HashiCorp—HashiCorp switched Terraform and 7 other projects from open source to restrictive Business Source License, sparking community backlash and OpenTofu fork
On August 10, 2023, HashiCorp changed the license for Terraform, Vault, and 6 other projects from Mozilla Public License (open source) to Business Source License (BSL), which restricts commercial use for 4 years. The change sparked immediate backlash: 33,000+ developers starred an Open Terraform Manifesto, 140+ companies pledged support for a fork, and on September 20, 2023, the Linux Foundation accepted OpenTofu as an official project. In April 2024, HashiCorp sent OpenTofu a cease-and-desist letter claiming code misuse.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate Transparency | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| Open Source Licensing Integrity | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.664 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.59)
Evidence (1 signal)
HashiCorp switched Terraform and other projects to Business Source License
HashiCorp changed license for Terraform, Vault, and 6 other projects from Mozilla Public License to BSL, which restricts commercial use for 4 years. Co-founder Armon Dadgar stated change was to prevent competitors from commercializing their IP.