On August 10, 2023, HashiCorp decided to change the license for its products (including Terraform) from the open source under the MPL v2 license to a non-open source BSL v1.1 license, starting from the next (1.6) version. This change was met with widespread vocal opposition from the community and when HashiCorp refused to reconsider, the community decided to take action and forked the last stable version of Terraform into a new solution called OpenTofu (Yes really…) and almost immediately over 100 companies, 10 projects, and 400 individuals pledged their time and resources to keep Terraform open-source and the number is growing fast.
With more and more companies looking at alternatives, The Stack has published an interview with the HashiCorp CEO. I am having a hard time figuring out if this is a Troll piece in line with The Onion or an actual interview, because the quotes in the interview are mind boggling. From the interview:
HashiCorp’s CEO predicted there would be “no more open source companies in Silicon Valley” unless the community rethinks how it protects innovation, as he defended the firm’s license switch at its user conference this month.
Every company I have worked with over the decade has worked with Open Source software and companies and I don’t think a single one would make a statement like what he is claiming.
While open source advocates had slammed the license switch, McJannet described the reaction from its largest customers as “Great. Because you’re a critical partner to us and we need you to be a big, big company.”
Indeed, he claimed that “A lot of the feedback was, ‘we wished you had done that sooner’” – adding that the move had been discussed with the major cloud vendors ahead of the announcement.
“Every vendor over the last three or four years that has reached any modicum of scale has come to the same conclusion,” said McJannet.
Here’s my personal favorite:
He said the Linux Foundation’s adoption of Open Tofu raised serious questions. “What does it say for the future of open source, if foundations will just take it and give it a home. That is tragic for open source innovation. I will tell you, if that were to happen, there’ll be no more open source companies in Silicon Valley.”
Because foundations allow communities to continue with products they love and built even when corporate’s try to lock them in a closed garden, it is apparently a bad thing. Yes, it is a bad thing for folks who want to just take advantage of the community, enshittify the product while making money and ignoring the needs of the community. Open Source allows people to fork the product (which was built with Open Source contributions), keep it free and out of the greedy hands of corporate CEOs. That’s the beauty of Open Source and this article is a poor attempt to gaslight folks into believing that this is a bad thing.
– Suramya