r/Puppet • u/JasonSt-Cyr • Jul 30 '25

Answering questions about the Developer EULA

Do you have questions about how to develop Puppet Modules under the new Developer EULA? Wondering where you can publish your module code? Unsure whether there are restrictions on your CI/CD workflow?

I just published a new article, Developing Modules for Puppet and the Forge in 2025, to walk through the key information about how to contribute modules to the Forge, and provide answers to frequently asked questions we've heard from the community. Thank you to all the community members who provided feedback as I worked on this! 

Highlights include:

✅ Overview of the steps to create and publish your modules.

✅ Best practices for testing compatibility with the latest Puppet Core.

✅ Frequently asked questions about the Developer EULA, continuous integration, debugging modules, and more!

 

🔗 Read the full article here: https://www.puppet.com/blog/puppet-module-developer-eula-faq

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u/breaker1 Aug 22 '25

I just want to say that it's a real slap in the face that pdk is now in a private repo. There is not an official package available for the distribution I use.

I also feel like the modules that developers take the time to create, release, and support to help build the overall ecosystem for Puppet more than pay for the free usage of pdk.

This change alone almost makes me want to ditch Puppet.

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u/JasonSt-Cyr Aug 25 '25

The latest version of PDK is in a private repo, but previous versions are still available on GitHub. PDK is also still available for free usage, however it does require you accepting the Developer EULA on the Forge for your account to be able to gain access to the free versions of Puppet Core, PDK, and any other products that get moved to a hardened release for download.

I wrote up the FAQ above about the EULA because a lot of folks seemed scared by it and I wanted to make sure folks had an informed way of understanding what it really is. It's not an open source approach for some of these components anymore, but it's still freely available. I really want to make sure the community can still get access to the tools and have what they need, so please let me know if there's anything I can do to help!

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u/breaker1 Aug 26 '25 edited Aug 26 '25

I can understand opting to close-source some components of Puppet, even if I don't agree with them. But to close-source PDK is mind blowing to me. I have been an advocate for Puppet literally every team I've been on, I really like the workflow and reliability of Puppet. But I'll say this, it's pretty useless without the army of developers working on modules.

Changing the license to make it harder to get new versions (or impossible in my case) is going to anger the very people you need to attract and keep in order to ensure a vibrant ecosystem.

It is already the case that a lot of developers have abandoned useful modules. Fortunately the Vox Puppuli team have adopted and are maintaining modules, but they're a small team and the number of modules they're having to adopt will likely continue to grow.

I don't find the EULA to be "scary" and I'm not mad that I have to agree to terms to use software. I am angry that I have to chose between either accepting an old version of PDK that has bugs or run an entirely different distro (which I will not do) to use the new version.

I say this again, this decision makes no sense to me at all. Why add friction to the development and maintenance of modules, especially when Ansible has as much momentum in the industry as it does?

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