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THE OPENTF MANIFESTO

Terraform was open-sourced in 2014 under the Mozilla Public License (v2.0) (the
“MPL”). Over the next ~9 years, it built up a community that included thousands
of users, contributors, customers, certified practitioners, vendors, and an
ecosystem of open-source modules, plugins, libraries, and extensions. Then, on
August 10th, 2023, with little or no advance notice or chance for much, if not
all, of the community to have any input, HashiCorp switched the license for
Terraform from the MPL to the Business Source License (v1.1) (the “BUSL”), a
non-open source license. In our opinion, this change threatens the entire
community and ecosystem that’s built up around Terraform over the last 9 years.

Our concern: the BUSL license is a poison pill for Terraform.

Overnight, tens of thousands of businesses, ranging from one-person shops to the
Fortune 500, woke up to a new reality where the underpinnings of their
infrastructure suddenly became a potential legal risk. The BUSL and the
additional use grant written by the HashiCorp team are vague, and now every
company, vendor, and developer using Terraform has to wonder whether what they
are doing could be construed as competitive with HashiCorp’s offerings. The FAQ
provides some solace for end-customers and systems integrators today, but even
if you might be in the clear now, how can you build confidence that your usage
won't violate the license terms in the future? What if your products or
HashiCorp's products change? What if HashiCorp changes how they interpret
“competitive“? What if they change the license again? As a result, everything
that uses Terraform is on shaky ground.

It is clear that under the new license, the thriving ecosystem built around the
open-source Terraform will dwindle and wither. As developers consider what tools
to learn and what ecosystems to contribute to, and as companies consider what
tools to use to manage their infrastructure, more and more, they'll pick
alternatives that are genuinely open-source. Existing Terraform codebases will
turn into outdated liabilities, independent tooling will all but disappear, and
the community will fracture and disappear.

This sort of change also harms all similar open-source projects. Every company
and every developer now needs to think twice before adopting and investing in an
open-source project in case the creator suddenly decides to change the license.
Imagine if the creators of Linux or Kubernetes suddenly switched to a
non-open-source license that only permitted non-competitive usage.

We believe that the essential building blocks of the modern Internet, such as
Linux, Kubernetes, and Terraform need to be truly open source: that is the only
way to ensure that we are building our industry on top of solid and predictable
underpinnings.

Our goal: ensure Terraform remains truly open source—always.

Our aim with this manifesto is to return Terraform to a fully open-source
license. BSL is not open source, so this would mean moving Terraform back to the
MPL license, or some other well-known, widely accepted open-source license
(e.g., Apache License 2.0). Moreover, we want to be confident that Terraform
will always remain open source, so you don't have to worry about another sudden
license change putting everything at risk.

Our request to HashiCorp: switch Terraform back to an open-source license.

We ask HashiCorp to do the right thing by the community: instead of going
forward with the BUSL license change, switch Terraform back to a truly open
source license, and commit to keeping it that way forever going forward. That
way, instead of fracturing the community, we end up with a single, impartial,
reliable home for Terraform where the whole community can unite to keep building
this amazing ecosystem.

Our fallback plan: fork Terraform into a foundation.

If HashiCorp is unwilling to switch Terraform back to an open-source license, we
propose to fork the legacy MPL-licensed Terraform and maintain the fork in the
foundation. This is similar to how Linux and Kubernetes are managed by
foundations (the Linux Foundation and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation,
respectively), which are run by multiple companies, ensuring the tool stays
truly open-source and neutral, and not at the whim of any one company.

In particular, we want to create a foundation for Terraform that is:

 * Truly open source - under a well-known and widely-accepted license that
   companies can trust, that won't suddenly change in the future, and isn't
   subject to the whims of a single vendor
 * Community-driven - so that the community governs the project for the
   community, where pull requests are regularly reviewed and accepted on their
   merit
 * Impartial - so that valuable features and fixes are accepted based on their
   value to the community, regardless of their impact on any particular vendor
 * Layered and modular - with a programmer-friendly project structure to
   encourage building on top, enabling a new vibrant ecosystem of tools and
   integrations
 * Backwards-compatible - so that the existing code can drive value for years to
   come


SUPPORTERS

We acknowledge that maintaining an open-source project such as Terraform takes a
considerable investment in terms of time, skill, effort, and coordination. We
are grateful to HashiCorp for creating Terraform and their leadership in getting
it to this point, and to the thousands of community members for their
contributions so far. The next step for Terraform must be to remain open source,
either by HashiCorp switching it back to a truly open-source license or by us
forking it into a foundation. Whichever way it turns out, to ensure that there
is sufficient investment to grow and evolve Terraform, the signatories below
pledge to pool our resources to build a more open, inclusive future for an
open-source Terraform.


INSTRUCTIONS

If you’re willing to join our cause, please sign the manifesto as follows:

 1. Check out the manifesto repo (instructions).
 2. Add a new row to the end of the table below with your details.
 3. Open a pull request with your changes (instructions).


CONTACT US

If you are a member of the community, a member of the press, an employee of
HashiCorp, or anyone else with questions or feedback to share, you can reach the
team behind this manifesto by emailing us at pledge@opentf.org.


