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Props to them for being honest, but it's still not a good look for Hashicorp. Their stewardship of Terraform leaves a lot to be desired. For years now I've watc

Props to them for being honest, but it's still not a good look for Hashicorp. Their stewardship of Terraform leaves a lot to be desired. For years now I've watched Terraform PRs just wither on the vine. You get the impression that nobody is working on the AWS provider at all. Every PR to the AWS provider that I've ever cared about has taken years to be reviewed and merged despite lots of thumbs-ups and comments from users begging for it to be merged. This has been ongoing for years. There is clearly a priority problem here.

OJFord 5y ago
(Minor contributor, perhaps major issue-opener-commenter speaking) I have a lot of respect for the team personally (as in myself), though I do recognise what you say completely too. I just think there's a lot of focus on trying to do things right, and long-term-maintainably, that it often presents with a poor outlook or like there's a lack of interest. @apparentlymart from OP in particular - I have no idea who he is in Hashicorp hierarchy, I just recognise him from GitHub - in particular is really excellent in responding to good issues and adding information along the lines of 'yes we want this but unfortunately XYZ so we're hoping PQR is going to make this easier but first we need to ABC so yes but sorry not a priority right now' sort of thing.
- nomoreplease 5y ago
  Ya, but I’ve seen those same responses 4+ years ago. I had to give up on using it for a project years ago as they didn’t support some things and closed the PRs
jen20 5y ago
A few years ago, there used to be community reviewers of pull requests to the AWS provider - indeed I reviewed dozens after leaving HashiCorp. My own access for this got removed in (IIRC) late 2018, and I’d assume this was across the board. I don’t think it’s conceivable that any reasonable number of employees could satisfy the demand of maintaining the first-party provider set in the current form, without leveraging the community. However, I for one will not sign a CLA that allows proprietary relicensing, and I’d guess most people who could give meaningful reviews are in a similar boat, or already work on the provider teams. However, I’m also not sure that there is a “priority problem” as such - most providers don’t make HashiCorp money from consumers or contributors, and employee time is better spent on products which contribute to a positive bottom line. The Terraform Provider Registry has made it much more palatable to run a fork of any given provider than it was previously - I’d recommend doing so if you have functionality you need that hasn’t been integrated.
- robocat 5y ago
  > I for one will not sign a CLA that allows proprietary relicensing Why the objection? For it to have a material effect, both (a) Hashicorp would need to take Terradorm proprietary within a few years while your use actively need updates, and (b) there would have to be no one else maintaining a fork based on the existing MPL2[3] code. They say[2] why they need a CLA, which doesn’t seem deceptive. From the CLA[1] “you reserve all right, title, and interest in and to Your Contributions”, which is unlike the FSF which demands copyright assignment[4] “Put simply, this is the legal transfer of copyright on a program from the developers to the Free Software Foundation.”[5]. [1] https://www.hashicorp.com/cla https://www.hashicorp.com/cla [2] https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/introducing-a-cla https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/introducing-a-cla [3] https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/main/LICENSE [4] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html [5] https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2014/spring/copyright-assignment-at-the-fsf https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2014/spring/copyright-assignmen...
  - jen20 5y ago
    Because the MPLv2 license grants all the rights I'm willing to part with. I don't see it as deceptive, just as unnecessary. I would also not assign copyright to the FSF.
BurritoAlPastor 5y ago
I really don't see how you can look at the changelogs for the weekly releases of the AWS provider and think that nobody's working on it. If you want to see what a neglected provider looks like, spend some time with the poor Vault provider, where I have a two-year-old bug report about a reproducible crash condition without so much as a reaction emoji on it.
sneak 5y ago
Seems like someone who cares about this open source project should fork it as the maintainer is obviously absent.
beaconstudios 5y ago
There's a group called cloudposse who have a huge repository of their own terraform AWS plugins. I haven't had to use their plugins yet (I've been lucky so far in having found a way to do most of what I've wanted through the official provider) but their selection is pretty comprehensive: https://registry.terraform.io/search/modules?namespace=cloudposse https://registry.terraform.io/search/modules?namespace=cloud... https://github.com/orgs/cloudposse/repositories?q=aws+terraform&type=&language=&sort= https://github.com/orgs/cloudposse/repositories?q=aws+terraf...
- Galanwe 5y ago
  These guys are really really good. I've read a lot of their terraform code, it's top quality, well architectured. Definitely recommend to read their modules.
wayoutthere 5y ago
Oh, it's absolutely not a good look for Hashicorp because their company culture is the problem. They grew too fast and hired too many middle managers who brought in a brogrammer culture. It drove everyone with better options away (at least per friends who formerly worked on Terraform at Hashi). And from the resumes I see come across my desk it feels like they've been bleeding talent at all levels for a while.

