Is your company at risk right now? That’s the question keeping you up at night after Redis and HashiCorp changed their licences. The good news? Licensing anxiety becomes structured action when you have a systematic methodology. This playbook gives you decision trees, compliance audit checklists, and step-by-step migration guides for evaluating Redis to Valkey and Terraform to OpenTofu switches.
This guide is part of our comprehensive resource on Open Source Licensing Wars – How HashiCorp, Redis and Cloud Economics Are Reshaping Infrastructure Software, where we explore the economic forces and vendor dynamics driving these changes. If you’re running Redis or Terraform in production at a company with 50-500 employees, you need clear decision criteria and actionable steps. The framework is straightforward: immediate risk assessment → compliance audit → migration vs stay decision → execution (if migrating) → vendor evaluation (for future).
Is Your Company at Immediate Risk from Redis or Terraform Licence Changes?
Before you dive into detailed analysis, work out your urgency level. Redis changed to three licence options: AGPLv3, RSALv2 (Redis Source Available Licence), and SSPLv1. The RSALv2 prohibits offering Redis as a managed service. HashiCorp’s Business Source Licence includes an Additional Use Grant that allows production use except in products competitive with HashiCorp’s offerings.
Here’s how to classify your situation:
HIGH URGENCY scenarios require action within 30-90 days:
- You’re running Redis as part of a SaaS product offering database access to customers
- You’re using Terraform in a platform product that competes with HashiCorp Cloud Platform
- You’re a venture-backed company approaching a funding round where licensing compliance is a due diligence item
- Your customer contracts require open source compliance that BSL violates
MODERATE URGENCY scenarios need assessment within 3-6 months:
- You’re using Redis or Terraform internally for your own infrastructure
- You’re planning to scale infrastructure where lock-in costs increase with scale
- You’re evaluating long-term vendor strategy and governance model preferences
- You’re concerned about future licence changes or price increases from the vendor
LOW URGENCY scenarios mean monitor but no immediate action:
- Small deployments (fewer than 10 instances) with no customer-facing components
- Using managed cloud services (AWS ElastiCache, etc.) that handle licensing
- No plans to scale or change infrastructure
- Satisfied with current vendor relationship and pricing
Most companies fall into moderate urgency. The licence doesn’t prohibit your current use but it creates strategic vendor lock-in risk worth evaluating.
How Do I Audit Our Redis and Terraform Deployments for Licence Compliance?
You need to systematically verify whether current usage violates the new licensing terms. Get your documentation sorted before you can make informed decisions.
For Redis, work through this checklist:
- Inventory all Redis instances across production, staging, and development environments
- Identify usage patterns: internal caching versus customer-facing database versus managed service offering
- Check Redis Stack modules: RedisJSON, RedisGraph, RedisSearch create additional compatibility considerations
- Document data volumes, performance requirements, and dependencies
- Verify current licence: deployments started before March 2024 may still be BSD/MIT licensed
For Terraform, audit these elements:
- State files and module usage to identify complexity and external dependencies
- Infrastructure scope: number of resources, providers, custom modules
- Commercial usage: internal ops versus platform product versus consulting service
- Terraform Cloud or Enterprise usage with additional licensing considerations
- Version verification: pre-1.5.0 versions remain MPL 2.0 licensed
Create an inventory spreadsheet with columns for instance/deployment, usage type, version, licence status, and risk level. Identify dependencies—applications and services that rely on Redis or Terraform. Quantify scale through data volumes, request rates, and infrastructure resource counts.
How do you identify the “offering as a service” threshold? If you’re offering Redis access to customers as part of your product, that trips the restriction. Internal caching for your own application doesn’t.
Should I Migrate or Stay? The Migration vs Stay Decision Framework
The core question is whether migration cost is justified by risk reduction and long-term benefits.
