These included CockroachDB, Couchbase, Terraform, and ArangoDB. The most
prominent of these BUSL adopters was HashiCorp, which wrote
\begin{quote}
BSL 1.1 is a source-available license that allows copying, modification, redistribution, non-commercial use, and commercial use under specific conditions. With this change we are following a path similar to other companies in recent years. These companies include Couchbase, Cockroach Labs, Sentry, and MariaDB, which developed this license in 2013. Companies including Confluent, MongoDB, Elastic, Redis Labs, and others have also adopted alternative licenses that include restrictions on commercial usage. In all these cases, the license enables the commercial sponsor to have more control around commercialization.
...
...
@@ -188,15 +188,69 @@ BSL 1.1 is a source-available license that allows copying, modification, redistr
This change applied to almost all of the company's software, including popular
software like Terraform, Vagrant, and Hashicorp Vault.
% TODO: add six (!) more databases: ArcticDB, Dragonfly, Memgraph, evitaDB, ReadySet, and SurrealDB
Although Hashicorp's license change attracted the most attention and
commentary, it's interesting to note that BUSL was originally written by
a database company and that the majority of the projects we've identified
that relicensed under BUSL are database systems. Some of the project
developers wrote that they wanted to discourage other companies from
competing directly with the developers' hosted database services, and that
they doubted whether an open source license would manage to accomplish
this. It's also possible that there was a degree of ``social contagion"
as database developers observed several of their peers relicensing away
from open source at roughly the same time, either to BUSL or to other
licenses that restrict licensees from operating commercial services.
Several licensors add an Additional Use Grant (AUG) under the BUSL to
allow for ``production" uses other than those that are considered to
compete with the developer's commercial services. For example,
ArcticDB provides the following Additional Use Grant\footnote{This same
text is also used by several other projects, and we have not determined
which project originated it. There are also other variants with similar
effect.}:
% TODO: It seems like we should say something about the fact that the
% absolute majority of the projects that we know of that are
% licensed BUSL are databases?
\begin{quote}
You may make use of the Licensed Work under the terms of this License,
provided that you may not use the Licensed Work for a Database Service.
A ``Database Service" is a commercial offering that allows third parties
(other than your employees and contractors) to access the functionality
of the Licensed Work by creating tables whose schemas are controlled by
such third parties.
\end{quote}
It appears that the project thus intends to immediately allow
\emph{commercial} uses, including for public services, as long as these
don't entail charging money for hosting databases in particular. Several
other BUSL adopters have analogous grants.
The AUG mechanism---including optional free-form text that exempts certain
uses from BUSL's ``production use" restrictions---complicates direct
comparison of uses of the BUSL; we have not yet devised a taxonomy
for making these comparisons.
% TODO Sort this table by date of BUSL adoption? ("BUSL date")
