OpenTofu

OpenTofu is the open source fork of Terraform, created after HashiCorp moved Terraform to the Business Source License in 2023. It is a CNCF project under the Linux Foundation, licensed under MPL 2.0 and compatible with the existing Terraform providers and modules.

OpenTofu is our default tool for Infrastructure as Code. We use it in preference to provider-specific templating such as CloudFormation or ARM templates, and in preference to Terraform itself.

Why OpenTofu?

• One tool for every cloud: The same workflow and language provision AWS, Azure and European providers alike. Good provider support is one of our selection criteria for a European Sovereign Cloud, and it is what makes moving between clouds realistic.

• Open license and governance: The tool at the core of our infrastructure cannot be relicensed from under us.

• Drop-in for Terraform: Existing Terraform code, providers and modules work, so migrating from Terraform 1.5 or older is usually a matter of swapping the binary.

• Built-in state encryption: State files often contain secrets. OpenTofu can encrypt them client-side, while Terraform relies on the backend to encrypt state at rest.