The history of Terraform and the open-source fork drama

The 2014 Launch and the 2023 License Shift

Mitchell Hashimoto unveiled Terraform in the summer of 2014. This tool allows users to manage and provision infrastructure using code. In 2023, HashiCorp changed the license from Mozilla Public License v2.0 to Business Source License v1.1. This shift restricts commercial use for companies that develop products rivaling HashiCorp or host Terraform in their offerings. I find this move predatory toward the community. Businesses using the software for profit must grant HashiCorp a free, non-exclusive license to their derivative works. The transition to the BSL license could be a major undertaking if the organization uses Terraform to manage a sizable and intricate infrastructure, but the transfer might be rather simple if the organization uses Terraform to manage a modest and basic infrastructure. Spacelift notes that current operations remain unaffected because the relicensing is not retroactive. The changes only affect future Terraform releases above version 1.5.5. The BSL allows users to copy, alter, and redistribute the program, but the wording remains vague. A Terraform Enterprise license starts at $15,000 for five workspaces with bronze support. You should verify your specific version before you plan any major migrations.

OpenTofu and the Linux Foundation

The license shift triggered the creation of OpenTofu. Companies including Gruntwork, Spacelift, env0, and Scalr initiated this fork under the MPL-2.0 license. The Linux Foundation hosts the project. OpenTofu released version 1.6.0 in January 2024 and version 1.7 in April 2024. The release of version 1.6.0 involved over fifty developers from five continents. The project maintains 20,000 stars on GitHub and secures 18 full-time developers for five years. The project provides a registry that supports 2,260 providers. Users call the commands tofu init, tofu plan, and tofu apply instead of the Terraform equivalents. The project remains functionally compatible with Terraform. However, the maintainers faced scrutiny on August 27 when they blocked Russian IP addresses and deleted Yandex Cloud, Cloud.ru, and Rustack Cloud Platform from the registry. This decision violated the spirit of open source. Will the team delete AWS or GCP providers next? I think the maintainers’ ability to remove content at will makes the tool unreliable for production.

IBM and the Future of IaC

IBM completed the acquisition of HashiCorp. Tarun Chopra and Armon Dadgar plan to integrate HashiCorp products with Red Hat and OpenShift. IBM invests heavily in Terraform, Vault, and Nomad. The acquisition brings synergy between Vault and IBM’s identity-based security. IBM also targets high-performance compute through Nomad. The company plans to combine Terraform with Ansible to provide end-to-end infrastructure as code. This strategy combines Terraform with tools like Apptio and Turbonomic to manage cost and optimization. IBM focuses on identity-based security through Verify, which creates synergy with Boundary and Vault. They also target data posture management with Guardium, which fits with Radar and Vault. Terraform manages mainframes, and Vault runs on mainframes. IBM aims to sell integrated solutions rather than individual products.