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Okay, so while this title is technically true, it is phrased in a way to incite panic. Just to be clear, AWS/Hashicorp is NOT beginning to charge people for th

Okay, so while this title is technically true, it is phrased in a way to incite panic. Just to be clear, AWS/Hashicorp is NOT beginning to charge people for the use of Terraform modules.

jhugo 5y ago
terraform-aws-modules is a community thing, that consists of modules that are thin wrappers around the official AWS provider, that serve very little purpose other than to add a dependency and create problems like this.
- antonbabenko 5y ago
  lol
  - jhugo 5y ago
    Thanks for the downvote and the no-content comment, I guess? I've worked with numerous large Terraform configurations, and the ones that use terraform-aws-modules are harder to maintan, have more churn due to updates of the modules, and are more divorced from the actual underlying cloud resources due to random decisions made by the module authors. I really struggle to understand the reason for using the modules rather than the underlying resources, except that there are a lot of tutorials and blog posts written based on using the modules. Maybe you can enlighten me rather than writing a three-letter comment?
    - antonbabenko 5y ago
      no
    - nrmitchi 5y ago
      I will enlighten you. > serve very little purpose other than to add a dependency and create problems You're expressing your opinion as fact in a way that only serves to degrade people who don't agree with you. Obviously these modules serve a purpose, otherwise the repositories would not have hundreds-to-thousands of github stars/forks, and people would not be arguing about a license change on the front page of HN.
      - jhugo 5y ago
        > Obviously these modules serve a purpose, otherwise the repositories would not have hundreds-to-thousands of github stars/forks, and people would not be arguing about a license change on the front page of HN. Have you worked with the modules in question? If you have, please enlighten me to the obvious purpose that they serve. As I pointed out, I've worked with them extensively, and worked on comparable configurations that avoid them, and they create many problems (the wrappers introduce their own churn due to version updates, and often have mistakes in their interpretation of the underlying resources, etc) while solving virtually none. Several orgs I've worked for actually ban these and similar external modules due to these problems. It's telling that the only substantive reply I received merely points out the number of stars rather than actually explaining why people should use these wrappers.
jen20 5y ago
This is neither an AWS project nor a HashiCorp project. Why would that even be in question?
- res0nat0r 5y ago
  I'm sure just due to the repository naming many people think it is official. I did before I started using them and looking deeper.
  - jhugo 5y ago
    It's an unfortunate fact that many people think terraform-aws-modules is the way to manage AWS resources with Terraform.
- nrmitchi 5y ago
  Because regardless of that, the naming of the organization and repositories strongly implies that it is managed be a combination of AWS and Hashicorp. At a first glance, "transitions to non-free license" implies that you now have to pay for it. The default isn't "Well I guess non-free means it's still free but not the OSI definition". People very often do not read beyond the title. "Community maintained terraform-aws-modules transition to non-OSI-approved license" would probably be more accurate, but not nearly as click-bait.

Okay, so while this title is technically true, it is phrased in a way to incite panic. Just to be clear, AWS/Hashicorp is NOT beginning to charge people for the use of Terraform modules.

jhugo 5y ago

terraform-aws-modules is a community thing, that consists of modules that are thin wrappers around the official AWS provider, that serve very little purpose other than to add a dependency and create problems like this.

antonbabenko 5y ago
lol
- jhugo 5y ago
  Thanks for the downvote and the no-content comment, I guess? I've worked with numerous large Terraform configurations, and the ones that use terraform-aws-modules are harder to maintan, have more churn due to updates of the modules, and are more divorced from the actual underlying cloud resources due to random decisions made by the module authors. I really struggle to understand the reason for using the modules rather than the underlying resources, except that there are a lot of tutorials and blog posts written based on using the modules. Maybe you can enlighten me rather than writing a three-letter comment?
  - antonbabenko 5y ago
    no
  - nrmitchi 5y ago
    I will enlighten you. > serve very little purpose other than to add a dependency and create problems You're expressing your opinion as fact in a way that only serves to degrade people who don't agree with you. Obviously these modules serve a purpose, otherwise the repositories would not have hundreds-to-thousands of github stars/forks, and people would not be arguing about a license change on the front page of HN.
    - jhugo 5y ago
      > Obviously these modules serve a purpose, otherwise the repositories would not have hundreds-to-thousands of github stars/forks, and people would not be arguing about a license change on the front page of HN. Have you worked with the modules in question? If you have, please enlighten me to the obvious purpose that they serve. As I pointed out, I've worked with them extensively, and worked on comparable configurations that avoid them, and they create many problems (the wrappers introduce their own churn due to version updates, and often have mistakes in their interpretation of the underlying resources, etc) while solving virtually none. Several orgs I've worked for actually ban these and similar external modules due to these problems. It's telling that the only substantive reply I received merely points out the number of stars rather than actually explaining why people should use these wrappers.

jen20 5y ago

This is neither an AWS project nor a HashiCorp project. Why would that even be in question?

res0nat0r 5y ago
I'm sure just due to the repository naming many people think it is official. I did before I started using them and looking deeper.
- jhugo 5y ago
  It's an unfortunate fact that many people think terraform-aws-modules is the way to manage AWS resources with Terraform.
nrmitchi 5y ago
Because regardless of that, the naming of the organization and repositories strongly implies that it is managed be a combination of AWS and Hashicorp. At a first glance, "transitions to non-free license" implies that you now have to pay for it. The default isn't "Well I guess non-free means it's still free but not the OSI definition". People very often do not read beyond the title. "Community maintained terraform-aws-modules transition to non-OSI-approved license" would probably be more accurate, but not nearly as click-bait.