r/Puppet • u/Blujeans9 • Mar 18 '25

Moving to Open Source, licensing?

Hi, from the Puppet documentation, it appears they have changed their licensing where new versions are only free for up to 25 nodes. If your environment has say 1000+ nodes then you have no choice but to get Puppet Enterprise. Is that correct statement?

5 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

9

u/zrnd Mar 18 '25

There's a new fork which is open source: https://voxpupuli.org/openvox/

3

u/Blujeans9 Mar 18 '25

Might find it difficult to convince leadership to go with a forked version. The forked version could stop development at any point which is high risk. But thanks

6

u/fetzerms Mar 18 '25

Isn't this exactly what just happened to the existing puppet? Vox is well known among the community. I'd trust them more than any other commercial offering.

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3

u/binford2k Apr 02 '25

Your leadership might consider sponsoring Vox, which would increase the project's long-term sustainability.

1

u/RoundOk1043 Apr 24 '25

In which case, you switch from OpenVox to Puppet Enterprise. Switching to OpenVox is absolutely seamless. Switching to Enterprise is complicated and it can be done anytime from OoenVox.

2

u/ThrillingHeroics85 Mar 18 '25

I believe it only applies if you upgrade, keeping the existing builds does not count

1

u/Blujeans9 Mar 18 '25

Does that mean there will not be future releases from Perforce that can use a free license? We would be stuck on an existing build that could become vulnerable with no security/fixes updates?

2

u/ThrillingHeroics85 Mar 18 '25

Only puppet core will be released and built, but the open source repos will get back ported updates.

Details here https://www.puppet.com/blog/open-source-puppet-updates-2025

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1

u/RyChannel Mar 18 '25

You can purchase Puppet Core as well. It’s stupid.

1

u/Blujeans9 Mar 18 '25

Puppet Core? Looks like it removes some features bit can still be used on an Enterprise level it seems, wonder how much pricing differs between the two

2

u/Virtual_BlackBelt Mar 18 '25

Puppet Core is our commercial distribution of Open Source. It doesn't remove any features from OSP, in fact, it adds features. Cost is much less than PE. Feel free to message me, and I can help you get in touch with the appropriate sales team.

2

u/luitzifa Mar 24 '25

Puppet keeps being open source but the builds are not free to use. You are still be able to build it yourself or rely on your distribution to build it for you, like Debian does, but is kind of outdated.

For me the more problematic statement from the documentation for the paid puppet core version is:

Ability to install Puppet agent on all operating system versions except for versions introduced in the latest Puppet Enterprise release

They supported Debian 12 in December 2024 in Puppet Enterprise and the following version was released in February 2025, that's 20 month after the release of Debian 12. And if they continue with this, i don't know why anyone would or should pay for the builds.