Why Should You Switch to OpenTofu?

August 10, 2023, was a day to remember for anybody who works with infrastructure as code (IaC). On that day, HashiCorp changed the license for its products, including Terraform, from the Mozilla Public License (MPL) to the Business Source License (BUSL). I discussed some of the implications of these changes in the article Why OpenTofu is a Good Choice for IaC Adopters.

This move and the emergence of the OpenTofu initiative raise a couple of very important questions:

1. Should I move to OpenTofu?
2. If yes, why?

You’ll find the answers in this post.

Before we go into the reasons why you should move to OpenTofu, let’s discuss the potential impact of the license change on your work. The common perception is “I am a simple user, the license change doesn’t affect me.” In the short term, you might be right, but let’s decouple potential scenarios here:

• The license itself doesn’t indicate with 100% clarity if you are a competitor or not. This is the licensor’s decision. Imagine you are a consultant who works on a project for a third party. You help them to build infrastructure, and you manage all supporting elements of it — including state file. Because you are paid for this service, you could be viewed as competition. But from another perspective, you are also a user of the tool. You don’t know which is the case. And this is the biggest gray area behind BUSL licenses.
• Permission to use the software might be withdrawn without warning. Again, this is the licensor’s decision.
• The license may be changed. Developing the previous topic further, the licensor may confirm you are eligible to use the software under BUSL, but how the BUSL is built allows the licensor to change the conditions at any time.

These examples illustrate just how risky it is to use the tool under a BUSL license, which jeopardizes the long-term safety of your SDLC. Many use cases do not violate a BUSL license, but other factors come into play, which we will discuss later.

The short answer is yes. Terraform 1.5.5 was the last version published under the MPL license, so anything up to and including 1.5.5 stays open source and works with Spacelift as before.

The license change cannot be applied backward, so what was published under the MPL license stays open-source. The new BUSL license applies to any change made after HashiCorp’s announcement.

Here are three potential ways to work with Terraform now and into the future:

• If you are using Terraform 1.5.5 or lower, you can use Spacelift, and your process doesn’t change. If you plan to upgrade to a newer version, your options are outlined later in this post. Your workloads with Terraform versions up to and including 1.5.5 will work as before, and there is no change from a legal perspective. Spacelift continues to work on features, improvements, and all the elements that make Spacelift the best tool in the field.
• If you are considering migrating to newer versions of Terraform (1.6 and more recent versions yet to be published), Spacelift is working on options to ensure support. The Spacelift team will publish information about this in a transparent way and communicate it to our customers.
• Migration to OpenTofu is an option for you. Switching from Terraform to OpenTofu is currently as easy as changing the binary. As time progresses, migration may require more actions on your side, but you can rest assured that OpenTofu will supply you with all the support you’ll need.

Migration to OpenTofu delivers multiple advantages. Let’s list them in three categories — continuity, stability, and progress.

• Continuity
  • OpenTofu is backward compatible with Terraform 1.5.x, the last open-source Terraform release it was forked from. Your existing HCL, state files, and providers keep working.
  • Migration itself is simple and straightforward. It is largely just a binary change.
  • Community support is broad. More than 100 companies and hundreds of individual engineers pledged support through the OpenTofu manifesto.
  • Growth is steady. OpenTofu has shipped regular releases from 1.6 through 1.12, backed by Linux Foundation governance and a multi-vendor Technical Steering Committee.

• Stability
  • OpenTofu is a Linux Foundation project and a CNCF Sandbox project (accepted April 23, 2025), which keeps it vendor-neutral and open source.
  • Governance sits with a Technical Steering Committee, not a single company, so the license cannot be changed out from under you.
  • The MPL 2.0 license is OSI-approved and stable, the same open-source footing Terraform had before the change.

• Progress
  • A steady release cadence and Technical Steering Committee drawn from multiple vendors keep new features shipping, with no single company controlling the roadmap.
  • As the heart of this open-source project, the community will have an important voice in the direction of improvements. You can share this voice and have a real impact on OpenTofu’s roadmap and feature implementation.
  • With community support, engagement, and vision, OpenTofu will respond to requests to ensure the best alignment with the market’s needs.

OpenTofu 1.12 is stable, in the CNCF, a CNCF Sandbox project, and the migration path from Terraform is well-trodden. For most teams, it’s a binary swap.

If you’re on Terraform 1.5 or later, the change is mechanical. Back up your state files, replace terraform with tofu in your CI/CD pipelines, and run a plan in a non-production environment first. HCL syntax, state format, and the provider ecosystem are shared, so your existing code keeps working.

If you’re on an older Terraform version, do it in two hops: bring every module up to Terraform 1.5.5, migrate to OpenTofu 1.6, then jump to the latest.

Nearly three years in, OpenTofu has diverged from Terraform on purpose. Client-side state encryption, provider for_each, ephemeral values, the -exclude flag, and the .tofu file extension for OpenTofu-only features have no Terraform equivalent. Once you adopt them, the migration is one-way. Plan accordingly.

For the step-by-step checklist, see our Terraform-to-OpenTofu migration guide.

Yes, of course! Spacelift was one of the first companies to join the initiative and is one of the founding members. The OpenTofu platform has our full support, and we are engaged in the project’s development. This ensures almost native binding between Spacelift and OpenTofu.

The OpenTofu is a brand-new initiative, so you are bound to have questions. For more information, contact the OpenTofu Initiative through its webpage. To add your support, give a GitHub star to the OpenTofu repositories, or add your pledge to the list of supporters!

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.