STAY scenarios where migration isn’t recommended:
- Small deployments (fewer than 10 Redis instances or fewer than 50 Terraform resources)
- Managed cloud services handling licensing (AWS ElastiCache for Valkey manages compliance)
- Short-term infrastructure horizon (planning major architecture changes within 12 months)
- Heavy dependency on proprietary features (Redis Stack modules not yet in Valkey, Terraform Cloud features)
- Team lacks capacity for a 4-8 week migration project
MIGRATE scenarios where migration is recommended:
- Legal compliance risk: current usage violates or will soon violate BSL restrictions
- Strategic independence: reducing vendor lock-in and governance concerns outweigh migration costs
- Long-term cost optimisation: avoiding future licence fee increases or forced upgrades
- Scaling plans: better to migrate before infrastructure grows 10x
- Fork maturity validated: Valkey and OpenTofu demonstrate production readiness
Work out your costs. Migration costs include engineering time, infrastructure duplication during parallel running, training and knowledge transfer, and opportunity cost of delayed features. Staying costs include potential licence fees if usage changes, vendor lock-in switching costs increasing over time, and governance risk if the vendor makes unfavourable changes.
For most, Valkey represents a safe evolutionary step as a compatible successor with solid improvements. The question isn’t about feature parity—both tools provision infrastructure. The real question is how each aligns with your platform engineering strategy, governance requirements, and long-term risk tolerance.
For companies with 50-500 employees, the typical project is 4-6 weeks with 2-3 engineers part-time.
How Do I Migrate from Redis to Valkey Without Breaking Production?
Valkey is compatible with Redis OSS 7.2 and all earlier open source Redis versions. You’re aiming for protocol-compatible replacement with zero customer-facing downtime.
Here’s your step-by-step execution plan:
Week 1: Compatibility verification testing
- Set up Valkey instance matching Redis version (7.2.4 baseline)
- Replay production command logs against Valkey test instance
- Verify data types and commands: strings, lists, sets, sorted sets, hashes, streams
- Benchmark performance: compare latency, throughput, memory usage under production load
Week 2: Parallel deployment setup
- Deploy Valkey instances alongside existing Redis (blue/green deployment pattern)
- Configure replication using PSYNC protocol for continuous Redis to Valkey synchronisation
- Validate replication: verify data consistency, monitor replication lag, test failover procedures
Weeks 3-4: Phased migration approach
- Start with non-critical environments: migrate development, then staging, then production
- Traffic cutover: feature flags or connection string updates to direct traffic to Valkey
- Monitor closely: error rates, latency percentiles, cache hit rates, memory usage
- Rollback criteria: define “stop and revert” thresholds (more than 5% error rate increase, more than 2x latency degradation)
Week 5: Validation and cleanup
- Performance validation: confirm Valkey meets or exceeds Redis baseline
- Decommission Redis instances only after 7+ days of stable Valkey operation
- Update documentation: runbooks, architecture diagrams, monitoring dashboards
Valkey 8.0 achieved 999.8K RPS on SETs with 0.8ms p99 latency versus Redis 8.0 at 729.4K RPS with 0.99ms p99. Valkey achieved 37% higher throughput on SET and 16% higher on GET compared to Redis.
Redis Stack compatibility concerns: Valkey does not yet support RedisJSON, RedisGraph, RedisSearch, RedisBloom modules. If you’re using Redis Stack, migration is blocked until Valkey module equivalents become available.
Aiven successfully migrated approximately 15,000 Redis servers to Valkey. MaiCoin used blue/green deployment strategy for migration from ElastiCache Redis to Valkey. Both show that zero-downtime migration is doable for standard Redis workloads, but it requires 4-6 weeks of careful testing, parallel running, and monitoring.
How Do I Migrate from Terraform to OpenTofu Without Breaking Infrastructure?
OpenTofu maintains 100% backward compatibility with existing Terraform code, modules, providers, and state files. Command syntax mirrors Terraform—simply replace terraform with tofu.
