It's only source available: it is licensed under the BSL which is not a free software license. Use of the term open source is not appropriate.
A friend works there and tried to recruit me; I declined because of this sort of fake open source charlatan nonsense.
The software in TFA (VPNCloud) is indeed free software/open source: it is licensed under the GPL, just like Linux.
So, older versions are indeed open source, and new versions will eventually be so as well.
What’s your objection to the BSL? It seems like a great way to provide ongoing funding to open source, and guarantees popular commercially developed software won’t end up as abandonware.
It also makes it hard for a fork to develop traction, as a fork would have to start at a much older version that is Open Source, or the ecosystem would have to forgo the opportunity for third-party hosting services to support it.
The freedom to fork is an essential freedom. Without it, I would not feel comfortable contributing to the project. Nor would I feel comfortable basing critical business infrastructure on it.
Others may be fine with proprietary source-available software, and that is fine for them, but I strongly prefer Open Source for my needs, especially for core infrastructure.
> The Business Source License (this document, or the "License") is not an Open Source license.
https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierOne/blob/a7f652781faedfb...
Is the concern simply that governments can only use it to help people?
I know I can self-host even that top management layer (I think they called it "earth" or something). but they make that pretty complicated, probably on purpose.
In the end I just wrote it off in the end as something that has goals not aligned with mine. I'm going to look at Nebula (from Slack) soon. I use tinc at the moment but I wish it was more performant.
There's many options in this arena now so there's no point in sticking with something that doesn't completely fit your needs.
True. The stateless firewall is rather important to me and I haven't found that in anything else (I'll keep an eye on Nebula).
I'm not some free software zealot; I use macOS and the Creative Cloud and a bunch of other proprietary crap on a daily basis. I just don't pretend it respects my freedom. Nonfree licenses are like that.
It's not like it "switches to even more free": it is presently nonfree.
It's free for any use-case I'm concerned with. I can modify the source, self-host it, and run thousands of nodes through it if I want. All I can't do is take their work, slap my name on it, and sell it.
If that was your intent then VPNCloud is even less free. The GPL3 license means you could never host a closed-source version.
