A concerning trend is emerging: companies like HashiCorp and Redis are changing their project licenses from OSI-approved open source licenses to  their own versions of ‘source available’ licenses, which are not approved by the OSI. I asked Dirk Hohndel, Head of Verizon’s Open Source Program Office (OSPO) for his thoughts on the matter. Hohndel sees this trend as a natural consequence for projects that are dominated by a single company. However, he emphasizes that the community has the right to create its own version if the original project  pivots away from its open source roots, leading to successful forks (notable examples include OpenTofu and Valkey).

Guest: Dirk Hohndel (LinkedIn)
Organization: Verizon (Twitter)
Show: To The Point

Note: This video is part of a series of short segments from our in-depth interview with Dirk Hohndel recorded earlier this year at the Open Source Summit in Seattle.