Here’s your step-by-step execution plan:
Day 1-2: State file backup and preparation
- Back up all Terraform state files: local and remote backends (S3, Terraform Cloud, etc.)
- Verify backup integrity: test restore procedure
- Document current state: Terraform version, provider versions, module dependencies
Days 3-4: State migration execution
- Install OpenTofu matching Terraform version (1.5.x equivalence)
- Run tofu init in Terraform working directory: automatically migrates state
- Validate state migration: tofu plan should show zero changes if migration successful
Weeks 2-3: Phased migration approach
- Start with non-production environments: migrate dev/staging infrastructure first
- Monitor plan outputs: any unexpected changes indicate compatibility issues
- Gradual production migration: migrate non-critical infrastructure, then critical resources
- Team training: engineers need familiarity with OpenTofu CLI
Week 4: CI/CD pipeline updates
- Replace terraform commands with tofu in automation
- Update Docker images and tooling dependencies
- Test automated deployments: verify OpenTofu works in CI/CD pipelines
- Update documentation: runbooks, README files, onboarding guides
OpenTofu ships with native state file encryption. State encryption is a feature the Terraform community has requested for the last five years but has never received.
Technical migration takes 1-2 weeks for most organisations. Full team adoption and workflow adjustment takes 2-4 weeks total.
What Questions Should I Ask Vendors Before Adopting Infrastructure Tools?
You want to prevent future licensing crises by assessing vendor governance and licensing stability upfront. As detailed in our comprehensive analysis of the open source licensing wars, HashiCorp and Redis licence changes were predictable from governance structure and VC funding.
Licensing and governance questions:
- What is your current open source licence and what is your commitment to maintaining it?
- What is your company’s revenue model and how does it relate to the open source project?
- Has your company ever changed licences on existing projects?
- What governance model does the project use? (Foundation-backed, vendor-controlled, community-governed)
- Who owns the trademark and copyright? What protections exist against future licence changes?
Long-term sustainability questions:
- What is the contributor diversity? (Single vendor versus multi-company contributors)
- How is the project funded? (Venture capital, revenue, foundation grants)
- What happens to the project if your company is acquired or goes out of business?
- What is your relationship with cloud providers? (Partner versus competitor)
Vendor lock-in assessment questions:
- Are there proprietary extensions or features not available in the open source version?
- What is the compatibility with alternative implementations or competitors?
- How difficult is it to migrate away from your tool if we needed to?
- Do you use open standards or proprietary formats/protocols?
Red flags include evasive answers about licensing or governance structure, recent venture capital funding rounds (creates pressure for revenue extraction), conflicts with cloud providers (risks future licence restrictions), lack of contributor diversity (single vendor control), and proprietary features required for production use.
HashiCorp controls Terraform’s roadmap, prioritisation, and contribution acceptance. Within weeks of the HashiCorp licence change, major cloud providers formed the OpenTofu initiative. Decisions in OpenTofu happen in public, and contributions follow standard open source processes.
Ask these questions during vendor selection, not after you’re already deeply invested in the tool.
Conclusion
Here’s the recap: immediate risk assessment leads to compliance audit, then migration versus stay decision, followed by execution and vendor evaluation for future tool adoption. Licensing anxiety becomes structured action when you have systematic assessment methodology.
Choosing to stay and accepting lock-in is valid if you make the decision deliberately after assessment, not from avoidance. Migration is risk management investment—upfront cost buys long-term independence and stability.
Redis and Terraform represent a recurring pattern across the infrastructure industry—vendors changing terms as they seek exits or revenue growth. For a deeper understanding of the economic forces and governance models driving these changes, explore our complete overview of open source licensing wars. The vendor evaluation questions prevent repeat scenarios.
Start your assessment this week: run the compliance audit checklist, classify your urgency level, and schedule a decision review with your leadership team. Whether you migrate or stay, make it a deliberate strategic choice backed by systematic analysis.
FAQ Section
What happens if I continue using Redis or Terraform under the new BSL licence?
