{"slug": "opentofu", "name": "OpenTofu", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "", "recommenders": 2, "commenters": 6, "warners": 0, "score": 2.595, "rising": 0.67, "first": "2025-12-10", "latest": "2026-09-06", "why": "follow the dominant community fork should it be needed, as we did with terraform -> opentofu", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1, "compare": 3, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "follow the dominant community fork should it be needed, as we did with terraform -> opentofu", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["OpenTofu"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 787232659, "item_id": 49202041, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49202041", "by": "lrvick", "date": "2026-08-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "follow the dominant community fork should it be needed, as we did with terraform -> opentofu", "excerpt": "I am going to be PRing herdr to stagex as it is my daily driver. This will give it a totally independent release process with multiple parties bootstrapping, reproducing, and signing deterministic binaries for it alongside our tmux releases. We (the stagex team) will naturally patch out any corpo tracking bullshit that may or may not happen in the future, and follow the dominant community fork should it be needed, as", "context": "stagex team member", "use_case": "infrastructure as code", "switched_from": "Terraform", "story": "Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open"}, {"id": 753315936, "item_id": 47082246, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47082246", "by": "kstrauser", "date": "2026-02-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's far and away the least bad tool I've used in the space", "excerpt": "> Picking Terraform over Cloudformation: Endorse I, too, prefer McDonald's cheeseburgers to ground glass mixed with rusty nails. It's not so much that I love Terraform (spelled OpenTofu) as that it's far and away the least bad tool I've used in the space.", "context": "", "use_case": "infrastructure as code", "switched_from": "", "story": "Almost Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret after 4 years"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "lrvick", "context": "stagex team member", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49202041", "date": "2026-08-06"}, {"by": "FireBeyond", "context": "homelab operator", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48750198", "date": "2026-07-01"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["infrastructure as code", "homelab infrastructure as code"], "compared": [{"slug": "terraform", "name": "Terraform", "co": 5, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46222165", "title": "The future of Terraform CDK", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49585161", "title": "I changed my license", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49201003", "title": "Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48719573", "title": "I Don't Maintain My Homelab", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47043345", "title": "Almost Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret after 4 years", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"compare": 2}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {"compare": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 793367985, "item_id": 49585499, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49585499", "by": "mihaelm", "date": "2026-09-06", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Terraform -> OpenTofu", "excerpt": "You might also be interested in the O'Saasy license (https://osaasy.dev/) which is in the similar vein, but simpler. HashiCorp switched to BUSL license for their products/tools when they already had substantial market share, and they still faced MPL-licensed forks (Terraform -> OpenTofu, Vault -> OpenBao). It will be interesting to see in a few years if those tools notably cut into their share. I'm not sure a new too", "context": "", "use_case": "infrastructure as code", "switched_from": "", "story": "I changed my license"}, {"id": 787232659, "item_id": 49202041, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49202041", "by": "lrvick", "date": "2026-08-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "follow the dominant community fork should it be needed, as we did with terraform -> opentofu", "excerpt": "I am going to be PRing herdr to stagex as it is my daily driver. This will give it a totally independent release process with multiple parties bootstrapping, reproducing, and signing deterministic binaries for it alongside our tmux releases. We (the stagex team) will naturally patch out any corpo tracking bullshit that may or may not happen in the future, and follow the dominant community fork should it be needed, as", "context": "stagex team member", "use_case": "infrastructure as code", "switched_from": "Terraform", "story": "Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open"}, {"id": 780003169, "item_id": 48750198, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48750198", "by": "FireBeyond", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "effectively 100% IaC with OpenTofu and Salt", "excerpt": "I got sick of the work around it, so one weekend recently, while my partner was out of town, I used Claude to help re-architect my whole homelab to be effectively 100% IaC with OpenTofu and Salt. Went through the whole architecture, networking, etc. Now I would just need to pull down the repo to my Mac and can spin everything up via PXE to install Proxmox, Ubuntu, etc., and then I have a scheduled golden image build,", "context": "homelab operator", "use_case": "homelab infrastructure as code", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Don't Maintain My Homelab"}, {"id": 753315936, "item_id": 47082246, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47082246", "by": "kstrauser", "date": "2026-02-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's far and away the least bad tool I've used in the space", "excerpt": "> Picking Terraform over Cloudformation: Endorse I, too, prefer McDonald's cheeseburgers to ground glass mixed with rusty nails. It's not so much that I love Terraform (spelled OpenTofu) as that it's far and away the least bad tool I've used in the space.", "context": "", "use_case": "infrastructure as code", "switched_from": "", "story": "Almost Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret after 4 years"}, {"id": 739566017, "item_id": 46222876, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46222876", "by": "dev_l1x_be", "date": "2025-12-10", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Does OpenTofu use that same provider?", "excerpt": "It would be great to have an alternative to Terraform that uses a bit more advanced provider (at last for AWS). Does OpenTofu use that same provider?", "context": "", "use_case": "infrastructure as code", "switched_from": "", "story": "The future of Terraform CDK"}, {"id": 739556258, "item_id": 46222266, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46222266", "by": "vbernat", "date": "2025-12-10", "stance": "compare", "quote": "just use OpenTofu directly", "excerpt": "It's odd to always say \"Hashicorp, an IBM company\". Looks like they want to assign blame. I did try Pulumi a while back, but the compatibility with Terraform modules was not great, so I've switched to CDKTF, which can handle unmodified modules. Dunno if I'll switch back to Pulumi or just use OpenTofu directly.", "context": "", "use_case": "infrastructure as code", "switched_from": "", "story": "The future of Terraform CDK"}]}