Infrastructure as Code Best Practices: Terraform, Pulumi, and OpenTofu in 2026

Infrastructure as Code Best Practices: Terraform, Pulumi, and OpenTofu in 2026 The Infrastructure as Code landscape changed permanently in August 2023 when HashiCorp moved Terraform from the Mozilla Public License to the Business Source License 1.1. The change restricted commercial use for products that compete with HashiCorp's own offerings. Within weeks, the OpenTofu fork was announced under the Linux Foundation. It reached general availability in January 2024. Three years later, engineering teams are settled into a stable but fractured landscape. Terraform remains dominant by installed base. OpenTofu is the default choice for teams that need an open-source, community-governed alternative. Pulumi occupies a different position: it replaces HCL entirely with general-purpose languages, which makes it compelling for teams that want to apply software engineering practices directly to infrastructure. The tool you choose matters less than how you use it. State management mistakes, oversized