5 ms·
Hashicorp switched Terraform from MPL to BSL yesterday. Many other companies did that in the past to prevent others taking their code and charging for running i
by igorzij 3y ago
Hashicorp switched Terraform from MPL to BSL yesterday. Many other companies did that in the past to prevent others taking their code and charging for running it as a managed service (eg Mongo, Elastic). With Hashi however, the server-side part was never open-source to start with. There was no such thing as "open-source Terraform Server". And now it seems that any commercial product that uses the Terraform language under the hood is at risk of violating the terms of the license.
Funny enough, our own product (Digger, an open-source CI runner for Terraform) is not using Terraform (or any other Hashicorp's code) under the hood. So this change probably hits other TACOS (Spacelift, Env0) much harder than us. But with the recent pricing changes and now the license there is no guarantee that Hashicorp won't make another move in the future that would one way or another hurt us. So if there was an MPL fork, we'd rather swith to that, just to stay on the safe side. And since there isn't one yet, we thought why not make one?
- orangepurple 3y agoThe Terraform language should not be impacted by the license change any more than the GCC license impacts code it compiles (for example). I'd love to hear any assertions to the contrary.
- CuriousCosmic 3y agoI think that depends exactly on the licensing. The GPL has a specific exception for GCC that prevents it from polluting the licensing conditions of compiled programs.
- lars_francke 3y agoYou use TACOS as if it is well known. It isn't by me. Seems to stand for "Terraform Automation and COlaboration Software"
- izalutski 3y agoYeah apologies we're in a little bubble here together with Spacelift, Scale, Env0 and Atlantis so starting to assume everyone knows the niche terminology lol Yeah so basically TACOS are ci-like tools / control planes for Terraform. The OG one being Terraform Cloud. The term TACOS was coined by Piotr Zaniewski here: https://itnext.io/spice-up-your-infrastructure-as-code-with-tacos-1a9c179e0783 https://itnext.io/spice-up-your-infrastructure-as-code-with-...
- cube2222 3y agoIt's actually much older than that. I think it was coined by CloudPosse with this video: https://youtu.be/4MLBpBqZmpM https://youtu.be/4MLBpBqZmpM (December 2020)
- igorzij 3y agooh wow didn't know thanks!!
- chenrui 3y agoatlantis would be fine, see this comment, https://github.com/runatlantis/atlantis/issues/3663#issuecomment-1674038026 https://github.com/runatlantis/atlantis/issues/3663#issuecom...
- nunez 3y agoI wonder how this affects Pulumi, since they were using Terraform under the hood for some things IIRC.
- spott 3y agoI don’t think they were running terraform, they were converting terraform code to Pulumi code as a way to bootstrap their supported services/clouds/etc.
- ckdarby 3y agoPulumi itself isn't doing anything. The TF bridge is interacting. If they really want to remove liability they'd just leave TF out of the repo and shift all liability to the end user where the first step runs a package install that brings in terraform.
- Proven 3y ago[dead]
- darkwater 3y agoIANAL but probably Hashicorp has some trademark over "Terraform" in this context. I don't know if it's 100% safe for you to call it "Open Terraform".
- igorzij 3y agothanks! indeed, totally valid concern
- Zetice 3y ago> And now it seems that any commercial product that uses the Terraform language under the hood is at risk of violating the terms of the license. Has an attorney who practices in this area reviewed this sentence in their capacity as an attorney (e.g. to a client of theirs, and not as free legal advice on Twitter et. al.)?