HashiCorp Licensing FAQ

1. What did HashiCorp announce today (Aug 10)?

HashiCorp announced a transition from the Mozilla Public License v2.0 (MPL 2.0) to the Business Source License (BSL, or BUSL) v1.1 for future releases of all products and several libraries. HashiCorp APIs, SDKs, Terraform providers, and almost all other libraries will remain MPL 2.0.

2. Why is HashiCorp making this change?

We strongly believe in the value of openly sharing source code and enabling practitioners to solve their problems, building communities, and creating transparency. HashiCorp provides feature-rich products to the community for free, and that development is made possible by our commercial customers who partner with us. By shifting to this license, HashiCorp can better manage commercial uses of our source code and continue to invest in our thriving community of practitioners, many of whom are contributors, in a manner that will not impede their work.

3. What are the implications of this change for end users of HashiCorp’s open source products?

For end users who are using HashiCorp’s current open source products and new releases using the BSL license for their internal or personal usage, there is no change.

4. What are the implications of this change for integration partners of HashiCorp?

For integration partners that are building integrations with our products, including Terraform providers, Vault plugins, and other product integrations, there is no change. 

5. What are the implications of this change for commercial customers of HashiCorp?

For commercial customers of HashiCorp there is no change. Those customers get our technology under separately negotiated licenses.

6. Who is impacted by this change?

Organizations providing competitive offerings to HashiCorp will no longer be permitted to use the community edition products free of charge under our BSL license. Commercial licensing terms are available and can enable use cases beyond the BSL limitations. If you are building a solution that integrates with HashiCorp products and want to talk with us, email licensing@hashicorp.com.

7. What products will be covered by BSL 1.1 in their next release?

The products using the BSL license from here forward are HashiCorp Terraform, Packer, Vault, Boundary, Consul, Nomad, Waypoint, and Vagrant. The final product releases under MPLv2 are Terraform 1.5.7, Packer 1.9.5, Vault 1.14.8, Boundary 0.13.1, Consul 1.16.4, Nomad 1.6.5, Waypoint 0.11.4, and Vagrant 2.3.7.

8. What are the usage limitations for HashiCorp’s products under BSL?

All non-production uses are permitted. All production uses are allowed other than hosting or embedding the Licensed Work to compete with HashiCorp’s paid version of the same Licensed Work, whether hosted or self-managed.

9. How does this impact the licensing of Terraform providers?

There are thousands of Terraform providers in the ecosystem, created by many different organizations. The maintainers of each provider are free to select their own license. The providers built and maintained by HashiCorp remain Mozilla Public License v2.0 (MPL 2.0), as do the SDKs and Frameworks that HashiCorp provides to plugin and provider authors.

10. Can I continue to use versions of the products that were provided under the original MPL 2.0 license?

Yes. The license change is not retroactive. This means all source code and releases prior to the change remain under the MPL 2.0 license. You may continue to use those versions indefinitely under the original license.

11. Will HashiCorp backport security patches to previous releases under the MPL 2.0 license?

HashiCorp will continue to backport critical security patches, as available, to existing versions under the MPL 2.0 license until December 31, 2023. Any patches after that date will be provided under the new license.

12. What is a “competitive offering” under the HashiCorp BSL license?

A “competitive offering” is a product that is sold to third parties, including through paid support arrangements, that significantly overlaps the capabilities of HashiCorp’s paid version of the Licensed Work. For example, this definition would include hosting or embedding Terraform as part of a solution that is sold competitively against our commercial versions of Terraform. By contrast, products that are not sold or supported on a paid basis are always allowed under the HashiCorp BSL license because they are not considered competitive.  

If you need further clarification with respect to a particular use case, you can email licensing@hashicorp.com. Custom licensing terms are also available to provide more clarity and enable use cases beyond the BSL limitations.

13. What is considered a "paid support arrangement"?

A paid support arrangement is any structure where a user has a paying relationship with the provider and can receive support for the Licensed Work, whether embedded or hosted, regardless of whether that support arrangement is specific to the Licensed Work or provided generally for many products. For example, providing the Licensed Work as a free service, but providing support for that free service as part of a broader offering of services, would be considered a paid support arrangement.

14. What does the term “embedded” mean under the HashiCorp BSL license?

Under the HashiCorp BSL license, the term “embedded” means including the source code or executable code from the Licensed Work in a competitive version of the Licensed Work. “Embedded” also means packaging the competitive product in such a way that the HashiCorp product must be accessed or downloaded for the competitive product to operate.

For example, a provisioning service that allows customers to invoke Terraform, either as part of a managed service, self-hosted solution, or through a bring-your-own container mechanism, would be considered embedding of Terraform. If the competitive product is invoking or executing Terraform as part of the provisioning service, it is considered part of operating the product.

15. I’m building (or have built) a product that embeds one or more HashiCorp products, and I’m concerned you may view it as competitive. How can I get clarity as to whether my product will violate the new BSL license?

Please reach out to us. We are happy to speak with you. The best way to begin the conversation is at licensing@hashicorp.com. We can provide timely feedback to your questions and discuss constructive solutions, including potential exemptions and/or partnership arrangements.

16. I am the author of an open-source project that uses HashiCorp technology in a non-competitive way (e.g. uses Terraform but not in a production environment). If someone else uses my project to produce a competitive product or hosted service (e.g. starts using my project in their SaaS solution), am I at risk of being considered competitive and violating the BSL license? Do I need to track all users of my project and report suspected infringing use?

