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The OpenTF Manifesto

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Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#191

Post by stu2b50 »

jaggederest wrote: post #161
bayindirh wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Free Software advocate and supporter, I'm thinking about the answer to this question: - MPL is a weak-copyleft license, which allows companies to grab and run Terraform codebase, provide it as-is (as Terraform), or as white-labeled Terraform compatible feature/layer. This is alright (because license allows this). - These people also contribute their own fixes upstream, which is great, and maintain their own patc…

> But, HashiCorp says that, the thing we develop (i.e. Terraform) is used by others and generate revenue for them, this is great, but we can't generate enough revenue from it to keep the company afloat and continue providing TerraForm development, and sell it as a product at the same time. > What should they do? Suck it up, open source Terraform under a non profit foundation, find a new source of revenue. Or stop dev…

> Or stop developing Terraform, cut expenditures, and move on with life.

How would that be an improvement to anyone in any way? If you want, you can just pretend that Terraform is dead and Hashicorp will never push another commit for it. The people who can make the compromises BSL has can continue to use it.

> If the viability of your business is predicated on being the only one able to provide your project as a service and earn that service revenue gravy, just leave it closed source and proprietary. Sure, you won't get adoption at anywhere near the rate, but that's the tradeoff you make.

I don’t understand why this is a binary. If the conditions of the BSL are unacceptable to YOU that’s fine, just pretend it’s closed source if you wish. For others, that the BSL isn’t completely proprietary is useful for them - let it be useful. Your wishes need not dictate everyone else’s.

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#192

Post by johnbellone »

bloopernova wrote: post #125

If any Hashicorp people are reading, can you please tell your middle and senior management that this decision has deeply soured my entire DevOps cohort on continuing to use Terraform in the future. We're already exploring alternatives. Future client projects may not use Terraform at all. Languages and frameworks must remain open or they will wither and die.

Just stop using their products. Stop giving them free advertisements. Stop integrating your software and services with them.

It is harsh, but they’re a public company now, not Mitchell.

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#193

Post by ryanisnan »

new23d wrote: post #175

As an end-user, not competing with HashiCorp, this change doesn't worry me. According to their FAQ [1]: 10. What are the usage limitations for HashiCorp’s products under BSL? All non-production uses are permitted. All production uses are allowed other than hosting or embedding the software in an offering competitive with HashiCorp commercial products, hosted or self-managed. 24. Can I host the HashiCorp products as a…

I think it should, to some extent. A really quick example comes to mind. Some of the best documentation on how to use Terraform properly comes from folks who provide competitive offerings.

I could also see someome like Amazon eventually launching a CloudFormation like tool that works natively with Terraform, but now that's off the table and I think a net negative.

It also sounds like projects like Atlantis also would be against the BSL, including self-managed installations of the tool.

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#194

Post by diarrhea »

new23d wrote: post #175

As an end-user, not competing with HashiCorp, this change doesn't worry me. According to their FAQ [1]: 10. What are the usage limitations for HashiCorp’s products under BSL? All non-production uses are permitted. All production uses are allowed other than hosting or embedding the software in an offering competitive with HashiCorp commercial products, hosted or self-managed. 24. Can I host the HashiCorp products as a…

It’s not about individual usage but the ecosystem around and on top of Terraform, whose foundation just got a lot more shaky.

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#195

Post by verdverm »

i_am_jl wrote: post #139
verdverm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people still using elastic, mongo, and redis. What's different about this one?

You may make production use of the Licensed Work, provided such use does not include offering the Licensed Work to third parties on a hosted or embedded basis which is competitive with HashiCorp's products. Read benevolently it's a prohibition from spinning up a service based on HashiCorp's code and undercutting HashiCorp's pricing. On the other hand, if I build a product with HashiCorp-owned BSL'd code, then HashiCo…

My understanding is that the aforementioned companies' licenses are to the same effect, so what is the difference?

