HashiCorp: OpenTofu was not respecting the terms of its BSL license
twitter.com
twitter.com
The OpenTofu process puts a lot of effort into keeping code clean. To quote one of the project developers on their review process:
> The team employs this process in reverse. Implementing a functionality similar to one introduced in the BSL code, one individual can be designated as referee, look at the BSL code and ensure there’s no foul play in our MPL code. This individual cannot work on this feature/fix ever again.
Sometimes similar functionality is going to have similar implimentation, but that doesn't mean it was copied. Years ago I wrote a library called JShrink as a way to get around the weird JSMin license. I went back to first principles, literally grabbing a copy of the ECMA documentation to see how it handled tokenization. I then built my library. Someone pointed out that there were similarities between JSMin and JShrink, but it turns out that if two authors try to build the same thing with the same requirements (especially when talking about a relatively small piece of code) then of course there will be similarities.
In this case they're talking about an extension to an existing feature, one which really only resulted in a few lines of additional code. The idea that this was "stolen" is ridiculous, especially when you can see in the pull request how the functionality was developed.
OpenTofu vehemently disagrees with any suggestion that it misappropriated, mis-sourced, or otherwise misused HashiCorp’s BSL code.
Indeed, it seems that HashiCorp may be conflating code that it had previously been open-sourced under the MPL and more recently developed code it published under the BSL.
OpenTofu’s maintainers have investigated this matter, and intends to issue a written response providing a more detailed explanation of its position in the coming days.”
OpenTofu Project was recently made aware of a letter by HashiCorp’s lawyers, alleging that OpenTofu was not respecting the terms of its BSL license governing its Terraform codebase.
OpenTofu vehemently disagrees with any suggestion that it misappropriated, mis-sourced, or otherwise misused HashiCorp’s BSL code.
Indeed, it seems that HashiCorp may be conflating code that it had previously been open-sourced under the MPL and more recently developed code it published under the BSL.
OpenTofu’s maintainers have investigated this matter, and intends to issue a written response providing a more detailed explanation of its position in the coming days.