Why OpenTofu Is a Good Choice for Infrastructure as Code

OpenTofu is a good choice for infrastructure as code (IaC) because it is a truly open-source, community-governed fork of Terraform with no risk of a sudden license change. The Linux Foundation hosts it, the CNCF has accepted it, and it stays backward compatible with Terraform, so most existing configurations run unchanged.

Which tool you pick still depends on your team’s expertise, the skills available on the market, and your existing technology stack. In this article, we’ll walk through that decision from the viewpoints of CTOs, architects, and security officers.

IaC has been available for many years, but the approach has not been adopted as widely as you might expect. According to the CD Foundation’s 2023 State of CD report, only 27% of respondents used IaC that year. With Global Market Insights Inc’s report predicting more than 20% yearly growth, however, it is clear that many companies are considering it.

IaC is a vital element of DevOps adoption. With Lean and Automation (elements of the CALMS framework), DevOps aims to automate processes, increase productivity, and improve stability.

MPL (Mozilla Public License) is a type of open-source license. Software under this license can be used for private and commercial projects without any limitations (at least, for the case we discuss here).

BUSL (Business Source License), on the other hand, limits the use of the software. The software under this license will eventually be open-source.

The BUSL license is a parametrized one. There are some specific elements which can be parametrized:

• Restriction on usage
  
• Change date
• Open-source license after change date

The fact that these parameters can be changed and “adapted” as the licensor wishes is exactly the issue the community raises every time companies change a license to BUSL. 

The main charge against BUSL is that its terms are vague and can be used in an opaque manner at the licensor’s discretion. This prompts uncertainty about how and when software can be used.

Can I use the tool?

There are two aspects to this question: First, as I already mentioned, the BUSL license is rather vague in its construct, and the parameters can be changed without warning. Second, but equally important, is the potential to use the tool inside a wider platform.

For example, if I use vendor X to host my applications, can I use product Y there? This means that if you are using more than one vendor, you need to ensure you can use specific tools with others before you can be confident you control the whole toolset.

Let me give two examples here:

1. Fedora disallows software under BUSL license
2. VMware Aria disallows use of Terraform in higher versions than 1.5.5 (the last one with MPL license)

It is important to understand that a BUSL license might impact many more entities in the industry, even common users.

What does the change mean for different IT roles?

Let’s look at the impact of this change and why OpenTofu might be a good choice for you, depending on the specific role you play in the organization:

Architect

Contemporary architecture roles cover multiple areas, but solution, cloud, system, application, and enterprise architects must consider several factors that are not directly technical, including the licenses of any software they propose and incorporate into architecture. We have already discussed two examples where licensing might have a significant impact on the selected toolset.

The OpenTofu manifesto has over 36,000 GitHub stars, and the main OpenTofu repository has over 29,000. More than 100 companies signed the original manifesto, and dozens of active maintainers from multiple vendors contribute to the project. That level of backing tells architects the project has a future.

Engagement with the new initiative also encourages architects to be confident of the project’s future. 

Security Officer

As a person responsible for security in the organization, you have to examine a solution’s security, but you should also assess the software’s license modeling and maintenance. OpenTofu can support you in this respect. The MPL license is less restrictive than the BUSL, which allows a company to use it without extensive legal checks.

The fact that the initiative is community-driven allows security specialists in the community to propose their changes (through the RFC process) and ensure that best practices regarding security are being followed.

Chief Technical Officer (CTO)

As CTO, you manage the current stack and you plan for the next five years. OpenTofu holds up on both counts.

The reasons are as follows:

• It is a truly open-source project, under the Linux Foundation umbrella. This ensures stability for the effort. The Linux Foundation (directly or through their foundations) drives many projects used on a daily basis. Here are just a few of them: foundations like the CNCF and CD Foundation; software like ArgoCD, ETCD, Xen Project, Jenkins, Spinnaker, Istio, Prometheus, and Kubernetes; plus standards like SPDX and many more. This list should answer the question, “Is open-source really for me?”
• It has overwhelming support from the community. This means OpenTofu can set standards for future approaches to IaC.
• Its open-source status means the project can be used to build competing platforms. Nothing is better for growth than healthy competition, which introduces new features and solutions to the ecosystem.

As CTO, you must answer two questions for yourself:

1. Is this something that is good to use today?
2. Is it something that will be a good choice for the next one, two, or five years? 

I believe the answer to both questions is “Yes, indeed, it is.”

What does IBM’s acquisition of HashiCorp mean for Terraform users?

In 2025, IBM acquired HashiCorp. The acquisition did not change Terraform’s BUSL license, but it did sharpen the question the license change first raised: who controls the tool, and can the terms shift again? For a CTO or architect standardizing on an IaC tool for the next five years, that is the real risk. OpenTofu removes it. 

As a Linux Foundation project governed by a Technical Steering Committee drawn from several companies, no single vendor owns the roadmap, and the MPL 2.0 license cannot be revoked on the next release.

The community and governance story matters because of what it produces for you: no lock-in, a low-cost move off Terraform, and features you won’t find upstream. Here is what you get.

No license risk or vendor lock-in

This is the reason most teams move to OpenTofu. The MPL 2.0 license is OSI-approved and cannot be revoked on the next release, so the terms you adopt today are the terms you keep. No single vendor owns the roadmap either. The Linux Foundation hosts the project, the CNCF has accepted it, and a Technical Steering Committee drawn from several companies steers it.

Drop-in compatibility with Terraform

OpenTofu stays backward compatible with Terraform, so your existing configurations, modules, and providers run unchanged. For most teams, migration is swapping the terraform binary for tofu. The switching cost that usually blocks a tooling change mostly isn’t there.

Features Terraform doesn’t have

Because the community sets the roadmap, OpenTofu ships capabilities upstream Terraform lacks. State encryption protects your state file at rest. Ephemeral values keep secrets out of state entirely, so credentials never get written to disk. These landed in OpenTofu first.

A roadmap you can influence

Open-source, community-driven projects give you a seat at the table. You can join the initiative, propose changes through the public RFC process, and shape where OpenTofu goes. If a feature you need is missing, you are not waiting on a vendor’s priorities; you can make the case for it directly.

If you are about to enter the IaC world, compatibility with the existing Terraform ecosystem shouldn’t be a major concern. You are joining a new community eager to grow fast, which should be reassuring for the future. 

The ecosystem for OpenTofu is built by the community, which means every single person or company involved can have a role. 

OpenTofu has only one agenda: to build a thriving ecosystem around the IaC toolset that embraces progress in how infrastructure is developed, deployed, and maintained.

OpenTofu stays backward compatible with Terraform. How this will be maintained in the future depends on the supporting community and steering committee under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation.

OpenTofu will only be as strong as the community behind it. You can join that community and show your support by contributing to the public repository on GitHub. This contribution document explains how.

OpenTofu has shipped stable, production-ready releases since version 1.6.0 in January 2024. The current line adds features Terraform does not have, including state encryption and ephemeral values, with 1.12.0 released in May 2026. Check out our overview of what’s new. See the most important questions about OpenTofu.