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#196

Post by [deleted] »

new23d wrote: post #175

As an end-user, not competing with HashiCorp, this change doesn't worry me. According to their FAQ [1]: 10. What are the usage limitations for HashiCorp’s products under BSL? All non-production uses are permitted. All production uses are allowed other than hosting or embedding the software in an offering competitive with HashiCorp commercial products, hosted or self-managed. 24. Can I host the HashiCorp products as a…

[deleted]

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#197

Post by AtNightWeCode »

bloopernova wrote: post #125

If any Hashicorp people are reading, can you please tell your middle and senior management that this decision has deeply soured my entire DevOps cohort on continuing to use Terraform in the future. We're already exploring alternatives. Future client projects may not use Terraform at all. Languages and frameworks must remain open or they will wither and die.

The fantastic cost of running TF in the cloud is painful. Several years ago it was very clear that it would be difficult for HC to survive once they became a company registered at stock markets.

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#198

Post by smarx007 »

bayindirh wrote: post #136
bloopernova wrote: post #125

If any Hashicorp people are reading, can you please tell your middle and senior management that this decision has deeply soured my entire DevOps cohort on continuing to use Terraform in the future. We're already exploring alternatives. Future client projects may not use Terraform at all. Languages and frameworks must remain open or they will wither and die.

As a Free Software advocate and supporter, I'm thinking about the answer to this question: - MPL is a weak-copyleft license, which allows companies to grab and run Terraform codebase, provide it as-is (as Terraform), or as white-labeled Terraform compatible feature/layer. This is alright (because license allows this). - These people also contribute their own fixes upstream, which is great, and maintain their own patc…

MPL is a copyleft license, actually, just like EPL and EUPL. What it is not is a viral copyleft license. Anyone making changes to TF code and productionizing it is expected to contribute back but only the direct changes to TF itself, not the extensions around it. That's my reading of EPL/MPL/EUPL. Does that match your reading?

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#199

Post by i_am_jl »

cbo100 wrote: post #167
robbintt wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will affect categories of business users (programmers) who currently embrace terraform: amazon, google, microsoft, oracle, alibaba cloud. Like it or not, cohorts of engineering organizations like the above (cloud providers) have a very outsized weight and already have contender products they can choose to vigorously fund tomorrow. From the article: The license does not allow you to use Terraform if you meet both o…

> have contender products they can choose to vigorously fund tomorrow. Then why didn’t they “choose” to fund hashicorp yesterday and avoid this? As usual in OSS-goes-private events these all just sound like “keep building our critical infrastructure tool for free or we will go elsewhere”. What is hashicorp or any other company in their position to do? This is not sustainable.

> As usual in OSS-goes-private events these all just sound like “keep building our critical infrastructure tool for free or we will go elsewhere”.

If Terraform was 100% developed by HashiCorp employees that would be fair description. It's more like "We're the only company allowed to make money off of the codebase you contributed to."

> What is hashicorp or any other company in their position to do?

I'd suggest paying developers to write proprietary code. That way they could just sell a product they fully own instead of having to pull this bullshit re-licensing of an open source codebase.

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#200

Post by zapnuk »

latchkey wrote: post #151
sredevops01 wrote: post #144

Terraform is terrible as it is. Good riddance. We need real tools instead of messing around with text files with ridiculous formatting.

While I agree with you about TF having a lot of issues, the comment isn't helpful. What would you suggest otherwise? Kind of a moot point now that the license is fubar'd, but what could be improved to make it better? If you could have a do-over, what would that look like?

Right now there is pulumi as a alternative that supports different clouds. Otherwise AWS CDK or Azure Bicep come to mind.

If i could to a do-over I'd want the solution to look and feel like AWS CDK but without the cloudformation in the background, and support for GCP and Azure.

I've worked with CDK for 2 years now and being able to define your code in Typescript is quite handy and drastically reduces the effort it takes for new people to learn how our deployment work. It's also quite nice to be able to directly bundle and deploy the application together with the infrascructure with very little effort.

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