The ax has fallen: IBM is ending support for the CDKTF (Cloud Development Kit for Terraform).
This toolkit enables the generation of configuration files using imperative languages (TypeScript, Python, Java, C#, and Go). It draws inspiration from the AWS Cloud Development Kit and reuses several of its libraries.
IBM argues that the project never found its place. Indeed, traction in community channels and beyond remained minimal. In any case, CDKTF was never stabilized. Up to the final release, issued in June 2025, non-backward-compatible changes remained commonplace.
A Very Different Context from OpenTofu
In this setting, IBM presents itself as more open to the idea of a fork (the code is released under the MPL license). It is indeed not the same story as with OpenTofu. This Terraform competitor project had emerged in the summer of 2023. HashiCorp, then still independent, had just changed the license of its products. Out went the MPL (Mozilla Public License), and in came the BSL (Business Source License), which largely barred embedding or hosting the community editions of those products within any commercial offering intended for production use.
Launched at the urging of companies whose business models relied at least partly on Terraform, OpenTofu had been stabilized in early 2024. In the meantime, another initiative had emerged: OpenBao, conceived as a substitute for Vault, another HashiCorp product.
IBM officially became the owner of HashiCorp in February 2025, almost a year after announcing its acquisition plans. While awaiting a possible fork of the CDKTF, it invites users to run the command cdktf synth –hcl to convert .tf files into HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language).
