Terraform License Change (BSL) – Impact on Users & Providers

On August 10th, 2023, HashiCorp announced a licensing change for Terraform from the open-source Mozilla Public License v2.0 (MPL v2) to the Business Source License v1.1 (BSL 1.1). This change sparked mixed reactions from the open-source community and led to the creation of an alternative project, OpenTofu, which forked the legacy MPL-licensed Terraform. The new license prevents direct HashiCorp competitors from incorporating BSL-licensed code into their services. While most users are not affected by this change, it has caused uncertainty in the community and ecosystem that relies on Terraform. OpenTofu is a completely open-source fork of Terraform that works as a drop-in replacement for version 1.6 and is backward-compatible with earlier versions. It offers new features, enhancements, and bug fixes designed to improve the user experience and overall functionality.