A segment of the community that has embraced open source Terraform software, originally developed by HashiCorp to provision infrastructure as code (IaC), has published a manifesto calling on the company to reverse recent changes made to licenses that determine how the software can be used.
If that demand is not met, the group plans to launch its own fork dubbed OpenTF under the terms of the previous license that governed the usage of Terraform.
Pawel Hytry, CEO of Spacelift, a provider of a platform for orchestrating the management of multiple IaC tools, said the issue comes down to restrictions that Hashicorp has put in place restricting use within platforms that have embedded it, in addition to limitations on how Terraform can be used in production environments.
HashiCorp is shifting from a Mozilla Public License v2.0 (MPL 2.0) to a Business Source License (BSL) v1.1 in all future releases of its software including Terraform, Vault, Consul, Boundary, Nomad, Waypoint, Packer and Vagrant, as part of an effort to maintain maximum control over its intellectual property.
This shift will have a chilling effect on Terraform innovation because fewer individuals and organizations will want to contribute to advancing the tool, said Hytry.
However, Hytry added, historically HashiCorp has not been perceived as not being overly receptive to contributions from external developers, so the bulk of the code used to create Terraform has come from developers working for HashiCorp.
It’s not clear to what degree this firestorm impacts DevOps teams, but the fragmentation of open source projects stemming from issues that come down to revenue streams is increasing as it becomes more difficult for vendors that create open source software to continue to increase the number of subscription services for the support they provide. Red Hat, for example, recently decided to no longer make the source code for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) edition of its operating system available. The decision led to Oracle, SUSE and CIQ pooling their resources to create a fork of RHEL that they promise will be compatible with future updates to RHEL.
It remains to be seen how many vendors might throw their weight behind OpenTF. HashiCorp, in addition to having partners that built the business on the open source edition of Terraform, also has plenty of rivals that offer IaC tools.
It may be a while before this conflict is resolved, but for now, the situation remains fluid, said Hytry. DevOps teams that make extensive use of Terraform will need to monitor events to make sure any future usage of Terraform complies with BSL terms that supporters of the manifesto claim are at this point too vague.
In the meantime, organizations that rely on open source software should brace themselves for any abrupt changes to licensing terms that may be forthcoming in more challenging economic times. In fact, one of the hidden costs of using open source software is the different terms and conditions under which it is licensed. Resources to monitor each additional instance of open source software for compliance, with terms and conditions that are not always as simple or clear cut, need to be dedicated to a task that doesn’t make any meaningful contribution to return on investment.