BSL permits internal use without restriction—you can continue using Redis or Terraform for your own infrastructure. BSL prohibits offering as a managed service or competitive product. If you provide Redis or Terraform access to customers as a service, you violate the licence.
Most companies face strategic vendor lock-in risk, not immediate legal violation. The vendor controls pricing, features, and future changes. BSL enables monetisation pressure. Assess your specific usage pattern against BSL restrictions, then decide if strategic risk justifies migration.
How long does a typical infrastructure migration take for a mid-sized company?
For companies with 50-500 employees, typical migration timeline is 4-6 weeks with 2-3 engineers part-time. Week 1-2 covers compatibility testing and parallel environment setup. Week 3-4 handles phased migration (dev to staging to production) with monitoring. Week 5-6 includes validation, documentation, and decommissioning old infrastructure.
Things that extend the timeline? Large data volumes, complex custom integrations, Redis Stack module dependencies, and extensive Terraform module ecosystem. Rushing migration increases production incident risk. Careful execution is worth the time investment.
Can I migrate from Redis to Valkey without any downtime?
Yes, zero-downtime migration is achievable using PSYNC replication and blue/green deployment. PSYNC replication continuously synchronises Redis to Valkey in real-time. Blue/green deployment runs both systems in parallel, allowing instant traffic cutover and rollback.
You need Redis 7.2.4+ (Valkey protocol baseline), standard data types (not Redis Stack), and sufficient infrastructure capacity for parallel running. “Zero downtime” means no customer-facing outages, but migration still requires engineering time and careful monitoring.
What are the risks of migrating to an open source fork?
Primary risks include fork abandonment (community loses interest), feature divergence (compatibility breaks over time), and security vulnerabilities (smaller security team than original). Look for these mitigation signals: foundation hosting (Linux Foundation for Valkey/OpenTofu), contributor diversity (multiple companies), enterprise adoption (AWS, others), and community momentum.
Valkey and OpenTofu show strong viability signals: Linux Foundation governance, AWS/cloud provider backing, growing community, and production deployments. Compare fork risk versus vendor lock-in risk—staying with BSL vendor creates strategic dependency risk while migrating to fork creates technical sustainability risk. Both Valkey and OpenTofu are mature enough for production adoption now.
How do I convince my team that migration is worth the effort?
Frame it as risk management investment: upfront cost buys long-term stability and vendor independence. Work out how switching costs compound as infrastructure scales 10x. Use the decision framework for systematic cost-benefit analysis removing emotional arguments.
Address team concerns: migration is a controlled project with testing and rollback, not reckless change. Highlight strategic benefits including avoiding future licence fees, reducing vendor negotiating power, and controlling infrastructure roadmap. Be realistic about timeline: 4-6 weeks is a meaningful investment but not a year-long distraction. Consider timing: migrating before scaling 10x is far easier than migrating after.
Are there any features I’ll lose by switching from Redis to Valkey?
Standard Redis features show full compatibility with Redis 7.2.4 baseline—strings, lists, sets, sorted sets, hashes, streams, pub/sub all work identically. Redis Stack modules are currently not available in Valkey—RedisJSON, RedisGraph, RedisSearch, RedisBloom require staying on Redis or finding alternatives.
If using Redis Cloud proprietary features, Valkey on AWS ElastiCache may lack equivalents. Performance characteristics: Valkey matches or exceeds Redis performance in most benchmarks. For Redis Stack dependencies, DragonflyDB offers Redis Stack compatibility while staying open source. If Redis Stack is critical to your application, migration is blocked until Valkey adds equivalents or you architect around them.
What’s the difference between migrating Redis vs Terraform?
Redis migration involves data migration requiring replication, compatibility testing, performance validation, and production cutover with rollback capability. Terraform migration primarily involves state file management and CLI command updates with no data migration required.
