While I understand the move (similar to what Redis Labs, MongoDB, Confluent and many others have done recently), as one of the many contributors to these projects not affiliated with any company, it feels like a slap in the face. If such licenses gain prominence then having a healthy open source community for large-scale projects will be a thing of the past. As an outsider, it makes zero sense to be involved in the project if my code isn't really going to be open source until 3 years from now, and that can be delayed further or indefinitely if the company wants.
IMO the best way forward is for such projects to be run by non-profit foundations, not VC-backed companies.
I'm curious about this take. If I'm reading the article correctly it appears if you did not have plans to turn the software into a managed service this has no practical impact on you. Personally, for every open source project I've contributed to if this license has been in place rather than an open source one no one would have been impacted at a practical level (including those doing it professionally).
Aside from purely ideological concerns, what about these changes do you think will kill communities?
I think it's a combination of ideological and practical (and in some sense they aren't all that different). If they changed the license once, they can do it again. As a for-profit company they are obligated to their investors and shareholders, and at some point it is inevitable that they will find ways to start charging those who want to self-host as well.
The second part of this is that a large number of open source contributions come from employees at large software companies while on company time, and they aren't going to be allowed to do so any longer if the company isn't happy with the licensing terms of the project.
Hang on. Are you saying that you make a practice of contributing to open source software products of for-profit companies?
Those are companies with plenty of VC money to pay you a salary. Why would you give your work to them for free?
Maybe I misunderstood what you wrote, but then if I had, why would it bother you that a company like this changed its business model to close an unprofitable loophole?
Wait, Cockroach Labs accepts external code contributions? How are they able to pull the rug out from under you and relicense the code without your consent? Did you sign a CLA giving away your rights?
IMO the best way forward is for such projects to be run by non-profit foundations, not VC-backed companies.