Almost all the code is out there either as MIT or Apache2. Changes in the last 4 years have a temporary exclusivity period via the BUSL and roll over to Apache2 on a monthly basis. We have however heard loud and clear that a lot of people are dissatisifed with this, particularly with us calling ourselves an Open Source company.
We're trying out best, maybe that's not the last part of the story. Combining a sustainable business and Open Source under the same hat is tricky, and maybe we haven't found the right solution yet.
As one who is highly critical of the BUSL and especially of companies switching from Open Source licenses to the BUSL, I want to chime in a bit on this.
First of all- Thank You. Thank you to Sentry and the people there for making Sentry and making it originally Open Source. Thank you for continuing to make it eventually Open Source. Thank you for your continuing financial support of Open Source. I should have been more nuanced in my comment above, as Sentry only abandoned Open Source for their core product(s) and continue to contribute to other open source projects.
I don't believe Sentry "owes" anyone continued open source license terms.
I believe strongly in the value of the ability to fork. This is best for both companies and their customers. It allows both to pivot to new models. This is why I promote open source and insist on it for any core infrastructure or applications within my business. The freedom to fork has to be available to the community or any subset thereof, and viable. This is the weakness of the BUSL- because it prevents the community, or a subset thereof, from pursuing a key source of revenue to fund a fork.
I also really appreciate the business challenges of running any business, and especially an open source business. I believe there are many viable avenues to doing so. Community, product quality, support, and freedom are all critical selling points that open source companies have to do a better job of promoting and leveraging. I am willing to talk to anyone at Sentry or any other company considering the BUSL about strategies to make money and to avoid "heretical" software licenses. :)
> The freedom to fork has to be available to the community or any subset thereof, and viable. This is the weakness of the BUSL- because it prevents the community, or a subset thereof, from pursuing a key source of revenue to fund a fork.
I believe the main issue today is less the BUSL but that 3 or 4 years which are the common terms are a bloody long time. The secondary issue is that the BUSL is a huge turnoff for contributions for a potential community fork. I know people forked Sentry from the BSD source rather than the BUSL rollover versions, even though the Apache2 licensed Sentry is much newer (though still years old).
We might not owe anyone anything, but we also are not particularly happy with the license choice we have at the moment. We had the hope that we can start a positive trend for combining a SaaS business with Open Source and I don't think it has quite worked out how we wanted. A lot of companies rally behind the BUSL that have very different values than we do, and that adds to the negative perception of the license.
We're trying out best, maybe that's not the last part of the story. Combining a sustainable business and Open Source under the same hat is tricky, and maybe we haven't found the right solution yet.