SHARE




FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Is OpenTF going to be a foundation?

We strongly prefer joining an existing reputable foundation over creating a new
one. Stay tuned for additional details in the coming week.

Can anyone pledge?

Yes, the pledge is open to both all individuals and all companies who care about
the future of Terraform. You can also support this initiative by staring this
manifesto repository on GitHub and spreading the word via share buttons.

HashiCorp deserves to earn a return on their investment. What's wrong with that?

When any company releases their tool as open source, the contract with the
community is always the same: Anyone can use this code, but we the creators hold
a privileged position of being at the epicenter of the ecosystem. Vendors then
compete to offer the best solution, and the creators enjoy a unique competitive
advantage.

We believe that HashiCorp should earn a return by leveraging its unique position
in the Terraform ecosystem to build a better product, not by outright preventing
others from competing in the first place.


CO-SIGNED

Name Type How you'd like to help Gruntwork Company Development; open-source
community efforts Spacelift Company Cover the cost of 5 FTEs for at least 5
years env0 Company Cover the cost of 5 FTEs for at least 5 years Scalr Company
Cover the cost of 3 FTEs for at least 5 years Digger Company Development;
open-source community efforts Doppler Company Development; open-source community
efforts Gem Agile Company Development; open-source community efforts Massdriver
Company Development; open-source community efforts Qovery Company Development;
open-source community efforts Rivet Company Development; open-source community
efforts Terramate Company Development; open-source community efforts Terrateam
Company Development; open-source community efforts Verifa Company Development;
open-source community efforts Argonaut Company Development; open-source
community efforts Finisterra Company Development; open-source community efforts
AutoCloud Company Development; open-source community efforts 35up Company
Testing; code reviews; open-source community efforts Cirrus Assessment Company
Testing; minor development; open-source community efforts Amach Company
Development; open-source community efforts SMS Data Products Company
Development; open-source community efforts Cloud Posse Company Development;
open-source community efforts RoseSecurity Research Company Development;
open-source community efforts CloudDrove Company Development; open-source
community efforts Red Queen Dynamics Company Development; open-source community
efforts Octo Ventures Company Development; open-source community efforts Oxide
Computer Company Company Development; open-source community efforts Coherence
Company Development; open-source community efforts Nullstone Company
Development; open-source community efforts appCD Company Development;
open-source community efforts CloudKnit Company Development; open-source
community efforts Code Factory Company Development; open-source community
efforts Indeo Solutions Company Development; open-source community efforts 0pass
Company Development; open-source community efforts AppsCode Company Development;
open-source community efforts Firefly Company Development; open-source community
efforts OTF Project Development; open-source community efforts Terrakube Project
Development; open-source community efforts Kubestack Project Development;
open-source community efforts Mariano Rodríguez Individual Development;
open-source community efforts Ted Parvu Individual Development; open-source
community efforts Mike Hodgkins Individual Development; open-source community
efforts Thomas Schuetz Individual Development; open-source community efforts
Kelvin Soares Individual Development; open-source community efforts Chris Doyle
Individual Development; open-source community efforts Alex Panayi Individual
Development; open-source community efforts Sandro Manke Individual Development;
open-source community efforts Dave Overall Individual Development; open-source
community efforts Jeff Frasca Individual Development; open-source community
efforts Jeff Wenzbauer Individual Development; open-source community efforts
Alex Levinson Individual Development; open-source community efforts Michael
Pursifull Individual Development; open-source community efforts Teodor
Kostadinov Individual Development; open-source community efforts Patrick
Jain-Taylor Individual Development; open-source community efforts Daniel Ristic
Individual Development; open-source community efforts Eddie Herbert Individual
Development; open-source community efforts Curtis Vanzandt Individual
Development; open-source community efforts Talal Tahir Individual Development;
open-source community efforts Kevin Rathbun Individual Development; open-source
community efforts David Douglas Individual Development; open-source community
efforts Coin Graham Individual Development; open-source community efforts Jim
Jagielski Individual Development; open-source community efforts and Open Source
foundation experience Maciej Strzelecki Individual Development; open-source
community efforts Ioannis Polyzos Individual Development; open-source community
efforts Elvis McNeely Individual Development; open-source community efforts
Yoaquim Cintron Individual Development; open-source community efforts Viktor
Nagornyy Individual Open-source community efforts; Non-profit experience;
Fundraising/Open Collective Ronny López Individual Development; open-source
community efforts Khrist Hansen Individual Development; open-source community
efforts Fatih Tokus Individual Development; open-source community efforts Bill
Oberacker Individual Development; open-source community efforts Tiago Rodrigues
Individual Development; open-source community efforts Nik Kotov Individual
Development; open-source community efforts Nikolay Individual Development;
open-source community efforts Simón Ramos Individual Development; open-source
community efforts John Walsh Individual Development; open-source community
efforts Zoltan Vigh Individual Development; open-source community efforts Ilyas
Hamdi Individual Development; open-source community efforts Samuel Phan
Individual Development; open-source community efforts Denis Vaumoron Individual
Development; open-source community efforts

August 15th, 2023