8 ms·

Why should I care about OpenTofu?

74 points by RyeCombinator 3y ago

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
So far it appears to be the same old thing with a different owner. Maintainers act like they own the thing and everyone else (read: the users, as opposed to the developers) can just suck it. Like the whole "enshittification of products" HN post, project doesn't actually care about the users. It's just a hedge for SaaS to have a more permissive license. They need us to adopt it, otherwise they will have to develop identical features to TF in their fork to maintain compatibility, indefinitely. Community definitely isn't the goal.
- cactusfrog 3y ago
  I think a major benefit of open source is that it doesn’t require good intentions on the part of the maintainers. A consortium of maintainers ensures that none of them have the market power to change the license.
  - donutshop 3y ago
    There should be additional maintainers that are not affiliated with Hashicorp competitors.
- noirbot 3y ago
  Maybe that's true, but in the long run, I'll stick with the "community" of multiple SaaS providers all awkwardly sharing a permissive license than the one provider who took their ball and went home with it. Ultimately, the companies involved have to somewhat care about their users because the product needs to be good or no one will use it. The alternative is core Terraform or the first party's IaC options, which are all more closed and more don't care about the user. Community may not be the #1 goal, but it's certainly on the list of things that has value about the project, both to the users and the maintainers.
- redserk 3y ago
  A project like this needs a strong, opinionated approach. I’ve seen too many wild “I wish Terraform did…” discussions with others to trust any form of democratic maintenance to work.
- cube2222 3y ago
  > Maintainers act like they own the thing and everyone else (read: the users, as opposed to the developers) can just suck it. > project doesn't actually care about the users > Community definitely isn't the goal Hey, OpenTofu Core team member here. I'm sorry that you feel that way. Is there anything specific that you'd change, or should be different in your opinion? Being heavily community-driven (regarding issues chosen for implementation) is definitely one of our core goals, and it's a hard goal! We're still setting things up here and on the road to the first alpha release - your feedback would be very welcome and valuable. We do listen and strive to improve, we've just introduced weekly updates[0] based on community feedback. [0]: https://github.com/opentofu/opentofu/blob/main/WEEKLY_UPDATES.md https://github.com/opentofu/opentofu/blob/main/WEEKLY_UPDATE...
- panick21_ 3y ago
  > So far it appears to be the same old thing with a different owner. What a ridiculous point. Did you expect 15 new features a few weeks after the branch? > project doesn't actually care about the users And you know that because the haven't yet developed 100 new features?
- Proven 3y ago
  [dead]
codevark 3y ago
[dead]
kristopolous 3y ago
Can someone explain concretely and specifically what this thing does?
- SomaticPirate 3y ago
  This is a fork of Terraform after Hashicorp changed the license
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    Thanks. That's easily discoverable. Can you explain concretely and specifically what terraform does. "infrastructure as code tool that enables you to safely and predictably provision and manage infrastructure in any cloud" Doesn't tell me anything. Is this a markup language for describing networks? Is it some web interface where you drag and drop server icons and then draw lines between them? Is it a simulation tool? Is it some provisioning thing like chef with a database for different machines?
    - mping 3y ago
      Infrastructure as code. You define your infra in a couple of files, then terraform builds it against eg: aws.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - kristopolous 3y ago
        Through what? The aws cli tool? Why would I need to encode something like that? Are you talking about maybe having identical setups in different parts of the world?
        bdsa 3y ago
        You would encode it for the same reason we use source control - confidence that what is deployed matches some kind of record of it. In development we don't send archives of code to each other (OK, some people do I guess) and in infrastructure we don't click around in AWS to make changes
verdverm 3y ago
> TL;DR having options is good strategy, OpenTofu is your insurance policy and competition makes things great. I hope that includes competition beyond dotTF (as a term to capture both TF & Tofu)? For example, I'm keen to see what can be built in this space on top of CUE I have concerns that this movement will fracture the ecosystem. They speak of backwards compatibility, which to me means they are going to be allowing things that TF will not understand. The paths this could take will be interesting to watch unfold, it could be a complete bifurcation or something like the NPM v Deno v Bun situation, where it seems there will be long-term convergence of the module system, but requires more work for all vendors and module authors. re: the quote, I don't really feel an urgency to get insurance or invest in a migration just because Hashi changed their license. This seems more like a group policy for the SaaS's that are impacted than for the users of TF who aren't --- edit, after reading the whole thing, I'm not really sure what to make of this writing, it meanders and spends a lot of time self glorifying...
Pet_Ant 3y ago
So should OTF become OpenTofuEnterprise ? https://github.com/leg100/otf https://github.com/leg100/otf

