Linux Foundation jumps into infrastructure-as-code with OpenTofu
Bron: artikel integraal overgenomen van sdxcentral
Origineel auteur: Sean Michael Kerner
There is yet another new project coming to the Linux Foundation, and though the name might imply otherwise, it isn’t about food.
At the Open Source Summit Europe event in Bilbao, Spain, this morning the Linux Foundation announced that the OpenTofu project is coming under its wing. Previously code-named OpenTF, OpenTofu aims to create an open, community-driven successor to the Hashicorp Terraform infrastructure-as-code technology, under a neutral governance model.
Infrastructure-as-code enables organizations to define how data center infrastructure should be configured and deployed in a repeatable, programmatic approach.
In recent years, Terraform has become widely adopted for managing infrastructure deployments in cloud environments. However, in early August Hashicorp changed Terraform from the open source Mozilla Public License v2.0 to a business source license raised concerns within the open software community about its openness. OpenTF, now rebranded as OpenTofu, is the community response, with the goal of ensuring continued development and availability of an open source infrastructure as code solution for data centers.
“OpenTofu is a drop-in replacement for Terraform,” Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation said in a keynote at the event. “It’s open source, it is neutrally housed at the Linux Foundation and hits that sweet spot of open source and open governance.”
Who likes OpenTofu? (it’s not just for vegetarians..)
While the effort is still early, OpenTofu has pledges of support from multiple industry players including Harness, Gruntwork, Spacelift, env0, Scalr, Digger, Terrateam, Massdriver and Terramate.
OpenTofu is committed to funding a minimum of 18 full-time developers for at least the next five years to actively contribute to the codebase. Hosting the project at the neutral Linux Foundation is intended to guarantee OpenTofu remains community-driven and truly open source.
“We’re incredibly excited about the momentum and getting the community going on the project,” Sebastian Stadil, Open Tofu core contributor and CEO of Scalr said during the event. “And it’s not just individuals and developers like myself that are that are excited about this. It’s also enterprises.”
Terraform has become widely used by organizations of all sizes to help configure data center infrastructure in a programmatic and repeatable approach. The open source nature of Terraform, both in terms of code and governance is what attracted many to the technology in the first place.
David Bejar, head of Software Engineering at insurance giant Allianz, is one of the many Terraform users that is now very interested in OpenTofu.
“When it comes to securing the future of our customers, IT operations are business critical for them,” Bejar said at the event. “Doing infrastructure as code provides us with resilience and agility that is much needed.”
Bejar noted that Allianz has invested millions of Euros in developing and working with Terraform code in recent years. When the license change was announced in August, he and his team had concerns about Terraform still being the right way to secure the future for its customers.
“Now with the announcement of OpenTofu, we are so happy to join and to be able to pilot OpenTofu,” Bejar said.
The road ahead for OpenTofu is all about being open
The risk for many from a technology project that is not entirely open is that the direction will be set by a single vendor. According to Stadil, the goal with having OpenTofu at the Linux Foundation is to avoid that risk.
“They [Linux Foundation) provide OpenTofu with an amazing governance framework to make sure that across organizations, across sometimes competing interests, that everyone can come together and make a great project,” Stadil said.
The core framework for governance and project management that the Linux Foundation supports includes a number of key functions. One of them is a Technical Steering Committee, which Stadil said is kind of like a Supreme Court for technical arguments with or any disagreements on the vision or the direction for the project. The Linux Foundation also provides OpenTofu with expertise and guidance on security and legal governance.
“The next phase is starting to pull via an RFC [request for comments] process ideas from the community, features and improvements and start drawing on the brains of folks all over the world to make a fantastic project,” Stadil said. “And all while maintaining that backwards compatibility to make sure that you can use and migrate to OpenTofu at your own speed.”