Only those who are actively embedding or hosting the HashiCorp products in a competitive manner would be in violation of the license. The violation would not extend to a project owner who is not doing so, and the project owner would have no obligation to monitor or report on how others are using their project.

17. If I want to build a product that is competitive with HashiCorp, does that mean I’m now prevented from using any HashiCorp tools under the BSL license?

No. The BSL license does not prevent developers from using our tools to build competing products. For example, if someone built a product competitive with Vault, it would be permissible to deploy that product with Terraform. Similarly, if someone built a competitive product to Terraform, they could use Vault to secure it. What the BSL license would not allow is hosting or embedding Terraform in order to compete with Terraform, or hosting or embedding Vault to compete with Vault.

18. What if HashiCorp releases a new product or feature in the future that makes my project competitive?

If HashiCorp creates an offering in the future that is competitive with a product you are already offering in production, your continued use of the hosted or embedded HashiCorp product will not be considered a violation of the HashiCorp BSL license.

19. What is the Business Source License (BSL, or BUSL)?

BSL is an alternative to closed source or open source licensing models. Under BSL, the source code is publicly available. Non-production use of the code is always free, and the licensor can also make an Additional Use Grant allowing production use under specific restrictions. Source code is guaranteed to become open source at a certain point in time. On a specified Change Date, or the fourth anniversary of the first publicly available distribution of the code under the BSL, whichever comes first, the code automatically becomes available under the Change License. Our current Change License for HashiCorp projects is MPL 2.0.

20. Why did HashiCorp select the BSL license?

BSL 1.1 is a source-available license that allows copying, modification, redistribution, non-commercial use, and commercial use under certain conditions. BSL allows our community to use our source code for virtually all purposes, while preventing commercially competitive use of our source code.

21. What’s the difference between the BSL and others such as AGPL, SSPL or the addition of Common Clause to agreements that HashiCorp could have chosen?

The BSL is a highly permissive license. It allows users to copy, modify, and redistribute the code under a broad range of conditions. Other licenses such as AGPL or SSPL impose copyleft requirements and can be much more burdensome. The BSL is also a time-limited license that converts to an open source license (for us, Mozilla Public License v2.0) after a period of time (for us, 4 years). HashiCorp believes our approach strikes the best balance between making our source code broadly available and supporting the developer community with minimal limitations while protecting our ability to continue investing in feature-rich, free-of-charge software.

22. If I modify the source code of software licensed under the BSL, can I redistribute my modified version under another license?

No. Your modified version consists of the original software (which is under the BSL) and your modifications, which together constitute a derivative work of the original software. The license does not grant you the right to redistribute under another license.

23. Does HashiCorp still believe in open source?

Yes. HashiCorp is a proponent of open source philosophy and maintains a large number of open source projects. HashiCorp was founded as an open source company, with all the core products and libraries released as open source. The community ethos has focused on enabling practitioners, building an ecosystem around the products, and creating transparency by making source code available. HashiCorp is still dedicated to its original ethos. The licensing change impacts the core products, which have source available and a broadly permissive license. HashiCorp additionally publishes and maintains hundreds of other open source libraries, frameworks, and SDKs.

24. How does HashiCorp now refer to the freely available versions of products that were formerly known as open source (or OSS)?

We have referred to versions of our products as either open source (OSS), Enterprise, or Cloud. Going forward, we will refer to the open, freely available versions as “community”. The BSL license is open, free, and source-available. However, it does not meet the definition of open source as defined by OSI, and that is why we will refer to the products as the "community" edition rather than the "open source" edition as we did previously. There are many references to open source on our websites and we are actively working to clarify these language changes in the coming weeks.

25. Can I mix BSL licensed code with code provided under a different license (i.e., Apache, MPL, etc.) in my project?

Yes, provided that each of the components keep their own license, and you do not mix the BSL with strong copyleft licensed code such as GPL. With respect to some permissive licenses like Apache, you may also provide the whole program under BSL but include a notice for the Apache portion (this is possible because Apache, unlike some other open source licenses, grants the right to sublicense).

26. Can I host the HashiCorp products as a service internal to my organization?

Yes. The terms of the BSL allow for all non-production and production usage, except for providing competitive offerings of the Licensed Work to third parties that embed or host our software. Hosting the products for your internal use of your organization is permitted. HashiCorp considers an organization as including all of its affiliates that are under common control. This means one division can host a HashiCorp product for use by another internal division.

27. Can I continue to provide professional services around HashiCorp products?

Yes. We have a large ecosystem of systems integrator partners that provide consulting and professional services to help users deploy, manage, and operate our products for their internal use. The change to our license is not intended to deter partners from providing those services, and we will continue to encourage and support these types of systems integrator partners. Instead, the BSL license simply prevents embedding or hosting our community products in a manner competitive with our commercial products.

28. I’m a consultant who helps my customers run their infrastructure using HashiCorp tooling. Does HashiCorp consider me a competitor?

All non-production use of BSL licensed HashiCorp products is permitted. Assisting a customer with their own use of BSL licensed HashiCorp products for their production environment is also permitted. Embedding or hosting BSL licensed HashiCorp products in an offering  to be made available to multiple customers that is competitive with HashiCorp products is not permitted.

29. Where can I learn more about this announcement or ask further questions?

- Read the press release

- Read the blog post.

- For the online discussion forum, see this thread on HashiCorp Discuss, our Discourse forum.

- Review the BSL license text

- For any media questions, please contact media@hashicorp.com

- For questions about licensing and clarifications on usage restrictions, please contact licensing@hashicorp.com