Boundary is free and open source. There is no corporate speak here. It is FOSS licensed (MPL2) and everything announced today is completely FOSS.

We do sell open core software and if there is any place where you feel we aren't being honest about that please let me know and I'll work to address that. I added that "NOTE" at the end of the point specifically to ensure I was being honest and show I wasn't trying to hide anything.

We are also starting to offer managed services for folks who prefer to consume our software that way. The managed service offerings do unlock the typically enterprise features. Example: https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/hcp-consul-public-beta

"I want all of the functionality I want without having to pay for it." I hate how discussions around software businesses so often descend into purity tests around how much a company chooses to give away. Software is indeed eating the world, but the eternal battle of who has to pay for the underlying tools of said software continues.

Edit: 0: It's (presumably) technically not false now, but the implication is that $THING is honestly intended to be FOSS, immediately followed by admiting that their actual intent is to sabotage that embrace-extend-extinguish-style as soon as it's commercially expedient to do so.

Sabotage??? Wow, that’s quite an accusation for a company that’s, you know, a company. You might have an argument if they kept quiet about plans to monetize the product later, but that allegation is laughable.

If you’re not comfortable with the terms, don’t use the product. They’re being upfront about their plans. This anti-commercial position is hypocritical.

Is HashiCorp known to do this?

All I've heard are good things about HashiCorp from people who use HashiCorp products.

Second, it can't be forgotten these are companies. A company exists to create value for itself in some way.

It's the natural behavior of any company.

However in my opinion, "open core" design seems to be very very preferable amongst technologists (myself included). Essentially we are paying for additional features which normally we'd wait years from a sole contributor.

I think you might be confusing vault with another product?

We self-host vault in production, and it doesn't cost us a dime.

(other than the engineers we pay internally to operate it, of course)

ref: https://www.hashicorp.com/products/vault/pricing

HashiCorp and other companies doing "devops" tools are known for using "open core" and hijacking the spirit of open source in many ways.

All three have wildly different values and historically corporations aren't very good at listening to anyone that isn't waving a check. They use reasoning like "priorities" to close source formerly open source projects, bend project values to reflect their own values, and wedge projects with funding in exchange for representation or control. Corporate controlled and born projects are often used as marketing or for good PR, a cursory browsing of a company's Twitter page will show how they utilize it for this type of end.

I don't really read Mitchell's speak as corporate or double speak, but I do think that referring to HashiCorp (and other) projects as "open source" is a half truth. The line that I draw here is that I don't think Mitchell is lying, rather, I think that open source is now an umbrella term that means very little and really terms like open core, free and open source software, etc are more concise. We owe that outcome to inviting our corporate friends into the fold of open source with not enough restrictions, tracking, and accountability but there's a piece of me that feels this outcome was largely intentional because it's become a means to an end as I described above. These could just be feelings but the situation is common enough that it's relatable.

I'd encourage corporations to be more transparent in their verbiage, their investments, and their representation in these projects so that it doesn't continue to confuse people who participate in and enjoy the "free" side of open source. When I look at an open source project I'd love to know if a majority of the maintainers or funding comes from a corporation. If those things are true, then as someone who highly believes in the ideals of free software I may want to stay far away from people who are susceptible to corporate influence and values. On the other hand, that increased transparency may help clear the air and prevent issues from being perceived as non-transparent or outright misrepresentation.

Spot on. Corporate "open source" is often open only in terms of licensing, but not in terms of values.

Many companies use tricks to prevent successful forks and keep tight control over the development process.