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I don't think you can just "fork it." Hashicorp already owns all that code because they make contributors sign it away to them.

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They can't retroactively take source code away from people who they already granted access to it under the MPL. The old code is still available under the MPL forever- even if they take down all of their own public copies of it, anyone with the old Terraform code is still free to upload their copy for the creation of a new fork. That's kinda the whole idea with these open-source licenses :)

I've heard some people discuss that the contribution agreement that Hashicorp makes people sign gives them the right to change the license for existing contributions, but I'm not a lawyer so I really couldn't say for certain either way.

HashiCorp makes its external contributors sign a CLA to basically hand over the copyright.

However the MPL and licensing in general is irrevocable. They have irrevocably licensed Terraform 1.5.5 under the MPL and an enterprise license (dual license). Anyone can use, modify and distribute version 1.5.5 under the terms of the MPL.

Since HashiCorp retains full copyright they can release the next version under the BSL.

Note that many free software projects (like Linux) don't have a CLA which makes relicensing impractical since every contributor would have to agree to it.

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