😡Freakin' dumbass wannabe shitfluencers 💢
I just wanted to share how fast and strongly this spread at CxO levels and how intense the reaction were aaaaaand dumbasses took this and twisted it into "TERrAforM iS DeAD" and "OSS is gONe" 🤦
Let me clarify some things ... 🧵
1/32
twitter.com/iamvlaaaaaaad/status/1690039537370824704
If you missed it, there was a follow-up to the original thread.
TL;DR for that: the emotional reaction matters A LOT more than the facts. We're humans and we act as humans, for better or worse. In this case: businesses are scared of OSS now.
2/32
twitter.com/iamvlaaaaaaad/status/1690114917297188864
TL;DR: this is another follow-up, with 3 parts:
1️⃣ open-source is fine
2️⃣ HashiCorp products are fine
3️⃣ I just wanted to share not-easily-available reactions and y'all ruined it
The whole point is: calm down, everything is and will continue to be fine!
3/32
First, open-source will be fine!
Yes, really. One hundred percent yes. Affirmative and confirmed and absolutely 100% sure.
Please don't listen to dumbass wannabe shitfluencers that don't care about the accuracy of their content and that get money if they create drama 🙏
4/32
The small open-source is not affected. At all!
Seriously, the "tic-tac-toe but in Rust" that Chad posted on GitHub is not affected. Neither is the shitty startup that is "X but open-source" and that bought 5000 stars on GitHub to show product market fit.
Pls chill!
5/32
The big open-source projects are fine. They'll get some more governance and IP requirements but they already had a bunch of those.
Oh, you did not know those are already well defined and required? Huh, maybe that's a hint that you should shut the fuck up about this topic.
6/32
The other big open-source is the "3 multi-billion companies wanna collaborate and build X together but they need a bunch of assurances and risk mitigation before they allocate tens of millions in engineering effort on X".
They are adults and they are handling this!
7/32
How are they handling it?
From: Fancy Person
To: In-House Counsel / External Law Firm
Subject: HashiCorp BUSL
See <link>. Impact? Mitigations?
Sent from my iPad Pro
8/32
Like seriously. That's it.
They are adults and are handling it like professional adults that are working together (I mean there's still ✨hot business drama✨, but you won't see it and it won't amount to much in the end).
9/32
The other open-source groups (not-yet-big open-source, growing open-source, sneakily funded open-source, etc) will also be fine.
They'll get some contract addendums to protect against this. Lawyers will handle it and it'll pretty much be invisible to everybody else.
10/32
Yes, I am sure of this! Open-source will be fine.
Sure, there will be some changes happening over the next 7-10 year cycle and we might see some bad feedback loops. Only a few open-source community leaders will see that and only a few will be affected.
It'll be fine.
11/32
The second an open-source project becomes successful, ALL those bad things are handled.
The same processes have been happening for forever behind closed doors and they will continue to happen. Y'all will continue not to see the tremendous amount of work done on that side.
12/32
Open-source will be fine and will remain supported.
Heck, this might even lead to more funding for open-source! It will require open-source devs to incorporate and act as a proper adult business and they'll definitely throw a tantrum, but it'll all be good.
13/32
That't it on open-source 'cause I already talked waaay too much about it.
14/32
Secondly, HashiCorp products will be largely fine and your usage of them will not change.
Yes, really.
15/32
HashiCorp has been actually handling this pretty well 👏
They're responding to the avalanche of emails they got, they updated the FAQ, they are scheduling calls and conversations with people, and so on.
Seriously, good job turning this around HashiCorp!
16/32
Terraform will be fine.
Not because HashiCorp will do a good job working with partners (🤣) but because there are no realistic alternatives for the things Terraform is good at — they're all either slightly worse (CloudFormation), a lot worse (CDK, Pulumi), or disastrous.
17/32
HashiCorp's Packer will be fine.
Folks will continue to build AMIs with Packer and their own pipelines. Some people move to alternative solutions and Packer will get less integrations over the next 3-5 years, but it's stable enough that it will all be fine.
18/32
HashiCorp's Vagrant will be fine.
Some folks might migrate to alternative tools, but the numbers will be small. There's a reason there isn't that much focus on Vagrant right now and even enterprise workloads have appealing alternatives.
19/32
HashiCorp's Vault will be fine-ish.
Unless the product starts shining, in time, there's a chance Vault will get less and less integrations and slowly wilt.
Some might migrate to hosted solutions by cloud providers when they realize they're barely using Vault's power.
20/32
HashiCorp's Consul will be in some trouble.
Unless the product start shining, in time, people will migrate to higher-level hosted offerings as Consul's advantages will slowly disappear.
There's no immediate impact for most people, so long live Consul Community Version!
21/32
HashiCorp's Nomad get even more woes.
Nomad has some really nice concepts, but it was drifting and now it's getting even more troubles. We'll have to see how HashiCorp handles this 👀
Impact won't be visible for a while and the Community Version will be fine either way.
22/32
HashiCorp's Waypoint does not matter.
It's barely a proof-of-concept with few resources allocated to it. Nobody really cares about it. The community won't be eager to integrate with Waypoint so it'll probably disappear.
23/32
HashiCorp's Boundary... I have no idea.
I genuinely have no idea about this one. It's somewhat new and I did not really see it used. Maybe it'll become a major focus and grow a lot and be amazing? 🤷
24/32
HashiCorp can still fuck this up though😅
Really bad thing they could do: demand excessive license fees from their ex-community now turned competitors. It's fine-ish if HashiCorp extracts some value, it's devastating if the amount is excessive.
I hope that won't happen🤞
25/32
That's it on HashiCorp 'cause I talked waaay to much about them.
Terraform will be fine, everybody else will be fine-ish, and newer products will have a harder time growing. Let's not pretend that HashiCorp did not already have issues before this 😉
26/32
Lastly, I wrote the initial thread because it was interesting and largely unaccessible 🤷
Unless you're privileged, you don't get to see how executives react to things like these. To see and discuss reactions with multiple business leaders... you've gotta be really lucky!
27/32
That was it!
I saw interesting and strong reactions that might impact tech in the coming 5-7 years and, because that wasn't part of the conversation, I thought I should share it.
28/32
I shared how people reacted to this.
❗ react != act ❗
I did not share my thoughts. I did not share my opinions. I did not review anything.
I did not share solutions. I did not share next steps. I did not share definitive concussions. Those are still being worked on!
29/32
I still am not sharing most of that!
Partly because that's actual work product, partly because it would be risky, partly because that would require a bunch of writing and background, partly because it would open me up to harassment, and partly because fuck you pay me.
30/32
Plus, tech has more ✨drama✨ than the original Gossip Girl and that's all shared in confidence and under NDAs.
Seriously, there are so many layers of discussions and plans and drama and people and aaah. And we'll never know most of it.
Aside: HashiCorp = Jenny Humphrey?
31/32
So yeah, please don't listen to any dumbass with 10k followers on whatever platform you're on. And please tell them to calm down.
HashiCorp is fine! We're fine! Tech is fine! Pls chill!
Change is normal and this is just the natural evolution of a young and hot industry.
32/32