Is Terraform no longer Open Source?

For many developers, licenses have become something they barely even think about. Few if any of the most popular libraries use anything but open and permissive licenses like MIT and even GNU. Gone are also the days when large corporate entities like Microsoft shunned open source. It has never seemed more like the future of software development would be open. However, this is happening in the licensing world, and even though you might not have to purchase a license for the most popular code libraries and tools anymore, being license-aware is an extremely important part of using open software. open source licenses come in a huge variety of flavors, with some very important differences that limit the ways in which the software can be used. The latest news from the <a href="https://www.terraform.io/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">IaC tool Terraform</a> is not about a new feature or huge bug fixes. Instead, it is about what some would call a quite radical shift in the terms of its license. Some are even calling it a shift away from Open Source entirely. In this article I try to make sense of this change and what it means for you as a Terraform user. <h1>Background</h1> Terraform is a popular and widely used tool for managing cloud resources as code. Since its initial release in 2014, it has become a mainstay of infrastructure operations and is widely used in production. Terraform also has an enthusiastic community and a large user base, which makes it a safe bet for anyone who wants to modernize their infrastructure operations. Terraform is backed by a company called <a href="https://www.hashicorp.com/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Hashicorp</a>. Like most other companies, Hashicorp is required to make money. Hashicorps commercial Terraform platform is called <a href="https://www.hashicorp.com/products/terraform" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Terraform Cloud</a>, which offers versioning and deployment of Terraform code. Although the tooling itself has been entirely open source, this managed offering has been a popular alternative for many users who don’t want to manage their own Terraform deployments and Terraform state. <a href="https://medium.com/sopra-steria-norge/is-terraform-no-longer-open-source-f035c6c55c4b">Visit Now</a>