HCP chose to open source Terraform. They didn't have to. They chose to market the OSS aspect of their products and use it as a selling point.
It may well be true that HCP is having trouble hitting their revenue goals because they open sourced Terraform but that doesn't mean the competition is the bad actor, for using an OSS product entirely in the spirit of OSS.
As it stands, my opinion is that your framing is incorrect. There is Terraform, which was OSS, and there is Terraform Cloud/Terraform Enterprise, which is not OSS. A lot of the development energy goes into TFC/TFE, and there is where the attractive, for pay, features are. Terraform has not been receiving a lot of development time. Only a few people from HCP, part time, working on it. I believe that the reality is that HCP is unable to keep up with their TFC/TFE product. They aren't innovating, and they are attempting to use the legal system to remove competition rather than compete on product. And now that OpenTofu exists and is part of LF, you don't even need HCP to succeed for your Terraform code to continue to live. Maybe one feels that is unfair, but it was their decision to OSS the product, and their decisions to change that. And capitalism isn't fair. Shrug emoji.
It may well be true that HCP is having trouble hitting their revenue goals because they open sourced Terraform but that doesn't mean the competition is the bad actor, for using an OSS product entirely in the spirit of OSS.
As it stands, my opinion is that your framing is incorrect. There is Terraform, which was OSS, and there is Terraform Cloud/Terraform Enterprise, which is not OSS. A lot of the development energy goes into TFC/TFE, and there is where the attractive, for pay, features are. Terraform has not been receiving a lot of development time. Only a few people from HCP, part time, working on it. I believe that the reality is that HCP is unable to keep up with their TFC/TFE product. They aren't innovating, and they are attempting to use the legal system to remove competition rather than compete on product. And now that OpenTofu exists and is part of LF, you don't even need HCP to succeed for your Terraform code to continue to live. Maybe one feels that is unfair, but it was their decision to OSS the product, and their decisions to change that. And capitalism isn't fair. Shrug emoji.