Skip to content
GitLab
Explore
Sign in
Primary navigation
Search or go to…
Project
D
Delayed Open Source Publication -- Research
Manage
Activity
Members
Labels
Plan
Issues
Issue boards
Milestones
Wiki
Code
Merge requests
Repository
Branches
Commits
Tags
Repository graph
Compare revisions
Snippets
Build
Pipelines
Jobs
Pipeline schedules
Artifacts
Deploy
Releases
Package Registry
Container Registry
Model registry
Operate
Environments
Terraform modules
Monitor
Incidents
Analyze
Value stream analytics
Contributor analytics
CI/CD analytics
Repository analytics
Model experiments
Help
Help
Support
GitLab documentation
Compare GitLab plans
Community forum
Contribute to GitLab
Provide feedback
Keyboard shortcuts
?
Snippets
Groups
Projects
Show more breadcrumbs
Chad Whitacre
Delayed Open Source Publication -- Research
Commits
ebf2eb4b
Commit
ebf2eb4b
authored
1 year ago
by
Seth Schoen
Browse files
Options
Downloads
Patches
Plain Diff
Talk about reactions to Terraform relicensing + OpenTofu
parent
bfa18b5d
No related branches found
No related tags found
No related merge requests found
Changes
1
Hide whitespace changes
Inline
Side-by-side
Showing
1 changed file
dosp-survey.ltx
+40
-13
40 additions, 13 deletions
dosp-survey.ltx
with
40 additions
and
13 deletions
dosp-survey.ltx
+
40
−
13
View file @
ebf2eb4b
...
...
@@ -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}.}
...
...
This diff is collapsed.
Click to expand it.
Preview
0%
Loading
Try again
or
attach a new file
.
Cancel
You are about to add
0
people
to the discussion. Proceed with caution.
Finish editing this message first!
Save comment
Cancel
Please
register
or
sign in
to comment