From ebf2eb4b18234d892b6630d30f52c49f160d3986 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Seth Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org>
Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2023 23:16:01 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] Talk about reactions to Terraform relicensing + OpenTofu
---
dosp-survey.ltx | 53 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------------
1 file changed, 40 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-)
diff --git a/dosp-survey.ltx b/dosp-survey.ltx
index 8bc19a4..de2131a 100644
--- a/dosp-survey.ltx
+++ b/dosp-survey.ltx
@@ -292,23 +292,50 @@ This is echoed in statements by several BUSL adopters that they sought a way to
\subsection{Consequences/Impacts?}
-% Some people forked the last open source version of Terraform and are
-% actively maintaining it as OpenTofu. I don't know that people have done
-% this for other BUSL-relicensed projects.
+Projects that change from an open-source license to a delayed open-source
+license have attracted criticism, with some people pledging to
+switch to other projects or even to maintain competitive forks of the
+prior open-source versions. The most consequential such effort
+appears to be OpenTofu, a fork of HashiCorp's Terraform announced soon
+after Terraform was relicensed under BUSL.\footnote{See
+\otsurl{https://opentofu.org/}.}
+OpenTofu has announced several corporate sponsorships, apparently plans
+to hire multiple full-time developers, and has organized itself as a
+project of the Linux Foundation. The fork's creators complained that
+the prior open source license of Terraform had encouraged people to
+develop professional expertise with the software and to use it as a part
+of their infrastructure.
+% One could say much more about this both in terms of commercial strategy
+% and also in terms of users' subjective feelings of betrayal.
+They also noted concerns about whether Terraform users could be confident
+about whether their individual uses were considered commercially
+competitive with HashiCorp.
+
+Most other forks of recently-relicensed software have not attracted the
+same levels of attention, participation, or adoption.
+
% yes for Vagrant -> Viagrunt, although OpenTofu got vastly more support
% and activity
-% It's potentially much harder for projects under non-open-source terms to
-% accept outside contributions, both because people may be less motivated
-% to make them and because the licensing status is more confusing. However
-% HashiCorp for example has a CLA, with a bot that checks whether authors
-% of pull requests have signed it. HashiCorp does continue to receive some
-% outside contributions on BUSL-licensed projects.
+It could be harder for projects under non-open-source terms to receive
+or accept outside contributions, both because people may be less motivated
+to make them and because the licensing status of the resulting contributions
+is more complicated. However, some projects that have switched to BUSL (or
+other licenses) continue to accept outside contributions subject to a
+contributor license agreement (``CLA"), which grants certain rights to the
+original developer. HashiCorp, for example, has a CLA for its
+projects\footnote{See, for example,
+\otsurl{https://cla.hashicorp.com/hashicorp/terraform}.}, and a bot that
+that checks whether the authors of pull requests have signed it, so that
+their contributions will not be incorporated into the codebase until
+and unless they do so. The company does continue to receive some outside
+code contributions to its BUSL-licensed projects, including Terraform.
+% TODO: Has the rate measurably decreased?
%
-% e.g. https://cla.hashicorp.com/hashicorp/terraform
% TODO: Did they have this requirement before relicensing? Some open source
% projects do have comparable CLAs for outside contributions to
-% become part of their official upstream code bases.
+% become part of their official upstream code bases. It's not only a
+% BUSL/DOSP/proprietary licensing phenomenon.
\subsection{Other}
@@ -407,7 +434,7 @@ for example, the presentation at
% TODO: Get rid of the {} that shows up in the link target
Since both the start and end-state licenses of the BOSL are themselves
-open source, we do not regard the BOSL as a form of delayed open source
+open source, we do not regard the BOSL as a form of delayed open-source
publication as defined by this report. Rather, it seems to be an
unconventional form of open source publication with time-varying open
source terms. While the BOSL has not been approved by the Open Source
@@ -476,7 +503,7 @@ there was usually no public commitment to do so on any particular
schedule or under any particular circumstances. This practice is thus not
a core example of DOSP.
-A ``delayed open-access" model, applied to research articles, has become
+A ``delayed open access" model, applied to research articles, has become
popular for academic journals as a compromise between more restrictive
journal licensing and open-access publishing.\footnote{See
\otsurl{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed\_open-access\_journal}.}
--
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