On “Open” Distros, Open Source, and Building a Company

Clicking through to the other blog posts, it becomes apparent the the author plays fast and loose with the word "open", to their benefit. They "opened up" by providing gratis licenses to some of their software. They don't call it "open source", but the phrase "open source" is also scattered around the articles, so that "open" benefits by proximal association.

They're free to license their software however they want; I don't use it so I really don't care. But it really rankles when someone extols the virtues of open source and waxes rhetoric about how open they are, and yet the software they offer is proprietary by default. They "double down on open", but the open source distribution is opt-in.

I cannot help but feel that the articles are deliberately constructed to mislead. That's a serious accusation and I wish I could be more charitable in how I interpret them but the terminology is so consistent that it cannot be an accident -- gratis-but-proprietary is always "open", libre is never just "open" but always "open source".

Technically correct isn't enough. No-one's explicitly staked "open" as being the same as "open source". But in the context of this conversation "open" is an obvious contraction of "open source" and to use the obvious contraction to mean something diametrically opposed is not reasonable or ok; especially when "source available" is widely understood. The same thing was attempted with the Commons License.

The intent behind words is important. Persuasive oratory is fine but using those tactics to mislead does not engender trust, especially when the beneficiary is the one speaking and not the audience.

Actions speak louder than words. Amazon's words [1] were backed up by action- specifically, the public release of Open Distro for Elasticsearch and several useful, advanced features under an Apache 2.0 license.

This post from Elastic consists of vague claims of 'FUD' and of their commercial code being 'bluntly copied', without any further clarifying details or responsive action to back them up. (E.g., if you have real evidence of Amazon copying proprietary code, which I doubt, then announce the copyright infringement lawsuit you have just filed, don't weakly allude to your grievances in a blog post.)

Conspicuously, the post did not contain any defense or even mention of Amazon's key accusations of "significant intermingling of proprietary code into the code base", or its claim that "the innovation focus has shifted from furthering the open source distribution to making the proprietary distribution popular." The only response offered is a vague, generic "we believe in open source" - again with no concrete action backing up those empty words.

If this is the best and only response Elastic is able to offer, I fully expect Amazon to keep the high ground in this controversy.

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/keeping-open-source-...

actions? I think this is speaking for itself: https://www.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch-oss What has Amazon contributed to yet? Repackage other open source projects that was already existing? I don't call it a contribution.

What is the "Open Source Institute"? If you mean the Open Source Initiative, then yes, I have posted on open-source related topics here, yes, I am a member of the OSI (I joined... two weeks ago? mostly so I could vote for OSI board members who are committed to opposing corporate influence over the open source definition), and no, I do not have a conflict of interest. I paid the OSI $40 to join. I receive no money from the OSI; I certainly receive no money that Amazon donated to the OSI. I am not OSI staff, and I think the OSI only has one paid staff member. Saying there's a conflict of interest is like saying that individual ACLU members have a conflict of interest when speaking about a company that donates to the ACLU, or that Amazon Prime members have a conflict of interest when speaking about Amazon.

(I am, as it happens, rather opposed to Amazon as a company. I canceled my Prime membership; I try to shop anywhere else if possible; I celebrated the loss of NYC HQ2. But in this case, I think they're in the right.)

A lot of conversation around the backlash was about the insinuation that the new licenses were open when they weren't. "Apache 2 + Commons Clause" is an abuse of both the Apache license and the concept of the commons; the SSPL was submitted to the OSI for approval when it clearly did not meet the definition.