Terraform (software)

Terraform is an infrastructure-as-code software tool created by HashiCorp. Users define and provide data center infrastructure using a declarative configuration language known as HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL), or optionally JSON.[3]

Terraform
Original author(s)Mitchell Hashimoto et al.
Developer(s)HashiCorp
Initial release28 July 2014 (2014-07-28)
Stable release
1.5.5 / 9 August 2023 (2023-08-09)[1]
Repository
Written inGo
Operating systemLinux, FreeBSD, macOS, OpenBSD, Solaris, and Microsoft Windows
Available inEnglish
TypeInfrastructure as code
LicenseBusiness Source License v1.1[2](source-available)
Websitewww.terraform.io Edit this on Wikidata

Design

Terraform manages external resources (such as public cloud infrastructure, private cloud infrastructure, network appliances, software as a service, and platform as a service) with "providers". HashiCorp maintains an extensive list of official providers, and can also integrate with community-developed providers.[4] Users can interact with Terraform providers by declaring resources[5] or by calling data sources.[6] Rather than using imperative commands to provision resources, Terraform uses declarative configuration to describe the desired final state. Once a user invokes Terraform on a given resource, Terraform will perform CRUD actions on the user's behalf to accomplish the desired state.[7] The infrastructure as code can be written as modules, promoting reusability and maintainability.[8]

Terraform supports a number of cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare,[9] Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Serverspace, Selectel[10] Google Cloud Platform,[11] DigitalOcean,[12] Oracle Cloud Infrastructure,Yandex.Cloud,[13] VMware vSphere, and OpenStack.[14][15][16][17][18]

HashiCorp maintains a Terraform Module Registry, launched in 2017.[19] In 2019, Terraform introduced the paid version called Terraform Enterprise for larger organizations.[20]

License change

Terraform was previously open-source and available under version 2.0 of the Mozilla Public License (MPL). HashiCorp on 10 August 2023 adopted the Business Source License v1.1 for many of their products, including Terraform.[21] The Business Source License, unlike the MPL, is not open-source[22] but is instead source-available. In response, a group of users published the OpenTF manifesto on 15 August asking HashiCorp to continue publishing Terraform under an open-source license.[23] The group subsequently announced on 25 August that due to the lack of any favorable response from HashiCorp they would then be forking Terraform as OpenTofu based on the last available MPL-licensed version of the software code (v1.5.5) and would be working to have the project be hosted under the Linux Foundation.[24]

References
  1. "Releases - hashicorp/terraform". Retrieved 11 August 2023 – via GitHub.
  2. "LICENSE" – via GitHub.
  3. "Syntax - Configuration Language".
  4. "Providers".
  5. "Resources".
  6. "Data Sources".
  7. "Configuration".
  8. "Modules".
  9. "Cloudflare Provider". Retrieved 23 November 2022.
  10. "Selectel Provider". 12 April 2023.
  11. "Google Cloud Platform Provider for Terraform". Retrieved 5 February 2017.
  12. Starr-Bochicchio, Andrew (22 October 2018). "Introducing the DigitalOcean Terraform Provider". DigitalOcean Blog. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
  13. "Yandex Cloud Provider". 31 May 2021.
  14. "Terraform vs. Chef, Puppet, etc. - Terraform by HashiCorp". Terraform by HashiCorp. Retrieved 14 March 2018.
  15. Bryant, Daniel (26 March 2017). "HashiCorp Terraform 0.9. Released with State Locking, State Environments, and Destroy Provisioners". InfoQ. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  16. Yevgeniy., Brikman (2017). Terraform Writing Infrastructure as Configuration. O'Reilly Media. ISBN 9781491977057. OCLC 978667796.
  17. Somwanshi, Sneha (1 March 2015). "Choosing the Right Tool to Provision AWS Infrastructure". ThoughtWorks Blog.
  18. Turnbull, James (2016). The Terraform Book. ISBN 9780988820258.
  19. Atkins, Martin (16 November 2017). "HashiCorp Terraform 0.11". HashiCorp Blog. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
  20. HashiCorp. "HashiCorp Terraform - Provision & Manage any Infrastructure". HashiCorp: Infrastructure enables innovation. Retrieved 15 April 2020.
  21. Dadgar, Armon. "HashiCorp adopts Business Source License". HashiCorp Blog. HashiCorp. Retrieved 26 August 2023.
  22. "Business Source License 1.1". MariaDB.
  23. "The OpenTofu Manifesto". opentofu.org. 15 August 2023. Retrieved 23 September 2023.
  24. "OpenTofu Announces Fork of Terraform". opentofu.org. 25 August 2023. Retrieved 23 September 2023.
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