Terraform BSL vs OpenTofu?

Introduction

As you probably know, Hashicorp changed the license for Terraform, so now it is no longer an open source project but a BSL licensed tool.

This has, probably, no impact “yet” on you if you are not considered a competitor to Terraform by IBM (that bought Hashicorp recently).

Terraform or OpenTofu?

Regarding the question whether to use Terraform or OpenTofu in Brainboard. Here are all the details, the options and what is happening now (as of June 2025) in the industry.

There are 3 parts that need explanation:

1. Design to code

When you design the cloud infrastructure, Brainboard generates a valid Terraform code for it. This is pure Terraform code using our proprietary engine without any external library and has no implication in the license of Hashicorp.

1. This is applied to all architectures, environments, projects and templates created in Brainboard.
2. You can store a copy of this code in your own Git repository.

2. Deployment

The binary that is used to provision the cloud infrastructure in your target cloud provider(s). You have 3 options in Brainboard:

1. Either use Terraform open source version, but the latest one is 1.57. Not future proof.

2. Use the Commercial Terraform from Hashicorp: You need to buy a license from IBM. We do not recommend it.

3. Use OpenTofu (recommended), with is now the new standard, as the legacy Terraform itself is no longer an open source. The community is now federated around this project and it is even part of Linux Foundation:

   1. Here is the official page in Linux Foundation website
   2. It is being adopted massively by big companies like banks and financial institutions as there is no guarantee that IBM will not reconsider its license. Which they did by the way 2 years ago.
      • Here is a video of Fidelity Investment talking publicly about their adoption.
   3. It is the most active project and even surpassing now Terraform (IBM owned now).

   

3. Cloud providers Terraform resources (Azure, AWS, GCP…)

This is the biggest part of the equation and this is open source as it is maintained by the cloud providers themselves.

1. You can check the license in their GitHub repos, that is Mozilla open source license and has never changed:
   • AWS Terraform provider

     

   • Azure Terraform provider.

     

   • GCP Terraform provider.

     

Conclusion

When you use Brainboard for your design, code, and infrastructure management with OpenTofu as the binary for the deployment:

• We guarantee, as part of the agreement, to continuously support you and the deployment.
• At any given time, you can manage the infrastructure yourself, by taking the code into your Git and deploying with your pipeline. No vendor lock-in, which IBM is trying to do.
• You have one platform that manages every aspect of your cloud infrastructure from end to end. We are the only one in this space.