OJFord 5y ago

(Minor contributor, perhaps major issue-opener-commenter speaking) I have a lot of respect for the team personally (as in myself), though I do recognise what you say completely too. I just think there's a lot of focus on trying to do things right, and long-term-maintainably, that it often presents with a poor outlook or like there's a lack of interest. @apparentlymart from OP in particular - I have no idea who he is in Hashicorp hierarchy, I just recognise him from GitHub - in particular is really excellent in responding to good issues and adding information along the lines of 'yes we want this but unfortunately XYZ so we're hoping PQR is going to make this easier but first we need to ABC so yes but sorry not a priority right now' sort of thing.

nomoreplease 5y ago
Ya, but I’ve seen those same responses 4+ years ago. I had to give up on using it for a project years ago as they didn’t support some things and closed the PRs

jen20 5y ago

A few years ago, there used to be community reviewers of pull requests to the AWS provider - indeed I reviewed dozens after leaving HashiCorp. My own access for this got removed in (IIRC) late 2018, and I’d assume this was across the board. I don’t think it’s conceivable that any reasonable number of employees could satisfy the demand of maintaining the first-party provider set in the current form, without leveraging the community. However, I for one will not sign a CLA that allows proprietary relicensing, and I’d guess most people who could give meaningful reviews are in a similar boat, or already work on the provider teams. However, I’m also not sure that there is a “priority problem” as such - most providers don’t make HashiCorp money from consumers or contributors, and employee time is better spent on products which contribute to a positive bottom line. The Terraform Provider Registry has made it much more palatable to run a fork of any given provider than it was previously - I’d recommend doing so if you have functionality you need that hasn’t been integrated.

robocat 5y ago
> I for one will not sign a CLA that allows proprietary relicensing Why the objection? For it to have a material effect, both (a) Hashicorp would need to take Terradorm proprietary within a few years while your use actively need updates, and (b) there would have to be no one else maintaining a fork based on the existing MPL2[3] code. They say[2] why they need a CLA, which doesn’t seem deceptive. From the CLA[1] “you reserve all right, title, and interest in and to Your Contributions”, which is unlike the FSF which demands copyright assignment[4] “Put simply, this is the legal transfer of copyright on a program from the developers to the Free Software Foundation.”[5]. [1] https://www.hashicorp.com/cla https://www.hashicorp.com/cla [2] https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/introducing-a-cla https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/introducing-a-cla [3] https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/main/LICENSE [4] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html [5] https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2014/spring/copyright-assignment-at-the-fsf https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2014/spring/copyright-assignmen...
- jen20 5y ago
  Because the MPLv2 license grants all the rights I'm willing to part with. I don't see it as deceptive, just as unnecessary. I would also not assign copyright to the FSF.

BurritoAlPastor 5y ago

I really don't see how you can look at the changelogs for the weekly releases of the AWS provider and think that nobody's working on it. If you want to see what a neglected provider looks like, spend some time with the poor Vault provider, where I have a two-year-old bug report about a reproducible crash condition without so much as a reaction emoji on it.

sneak 5y ago

Seems like someone who cares about this open source project should fork it as the maintainer is obviously absent.

beaconstudios 5y ago

There's a group called cloudposse who have a huge repository of their own terraform AWS plugins. I haven't had to use their plugins yet (I've been lucky so far in having found a way to do most of what I've wanted through the official provider) but their selection is pretty comprehensive: https://registry.terraform.io/search/modules?namespace=cloudposse https://registry.terraform.io/search/modules?namespace=cloud... https://github.com/orgs/cloudposse/repositories?q=aws+terraform&type=&language=&sort= https://github.com/orgs/cloudposse/repositories?q=aws+terraf...

Galanwe 5y ago
These guys are really really good. I've read a lot of their terraform code, it's top quality, well architectured. Definitely recommend to read their modules.

wayoutthere 5y ago

Oh, it's absolutely not a good look for Hashicorp because their company culture is the problem. They grew too fast and hired too many middle managers who brought in a brogrammer culture. It drove everyone with better options away (at least per friends who formerly worked on Terraform at Hashi). And from the resumes I see come across my desk it feels like they've been bleeding talent at all levels for a while.