With DevOps Tech Stacks In Flux, Can OpenTofu Maintain Its Growth Momentum?

DevOps tech stacks have had an interesting year, to say the least. Terraform, long the market leader in the infrastructure-as-code (IaC) space, recently saw its parent company HashiCorp purchased by IBM, leading to concern from many in the industry that the platform will become overly focused on IBM’s cloud products. In the months leading up to the sale, HashiCorp had created turbulence of its own by changing from an open-source license to a commercial one, alienating much of its user base.

Within the midst of this turbulence, other IaC frameworks have seen rapid levels of adoption. In fact, one recent survey revealed that while roughly 80% of DevOps teams currently use Terraform, only slightly more than 20% plan to continue doing so in the future.

One of the platforms that has benefitted the most from this turbulence is OpenTofu, currently used by over 40% of DevOps teams, but projected to be adopted by roughly 55% in the near future.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Ohad Maislish, co-founder and CEO of env0, also co-founder of OpenTofu, about the market conditions and tech developments that have contributed to OpenTofu’s success, as well as its potential to maintain momentum in the coming months and years.

The Rise of OpenTofu

OpenTofu has emerged to prominence in a surprisingly short time since HashiCorp moved Terraform to a Business Source License in 2023. Maislish and the other OpenTofu co-founders reacted quickly to fork Terraform and create their own open-source solution, which subsequently came to be managed under the auspices of the Linux Foundation.

As Maislish says, “The key takeaway from this experience is the inherent unpredictability of having the future of a cornerstone open-source project, like Terraform, guided by a single company rather than a foundation.”

On the other hand, Maislish is quick to point out that he sees nothing wrong with a commercial company introducing and maintaining an open-source project. “Many beloved projects, including Terraform, started exactly this way and needed that corporate backing to survive and establish their footprint,” he continues.

“However, it’s important to acknowledge that corporate decisions ultimately serve the interests of their stakeholders, which may not always align with those of the open-source contributors and user community.”

While there’s plenty of talk about the possibility of IBM taking Terraform back into open-source territory, the new parent company is still profit-driven, so the DevOps community might not hurry back to Terraform even if this does take place. Because OpenTofu is a Linux Foundation project now, Maislish explains, it is more or less guaranteed to remain open source in perpetuity.

Precedent for Cloud Management Solution Changes

In the wake of Terraform’s licensing change and subsequent purchase by IBM, Maislish sees historical precedent in OpenTofu’s surging momentum. “The story of OpenTofu is unique, but there are other cornerstone technologies that followed somewhat similar paths to build a stable, sustainable ecosystem and drive widespread impact across the tech industry,” he explains.

One particularly poignant example, he says, can be found in Kubernetes, which was initially developed by Google, eventually becoming part of the Linux Foundation’s Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in 2015. “Nearly a decade later, Kubernetes has become a driving force for innovation, transforming and enriching multiple industries,” Maislish adds.

“The CNCF’s involvement with Kubernetes,” he says, “was a key factor in this success to everyone’s benefit. Similarly, Terraform is a widely adopted foundational technology, and with OpenTofu, it has now embraced true open-source principles, poised to thrive independently and explore its full potential.”

Earlier, when Walmart and Target needed to scale their IT services in the early 2010s, they faced a real challenge in choosing a solution. Essentially, they had to either go with AWS, owned by their rival Amazon, or find an alternative. Ultimately, they chose the open-source cloud computing platform OpenStack. The flexibility and security resulting from these developments led to the development of Walmart’s multi-cloud strategy, which has helped it reduce millions in IT costs.

In a sense, history is now repeating itself with OpenTofu, which was adopted by Oracle and VMware shortly after IBM announced its purchase of HashiCorp.

The Inherent Value of Truly Open-Source DevOps Tech

The historic and recent events driving OpenTofu’s momentum are underpinned by the value that DevOps teams find in open-source software — something that Maislish believes will allow OpenTofu to maintain and even increase the stunning growth it has achieved since last year.

“I’ve been around long enough to remember a time when OSS was a ‘taboo’ word for organizations, especially top-tier enterprises. Today it’s incredible to see the evolution open source has undergone, becoming a primary consideration when qualifying technology,” Maislish says.

“What makes it a preference will differ but, by and large, I think most teams opt for open source to achieve greater flexibility and cost-efficiency, as well as to benefit from the diversified innovation potential,” Maislish continues.

“However, I don’t believe that open-source software is always the best solution. Like anything else, the decision to use it should be weighed against other organizational considerations, and there are plenty of cases where commercial software would be the right choice.”

Piloting the Future

Maislish is ultimately confident in OpenTofu’s ability to maintain its growth momentum. Some 36,000 people have shown their support for the OpenTofu manifesto, a rare head start. There’s also the rapid pace of OpenTofu rollouts, with a major release having dropped every few months. “Each of these introduced significant improvements and features long requested by legacy Terraform users,” he asserts.

What’s more, Maislish says, “The amazing support from the Linux Foundation is a key factor that sets the project on a path for long-term success and amplifies its visibility. For instance, every KubeCon now features a dedicated OpenTofu Day event, demonstrating the foundation’s strong commitment to the project.”

It seems that OpenTofu is in a good position when it comes to larger trends that are shaping DevOps as a whole, and Maislish is optimistic. “With this combination of almost unprecedented initial reception, a high-performing development team, and a tailwind from the biggest open-source organization on the planet, I feel lucky to be a part of this ride and excited about what comes next.”

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