Terraform

Judgement

What it is

Developer tool

What it does

Describes cloud and on-premise infrastructure in HCL configuration files, shows a plan of the changes, then creates or updates the resources through provider plugins.

Adopt it when

Your team provisions infrastructure across one or more cloud providers and wants it reviewed and versioned as code with the largest provider ecosystem available.

Watch out

Since 2023 it is under the Business Source License rather than open source, which is why the OpenTofu fork exists; check the terms if you build a competing product.

Ready for

Production-ready

Runs as

Command line

Built with

Go and HCL

How established

Established: started 12 years ago, latest release v1.17.1.

What the license allows

GitHub could not read the license. Check it in the repository before reusing any code.

Judged on 2026-11-06 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

Follow it down: Terraform → Go → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

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