When Open Source Isn’t: How OpenRewrite Lost Its Way
1 min read
Summary
Open source code licencing remains a controversial topic, as shown by a spat between open source coding platform OpenRewrite and one of its contributors, Jonathan Leitschuh.
While contributing to the OpenRewrite rewrite-java-security project, Leitschuh found that the Apache 2.0 licencing under which his code had been contributed had been changed to a proprietary licence, thus negating his ability to contribute to - or even access - the code.
OpenRewrite developer Moderne quietly relicensed the code behind the project, contributing to what Leitschuh describes as a “violation of the norms, values, and expectations that hold open source communities together”.
Open source relies on community trust, which is easily lost and difficult to regain.
This is not the first licencing wrangle that open source has experienced: in recent years, organisations including MongoDB and HashiCorp have also restricted the freedoms of the very communities that helped them to grow.