Hashicorp Adopts BSL For Licensing

HashiCorp has recently announced that they are adopting the Business Source License (aka the BSL or BuSL). HashiCorp previously used the less restrictive Mozilla Public License (MPL) for its products. The BSL is not considered an open source license by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). The OSI defines open source software as software that is free to use, modify, and redistribute. The BSL does not allow for the redistribution of modified versions of the software, which is a requirement for open source software.

However, the BSL is a source-available license, which means that the source code for the software is made available to the public. This allows users to inspect the code and make changes to it, if they so desire. However, users are not allowed to redistribute their modified versions of the software under the BSL license. The biggest impact will depend on how they are using Hashicorp products in their production environments. If an organization is using products like Terraform and Vault purely for internal uses, then the impact will be minimal. HashiCorp's BSL implementation does include an additional use grant for production environments that stipulates you may make production use of the Licensed Work, provided such use does not include offering the Licensed Work to third parties on a hosted or embedded basis which is competitive with HashiCorp's products. Caution here is your organization is providing anything like Terraform as a Service or Vault as a Service.

This license does not impact HashiCorp's commercial customers. If there are any doubts about whether an organization's usage might not adhere to the new restrictions, then IT teams should connect with their legal teams to make a determination. License disputes can lead to long protracted course cases, which burn cash on both sides of the aisle.

Note: The Business Source License should not be confused with the Boost Software License, which unfortunately has the same acronym.