Timeline comparison: Redis migration typically takes 4-6 weeks, Terraform migration typically takes 1-2 weeks. Risk profile: Redis migration affects production data systems (higher downtime risk), Terraform migration affects deployment tooling (lower customer impact). Team skill requirements: Redis migration requires database operations expertise, Terraform migration requires IaC and CI/CD pipeline knowledge. Terraform to OpenTofu migration is “easier” but still requires careful execution—don’t underestimate CI/CD pipeline coordination complexity.
Should I migrate now or wait for the forks to mature further?
Current maturity level (early 2026): both Valkey and OpenTofu are production-ready for most use cases. Valkey maturity includes Linux Foundation hosting, AWS ElastiCache support, protocol compatibility proven, and enterprise deployments (Aiven 15k servers). OpenTofu maturity includes Linux Foundation hosting, Terraform 1.5.x feature parity, state encryption advantage, and growing community adoption.
Waiting strategy risks: vendor lock-in costs compound as infrastructure scales, and migration difficulty increases non-linearly with scale. Decision criteria: if your risk assessment shows HIGH urgency (legal compliance) or MODERATE urgency with capacity (strategic planning), migrate now rather than waiting. Thorough testing and phased migration reduce “early adopter risk”. Both forks already crossed the production-readiness threshold for most use cases.
How do I evaluate if my team has the skills needed for migration?
For Redis to Valkey, you need database operations experience, replication understanding, performance testing capability, and production cutover experience. For Terraform to OpenTofu, you need IaC fluency, state file management knowledge, CI/CD pipeline experience, and module ecosystem familiarity.
Skill gap options: train internally by allocating learning time and test environment practice (adds 1-2 weeks to timeline). Hire a contractor to bring in migration specialist for 2-4 week engagement. Use managed migration through cloud provider migration services (AWS Database Migration Service, etc.) if available. Team capacity assessment: migration requires dedicated focus from 2-3 engineers part-time (50% capacity) for 4-6 weeks—can you allocate this without sacrificing projects? Skill gaps are solvable with training or contractor support—don’t let “we’ve never done this” block strategically justified migration.
What should I do if my compliance audit reveals we’re violating the BSL licence?
Immediate actions (within 7 days): stop expanding restricted usage by not onboarding new customers to service using Redis/Terraform under BSL. Document violation scope to quantify affected deployments and customer impact. Get legal consultation to verify interpretation of BSL restrictions applies to your usage pattern. Inform leadership by escalating legal compliance risk to the executive team.
Short-term actions (30-90 days): prioritise migration as P0 project by allocating dedicated team. Consider workarounds by restructuring offering to avoid “providing as service” definition. Try licensing negotiation by contacting Redis Ltd or HashiCorp to discuss commercial licensing if migration is infeasible. BSL violations are less common than feared (most internal use is permitted) but require urgent action if identified—migration or licensing deal needed within 90 days to avoid legal risk.
How much will migration cost our company?
Direct costs include engineering time (2-3 engineers at 50% capacity for 4-6 weeks equals 4-9 engineer-weeks of effort), infrastructure duplication for parallel running during migration (1-2 weeks of double hosting costs, typically less than $5k for SMB), testing environments for validation (approximately 20% of production cost), and external help if needed (contractor rates $150-300/hour for 40-80 hours if skill gaps exist).
Indirect costs include opportunity cost (features/projects delayed while team focuses on migration), training and documentation (updating runbooks, training team on new tools), and monitoring and tooling updates (dashboards, alerts, automation).
Cost avoidance through long-term benefits includes vendor lock-in reduction (avoiding future licence fee increases or forced upgrades), strategic independence (controlling infrastructure roadmap and upgrade timing), and governance stability (foundation-backed projects less likely to change terms unfavourably). Break-even analysis shows migration typically pays back within 12-24 months through avoided vendor leverage and price increases. Rough estimate for companies with 50-500 employees: $20-50k total migration cost, offset by reduced lock-in risk and long-term economic benefits.
