I submitted this, and opted to elide that part of the title, both due to wordiness and also because it doesn't change the headline: the "evolution of model" that McJannet is advocating is not in fact open source. He is, therefore, predicting an "OSS-free Silicon Valley" -- one way or the other. (I also think he's entirely wrong.)
I'd imagine it looks a lot like BUSL: source is available, and fine for use in non-competing ways, but using it to compete against the commercialisation efforts that pay for primary development is not allowed. Basically every successful open source company other than Red Hat at this point has the model in one way or another.
That sounds reasonable indeed. But competing against the commercialization efforts is just so vague. It’s also a huge turn off for enterprises, they are already afraid of the GPL, I think enterprises will not touch BUSL code.
It’s nice for self hosters perhaps. But I for one am always thinking about how I can commercialize my self hosting skills (and have been somewhat successful here and there).
Enterprises are afraid of the GPL for libraries or OSS stuff they’re running but not paying for.
If they’re paying for a service because they need it (not so they can resell or repackage it in some way), I don’t think they’re going to be so picky about the license. They pay for plenty of 100% closed and proprietary software after all. The benefit of OSS/SA licenses in that case is debugging, being able to contribute patches, and continuity if the vendor goes bust. For those purposes, having access to the source is what matters, not the particular license.
I don't know I'd agree that it's vague - the triggering conditions in BUSL are instance specific so each instance requires evaluation. The HashiCorp provisions are perfectly clear.
What I do wish is that all companies who have this kind of license would also have a clearly priced, clearly defined "pay us X and you can use the OSS bits under this commercial license instead" model, for exactly the reason you describe though.
