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Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

elastic.co

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Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#2
wow, this is super interesting, but i can't say i'm surprised by this move.

the landscape has really evolved over the last few years for companies trying to build a business around open source.

at grafana labs we are closely following these developments, and are constantly wrestling with decisions around what is best for our own licensing strategy.

all of our peers (eg. mongodb, elastic, redis, confluent, cockroach, timescale, etc etc) have recently made moves to prevent being disintermediated by the cloud vendors.

it's become the new normal.

interesting times.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#3
I hope that SSPL becomes the standard for companies so that at least it becomes a known entity instead of a proliferation of bespoke licenses: like if CockroachDB moved to it as well.

Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality and I believe that would meet the definition of open source by the OSI while preserving the value of the commercial version.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#4
post #3

I hope that SSPL becomes the standard for companies so that at least it becomes a known entity instead of a proliferation of bespoke licenses: like if CockroachDB moved to it as well. Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality and I believe that would meet the definition of open source by the OSI while preserving the value of the commercial version.

Yeah, I understand the SSPL has some issues that could use better clarification (exactly the extent the copyleft is intended to reach), but it is an aggressive copyleft license, and I'd argue, very in the spirit of open source. The parties using it could develop a more clear newer version to SSPL that addresses the concerns.

And the more companies adopt SSPL, the more pressure OSI will be under to accept a viable license for open source businesses.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#5
post #3

I hope that SSPL becomes the standard for companies so that at least it becomes a known entity instead of a proliferation of bespoke licenses: like if CockroachDB moved to it as well. Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality and I believe that would meet the definition of open source by the OSI while preserving the value of the commercial version.

i agree with your point on license proliferation.

the osi has failed, in my opinion, for not approving sspl or something similar.

i respect them a lot less for it than i used to.

sspl does not technically impose any restrictions on any class of users; it’s just an extreme copy left license.

instead, osi spent a time arguing about mongo business model, technical capabilities, and sales tactics.

mongo eventually pulled their application to osi because (i think) they were so turned off by the process and politics.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#6
post #3

I hope that SSPL becomes the standard for companies so that at least it becomes a known entity instead of a proliferation of bespoke licenses: like if CockroachDB moved to it as well. Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality and I believe that would meet the definition of open source by the OSI while preserving the value of the commercial version.

> Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality

That would be a horrible precedent. Sending an http request to a server should not trigger copyright violation. This is similar to newspapers who claimed that having links to their site, violates copyright.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#7
post #3

I hope that SSPL becomes the standard for companies so that at least it becomes a known entity instead of a proliferation of bespoke licenses: like if CockroachDB moved to it as well. Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality and I believe that would meet the definition of open source by the OSI while preserving the value of the commercial version.

> Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality That would be a horrible precedent. Sending an http request to a server should not trigger copyright violation. This is similar to newspapers who claimed that having links to their site, violates copyright.

it’s not copyright violation. it’s a license violation. they are completely different.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality That would be a horrible precedent. Sending an http request to a server should not trigger copyright violation. This is similar to newspapers who claimed that having links to their site, violates copyright.

it’s not copyright violation. it’s a license violation. they are completely different.

Copyright law is the basis for the legal enforcement of software licenses. License violations usually get pursued under copyright law

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#10
post #3

I hope that SSPL becomes the standard for companies so that at least it becomes a known entity instead of a proliferation of bespoke licenses: like if CockroachDB moved to it as well. Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality and I believe that would meet the definition of open source by the OSI while preserving the value of the commercial version.

> Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality That would be a horrible precedent. Sending an http request to a server should not trigger copyright violation. This is similar to newspapers who claimed that having links to their site, violates copyright.

The issue should be whether there is a linking and not the nature of the linking. I mean if "over HTTP" was a get-out-of-jail card then you just need a C-ABI => JSON standard, and then you can link any library you want and only the server-linker needs to be opensourced (and probably would be as BSD).

I believe this is why the GPL uses the term "derivative".

> This is similar to newspapers who claimed that having links to their site, violates copyright.

Making links to their site might violate the license by which they allow you to browse their site, but it doesn't break copyright. If the on their homepage had a pop-up "You must agree not to not share any links found on this site as a condition of using this site" that would be analogous.

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