Under the auspices of the Linux Foundation, the OpenBao project has been established, which will continue the development of the Hashicorp Vault codebase under the free MPLv2 (Mozilla Public License). The fork was created in response to HashiCorp's transition of its products to the proprietary BSL 1.1 license, which restricts the use of code in cloud systems competing with HashiCorp's products and services.
The creators of the OpenBao project intend to continue the development of the Hashicorp Vault fork on the neutral platform of the Linux Foundation with the participation of a community formed by interested companies and enthusiasts, using an open governance model. The fork will be branched from the Hashicorp Vault 1.14.x line and will include all changes published under the MPL 2.0 license. The initiator of the fork is Sebastian Stadil, CEO and founder of the DevOps company Scalr, who is one of the creators of the OpenTofu project. Engineers from IBM, who support the LF Edge project, have also joined the work on the fork.
Hashicorp Vault provides tools for managing, storing, and distributing certificates, keys, API tokens, passwords, and other confidential information, as well as for organizing access to secret data, maintaining an audit log, generating passwords and tokens, encrypting data, and ensuring the revocation of compromised secrets. Hashicorp has announced that it will stop publishing fixes for Hashicorp Vault releases under the MPL license after December 31, 2023.
The change in licensing is explained by the desire to maintain funding for its developments in light of the inability of traditional licensing models to combat the parasitism of companies using ready-made open-source codes from HashiCorp's developments to create their own commercial cloud products without participating in joint development. According to a report published a few days ago, Hashicorp's revenue for the third financial quarter, which ended on October 31, 2023, reached $146.1 million, which is 17% more than in the same period last year. The company's losses, meanwhile, decreased from $72 million to $39.5 million.
Derudover kan det nævnes, at beta-testningen af den første udgave af OpenTofu, en fork af platformen til konfigurationsstyring og automatisering af infrastruktur, Hashicorp Terraform, er begyndt. Den første udgave af OpenTofu er baseret på Terraform 1.6-grenen, understøtter alle eksisterende funktioner og indeholder nogle yderligere rettelser og forbedringer, der sigter mod at styrke sikkerheden. Som et alternativ til Terraform Registry har projektet også oprettet et register over alle udbydere og moduler, der kan bruges med OpenTofu.
OpenTofu udvikles under banneret af Linux Foundation med brug af den frie licens MPLv2. 158 virksomheder og 780 individuelle udviklere har erklæret deres støtte til OpenTofu og deres intention om at deltage i udviklingen af forken. De virksomheder, der har tilsluttet sig OpenTofu-initiativet, har afsat ressourcer til udviklingen af forken, svarende til 18 ingeniørers fuldtidsarbejde over de næste 5 år (til sammenligning har 5 ingeniører i HashiCorp de sidste to år arbejdet med vedligeholdelsen af Terraform).
Kilde: opennet.ru
