I've been out of the loop on Puppet for a while, as most of my jobs in the last 8 years centered around Kubernetes/containers and not managing VMs, but I wanted to make sure I was crystal clear on a specific point from this doc: https://www.puppet.com/blog/open-source-puppet-updates-2025 This particular statement:

The new development license is an EULA that allows developers free access to our hardened Puppet releases (up to 25 nodes). Capacities higher than 25 nodes will require a Puppet Labs Support Commercial License.

Though the webpage refers to Open Source Puppet in the title, throughout the doc, it appears that nothing changes with the, now EOL, Open Source Puppet and this statement applies to the supported versions of Puppet, specifically Core, which the limitation is removed by spending money on the Enterprise Edition. So, just to be clear, the (now EOL) OSS Puppet does not have a 25 node limitation, as its licensing model has not changed/is not subject to the new development license described above, correct? We'll assess moving to Enterprise soon, but the node limitation is the only thing that I need clarity on, at the moment (as it impacts an active POC, where the showcase will include more than 25 nodes).

OSS Puppet has been forked, check out https://voxpupuli.org/openvox/

I'll check it out, but I'm locked into the current stack until the POC is over

it's not possible to change the license for already released stuff. so the dead puppet-agent releases are still available as apache-2. But they have open CVEs

That was my expectation and how I understood it as well, but I wanted to be certain, so thanks for confirming that.

Hey @Antoinne Williams, you have it right, if you are using the Puppetlabs open source Puppet version (last release was 8.10, I believe) that is the same old licensing as it always was. I wouldn't necessarily recommend staying on that because of the numerous CVEs that have been resolved since then by both OpenVox and Puppet Core, but the license for it hasn't changed. Just to clarify on the enterprise part: you don't have to go to Puppet Enterprise. Perforce introduced Puppet Core as the replacement for what was previously the open source version. It has the 25-node free tier, and a paid option for more nodes as well. However, there are also the other Puppet Enterprise and Puppet Enterprise Advanced packages that have a bunch of other stuff too and costs more than Puppet Core. The marketing team has a products page that outlines the different packages: Pricing: Puppet Core, Enterprise & Advanced | Perforce Puppet But for your needs today, you can absolutely do whatever PoC you need to do on the open source version. But for real usage you probably want to look at getting something that is more up to date.

Awesome, thanks a ton for this information @Jason St-Cyr 🙏