HashiCorp’s acquisition by IBM has sparked mixed reactions within the HashiCorp and OpenTofu communities. While IBM has stated that HashiCorp will remain independent post-acquisition, past experiences with IBM’s acquisitions in the IT world have led to skepticism among some community members.
The decision by HashiCorp to adopt the Commercial Font License (BSL) instead of the Mozilla v2.0 public license has caused frustration and disappointment within the community. In response, OpenTofu, a forked open source infrastructure as code tool, was created as a community-driven alternative to Terraform. Now hosted by the Linux Foundation, OpenTofu has gained popularity and allows users to manage local and cloud resources through human-readable configuration files.
Developers within the community have expressed a desire to keep Terraform open source, with some advocating for the project to remain open source. Concerns have been raised about restrictions implemented by HashiCorp prior to the acquisition, as well as the potential impact of the acquisition on the platform’s future.
Opinions from developers using Terraform and OpenTofu vary, with some expressing concerns about potential license changes and the impact on their work. The OpenTofu movement is gaining momentum, with companies like Oracle already adopting the tool internally.
Analysts have raised concerns about the fairness and independence of HashiCorp’s services post-acquisition by IBM. While the acquisition aligns with IBM’s multi-cloud focus, there are risks of perceived bias and limitations on customer options. The impact of the acquisition will need to be well managed across IBM and Red Hat.
Competitor’s perspectives on the acquisition have also been shared, with concerns about the integration of IaC technologies and implications for the market. The historic challenges of delivering strong developer and governance experiences at scale raise important considerations for IBM as it seeks to expand HashiCorp’s offerings.
Overall, the future of Terraform in the wake of the acquisition remains uncertain, with community members and analysts closely monitoring developments. The potential for collaboration or limitations on customer options post-acquisition adds complexity to the discussion surrounding the acquisition.
Article Source
https://thenewstack.io/ibm-buying-hashicorp-what-devs-analysts-and-competitors-are-saying/