74 points by RyeCombinator 3y ago

So far it appears to be the same old thing with a different owner. Maintainers act like they own the thing and everyone else (read: the users, as opposed to the developers) can just suck it. Like the whole "enshittification of products" HN post, project doesn't actually care about the users. It's just a hedge for SaaS to have a more permissive license. They need us to adopt it, otherwise they will have to develop identical features to TF in their fork to maintain compatibility, indefinitely. Community definitely isn't the goal.

cactusfrog 3y ago
I think a major benefit of open source is that it doesn’t require good intentions on the part of the maintainers. A consortium of maintainers ensures that none of them have the market power to change the license.
- donutshop 3y ago
  There should be additional maintainers that are not affiliated with Hashicorp competitors.
noirbot 3y ago
Maybe that's true, but in the long run, I'll stick with the "community" of multiple SaaS providers all awkwardly sharing a permissive license than the one provider who took their ball and went home with it. Ultimately, the companies involved have to somewhat care about their users because the product needs to be good or no one will use it. The alternative is core Terraform or the first party's IaC options, which are all more closed and more don't care about the user. Community may not be the #1 goal, but it's certainly on the list of things that has value about the project, both to the users and the maintainers.
redserk 3y ago
A project like this needs a strong, opinionated approach. I’ve seen too many wild “I wish Terraform did…” discussions with others to trust any form of democratic maintenance to work.
cube2222 3y ago
> Maintainers act like they own the thing and everyone else (read: the users, as opposed to the developers) can just suck it. > project doesn't actually care about the users > Community definitely isn't the goal Hey, OpenTofu Core team member here. I'm sorry that you feel that way. Is there anything specific that you'd change, or should be different in your opinion? Being heavily community-driven (regarding issues chosen for implementation) is definitely one of our core goals, and it's a hard goal! We're still setting things up here and on the road to the first alpha release - your feedback would be very welcome and valuable. We do listen and strive to improve, we've just introduced weekly updates[0] based on community feedback. [0]: https://github.com/opentofu/opentofu/blob/main/WEEKLY_UPDATES.md https://github.com/opentofu/opentofu/blob/main/WEEKLY_UPDATE...
panick21_ 3y ago
> So far it appears to be the same old thing with a different owner. What a ridiculous point. Did you expect 15 new features a few weeks after the branch? > project doesn't actually care about the users And you know that because the haven't yet developed 100 new features?
Proven 3y ago
[dead]

codevark 3y ago

[dead]

kristopolous 3y ago

Can someone explain concretely and specifically what this thing does?

SomaticPirate 3y ago
This is a fork of Terraform after Hashicorp changed the license
- kristopolous 3y ago
  Thanks. That's easily discoverable. Can you explain concretely and specifically what terraform does. "infrastructure as code tool that enables you to safely and predictably provision and manage infrastructure in any cloud" Doesn't tell me anything. Is this a markup language for describing networks? Is it some web interface where you drag and drop server icons and then draw lines between them? Is it a simulation tool? Is it some provisioning thing like chef with a database for different machines?
  - mping 3y ago
    Infrastructure as code. You define your infra in a couple of files, then terraform builds it against eg: aws.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - kristopolous 3y ago
      Through what? The aws cli tool? Why would I need to encode something like that? Are you talking about maybe having identical setups in different parts of the world?
      - bdsa 3y ago
        You would encode it for the same reason we use source control - confidence that what is deployed matches some kind of record of it. In development we don't send archives of code to each other (OK, some people do I guess) and in infrastructure we don't click around in AWS to make changes

verdverm 3y ago

> TL;DR having options is good strategy, OpenTofu is your insurance policy and competition makes things great. I hope that includes competition beyond dotTF (as a term to capture both TF & Tofu)? For example, I'm keen to see what can be built in this space on top of CUE I have concerns that this movement will fracture the ecosystem. They speak of backwards compatibility, which to me means they are going to be allowing things that TF will not understand. The paths this could take will be interesting to watch unfold, it could be a complete bifurcation or something like the NPM v Deno v Bun situation, where it seems there will be long-term convergence of the module system, but requires more work for all vendors and module authors. re: the quote, I don't really feel an urgency to get insurance or invest in a migration just because Hashi changed their license. This seems more like a group policy for the SaaS's that are impacted than for the users of TF who aren't --- edit, after reading the whole thing, I'm not really sure what to make of this writing, it meanders and spends a lot of time self glorifying...

Pet_Ant 3y ago

So should OTF become OpenTofuEnterprise ? https://github.com/leg100/otf https://github.com/leg100/otf