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The OpenTF Manifesto

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Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#61

Post by [deleted] »

jen20 wrote: post #53
tedivm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part is they did create a viable business model. They were profitable when they had their IPO. They then pretended that the IPO was just another Series X investment, blew all the money, and went negative on their cashflow. Hashicorps problem isn't that their business model doesn't work, it's that they are really bad at their jobs. They ignore customer feedback, laid off support people, and then jacked their…

Have you actually read the financial statements? None of what you just wrote is remotely true.

[deleted]

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#62

Post by ig1 »

unethical_ban wrote: post #56
brikis98 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if hashicorp thinks you are a competitor This is precisely the problem with the new BSL license. Whether your usage of Terraform complies with the license isn’t determined by the legal terms, but instead is entirely at the whim of HashiCorp. And they can change their mind at any time. It makes it impossible to build anything on top of Terraform. I talk about that more here: https://blog.gruntwork.io/the-future-of-t…

I worked at a financial institution that heavily utilized terraform. Their business is banking and they do not offer automation, orchestration or IaC as a service. They're fine. This seems to affect only those places that attempt to build a business off terraform. I am not saying those businesses can't be mad at the rug getting pulled out from under them, but it's important to be accurate that this doesn't affect end…

Is the financial institution made up of separate legal entities which bill each other for services, and does one of those entities provide tech infra for the other legal entities?

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#63

Post by cube2222 »

PeterZaitsev wrote: post #57

One thing I particularly hate about license change is lack of notice - If you operate in good faith you probably would want to give time to community to make arrangement, whenever it is negotiating agreement with you or looking for alternatives. Lack of notice this means everyone who embedded Terraform put their customers at risk immediately as in case any discovered CVEs they will not be able to ship security fixes…

Their FAQ states they'll backport security fixes under the old license until the end of 2023.

Disclaimer: Work at Spacelift

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#64

Post by linuxdude314 »

brikis98 wrote: post #26
dbingham wrote: post #23

I appreciate the letter and trying to work with Hashicorp -- I used to have a ton of respect for Hashicorp. But honestly... at this point... ...just fork it into a foundation. Don't wait for Hashicorp's response. I get wanting to have the appearance of working with Hashicorp, but we've been shown again, and again, and again, and a-fucking-gain that private corporations cannot be trusted to maintain public goods. Only…

The truth is that a fork hurts everyone. Imagine a future CTO trying to pick the IaC tools for their company. They see Terraform as an option, but then learn there are multiple forks, licensing questions, and a big battle happening in the community. What do they do? They are now way more likely to pick a different tool that is genuinely open source. The same is true of every dev considering where to build their caree…

I doubt that’s what would happen if they could afford a license from Hashicorp.

Avoiding proprietary licenses has its place but if you aren’t using terraform to build a product this really shouldn’t impact you much.

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#65

Post by PeterZaitsev »

cube2222 wrote: post #63
PeterZaitsev wrote: post #57

One thing I particularly hate about license change is lack of notice - If you operate in good faith you probably would want to give time to community to make arrangement, whenever it is negotiating agreement with you or looking for alternatives. Lack of notice this means everyone who embedded Terraform put their customers at risk immediately as in case any discovered CVEs they will not be able to ship security fixes…

Their FAQ states they'll backport security fixes under the old license until the end of 2023. Disclaimer: Work at Spacelift

Ah, this is great when. MongoDB did not do it in their switch to SSPL

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#66

Post by pseg134 »

tedivm wrote: post #49
jen20 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Terraform doesn't have a test suite Patently false. Terraform has had an excellent test suite since 2014.

Sorry, this may be a miscommunication. Terraform itself has a test suite, yeah, but it doesn't have a testing framework that users of the language can use to test their own code. To make a python metaphor, if cpython had a testing suite but pytest didn't exist then people wouldn't be able to test their own python code. That's kind of the situation with Terraform right now- you can't test your code using just the Terr…

It isn’t a miscommunication, jen20 is astroturfing for hashicorp. Look at all of their recent posts.

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#67

Post by throwaway1101z »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #55
tedivm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hashicorp left the provider frameworks under the original licenses, probably because they don't want to scare provider developers off. So for now both Terraform and a potential fork can continue sharing the same providers without issue.

Are they even able to unilaterally relicense third party providers?

Indirectly, by changing the license for the SDK.

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#68

Post by PeterZaitsev »

dbingham wrote: post #23

I appreciate the letter and trying to work with Hashicorp -- I used to have a ton of respect for Hashicorp. But honestly... at this point... ...just fork it into a foundation. Don't wait for Hashicorp's response. I get wanting to have the appearance of working with Hashicorp, but we've been shown again, and again, and again, and a-fucking-gain that private corporations cannot be trusted to maintain public goods. Only…

I totally agree. I do not think pleading with Hashicorp to reconsider will result in changing back the license

Doing the Fork and showing it IS sustainable and has broad community support can encourage Hashicorp to make concessions.

After taking this unilateral hostile step I do not think Hashicorp deserves the community trust and what industry needs is "Foundation Governed" Terraform like solution, whatever name this solution will have.

You can see example in Confluenct which builds proprietary solutions around Kafka, where Kafka itself is Apache project.

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#69

Post by unethical_ban »

ig1 wrote: post #62
unethical_ban wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a financial institution that heavily utilized terraform. Their business is banking and they do not offer automation, orchestration or IaC as a service. They're fine. This seems to affect only those places that attempt to build a business off terraform. I am not saying those businesses can't be mad at the rug getting pulled out from under them, but it's important to be accurate that this doesn't affect end…

Is the financial institution made up of separate legal entities which bill each other for services, and does one of those entities provide tech infra for the other legal entities?

Good point, but no. Also I think they pay Hashicorp for support.

Re: The OpenTF Manifesto

#70

Post by nabakin »

cies wrote: post #37
aftbit wrote: post #17

>Imagine if the creators of Linux [] suddenly switched to a non-open-source license that only permitted non-competitive usage. Linux cannot even successfully switch from GPL2 to GPL3 because of the sheer number of contributors and the fact that not all of them have transferred their copyright ownership to any given organization. This patchwork of different copyright owners has historically been seen as a potential we…

I thought Linus and other believed GPLv2 was fine and the improvements of GPLv3 did not outweigh the potential problems introduced by it. It never came to a point where all authors were asked to agree, or sign away their ownership.

Yes, I believe I saw a video of Linus stating exactly this
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