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Linux Foundation to Fork HashiCorp Terraform into 'OpenTofu'
(thenewstack.io)
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this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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EDIT: Informative comments below have convinced me that the license change is worth worrying about, and this fork is worth supporting.
The new license does not really affect the average person. Only companies offering terraform as a hosted service.
Funny to be reading this in an open source community. For one, the fork's license is open source while Terraform's is not. The impact is mostly on businesses, but open source has always been for everyone - including business.
Furthermore, Terraform's new license is subject to interpretation and dynamic. It's so hazy and unclear that they created an FAQ website which is essentially a binding addendum to the license that can be updated anytime as Hashicorp pleases. Is your business competing with Hashicorp? Who knows, only Hashicorp can decide that.
Edit: Clarified phrasing
I like open source because of how it affects ordinary individuals. I am not very concerned for businesses. In fact I'd prefer that businesses profitting from free software must profit share with the creators. It would ensure the longevity of the project.
What you're describing is business source, not open source. Hashicorp chose to use open source and thus allow other companies to compete. Nobody forced them to, they could've just kept Terraform as closed or business source from the beginning. There's nothing wrong with doing so, only if you pull a bait and switch like Hashicorp did does it become a problem.
The project controlled by only one entity can affect users in the future. Moving forward Hashicorp could do anything with the code or licensing and nobody could do anything about it. It is good that something is happening now, when there is still the chance to do it.
There are Alot of terraform users that either use a third party tool that the BSL would make legally impossible or benefit from features like locally encrypted state won't get merged by hashicorp