This is a good analysis and touches on the issue of entitlement.
All of the company's work to date remains available free and in perpetuity. The complaint can only be that the company has changed course and will not commit to providing future new stuff for free. The only way this complaint is valid is if there was a bait and switch - the company pretended that their new stuff would also be free forever. Without intimate kniwledge, I'd venture that Hashicorp never said anything of the kind and they're just trying to make a buck like the rest of us.
The more this happens, the less people will hold the naive view that for-product entities will by default keep providing stuff for free forever. Capitalism baby.
> The only way this complaint is valid is if there was a bait and switch
There is a bait and switch, just not the one you proposed. If Terraform had started off under the BSL, it would have significantly less adoption.
As is, people adopted it under evaluation of the old terms, and are now being told the terms are changing going forward.
Since the previous code is still available, this will likely hurt newer, smaller players more than larger established players - if you are offering a large commercial offering on terraform today, you will likely justify maintaining a vendor fork going forward, or contributing to a genuine new fork project like OpenTF.
> The more this happens, the less people will hold the naive view that for-product entities will by default keep providing stuff for free forever. Capitalism baby.
Historically the successful companies had a clear view of what was free and what was charged - e.g. Redhat binary and source distributions were free, but enterprise distributions, commercial support, professional certifications as well as custom software/professional services were all revenue channels.
The rise of more asymmetric licensing terms (e.g. sole corporate copyright with publication under AGPLv3) has been an ongoing change as companies have wanted the freedom to change where they get their money over time, and defend from other members in the community potentially competing against them.
All of the company's work to date remains available free and in perpetuity. The complaint can only be that the company has changed course and will not commit to providing future new stuff for free. The only way this complaint is valid is if there was a bait and switch - the company pretended that their new stuff would also be free forever. Without intimate kniwledge, I'd venture that Hashicorp never said anything of the kind and they're just trying to make a buck like the rest of us.
The more this happens, the less people will hold the naive view that for-product entities will by default keep providing stuff for free forever. Capitalism baby.