August 25th, the OpenTF initiative announced their fork of Terraform. This is a great day for Terraform. Over the last few weeks there has been a lot of discussion on Reddit and HackerNews about the HashiCorp license change and OpenTF and the impact of it. Many people have been supporting of OpenTF, understanding that an open Terraform is better for everyone.
Regardless of where you stand on HashiCorp’s decision, if you are a user of Terraform, the OpenTF initiative is great for you. Terraform had the opportunity to be the lingua franca of the cloud. However, being controlled by a single vendor limited its potential. A single vendor, as we’ve seen, can make decisions that impact the entire community. HashiCorp has no obligation to the community that made Terraform what it is today.
The goal of OpenTF is to keep Terraform open. A major aspect of this is to have OpenTF join the Linux Foundation and, eventually, CNCF. By putting OpenTF under a foundation, the future of OpenTF is in the hands of the community. Changes can’t be made that dramatically impact the future of the product without a public decision process.
OpenTF has built up a lot of momentum in the few weeks it has existed. We, at Terrateam, are very excited to be part of it. Even if you believe that HashiCorp made the right decision for themselves, if you’re a Terraform user, OpenTF is making the right decision for you. The most popular IaC tool in the world should be open. It should be community driven. It should not be at the whims of a single company.