Terraform Vs OpenTofu

Ravi Yasakeerthi
4 min readSep 21, 2023

Recently, Hashicorp announced a license change for its products, including Terraform. It’s been open source under an MPL v2 license for almost a decade; however now it’s moving under a BSL v1.1 license.

The Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL 2.0) and the Business Source License (BSL) are two different open-source software licenses with distinct goals and provisions.

Mozilla Public License (MPL) 2.0

  • MPL 2.0 is considered a strong open-source license that allows for free and open distribution of the software. It is compatible with other major open-source licenses like the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the Apache License.
  • Allows for unrestricted use, modification, and redistribution of the software, provided that any modifications made to the MPL-licensed code are also made available under the MPL. It also allows for integration with proprietary software.
  • The MPL 2.0 is a recognized open-source license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). It is designed to ensure that open-source code remains open and available to the community.
  • MPL 2.0 does not impose any time-based limitations. It remains open source indefinitely.
  • Allows for both non-commercial and commercial use of the software without restrictions.

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