HashiCorp Vault: The Secrets Manager That Changed Its License and Spawned OpenBao — A Deep Dive Into the BSL Fork
Vault guarded the world's API keys under MPL 2.0 for years. In August 2023 HashiCorp flipped it to the Business Source License alongside Terraform, and IBM engineers forked the last open version into OpenBao. This deep dive covers the relicensing, the fork, the drop-in migration, Nvidia and GitLab adoption, real self-hosting costs, where your secrets actually live, and an honest verdict for a sovereignty-minded operator.