Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana • Hacker News Board

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#161

Post by dhd415 » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #155

PeterZaitsev wrote: post #76

I wonder how many people contributed to Elastic which do not work for Elastic.co ? Those folks have reasonably counted on having fruits of their labor to be available under Apache 2.0 and now they only get to use them with SSPL restrictions

I feel this way about all similar licensing changes (Redis, Elastic among many others). It's basically a large company vs much larger company fight, and the losers are the thousands of individual contributors not affiliated with either one who have worked for free and can no longer use their work in the way they want. Moves like this are definitely eroding trust in open source in the long term.

There's a fair amount of hyperbole in that statement. Most of the above products (Redis, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, etc.) don't have "thousands of individual contributors" and are developed primarily by employees of the backing companies.

Second, external contributors can use it in their work in any way that they want so long as it's not in offering Elasticsearch-as-a-service. They can even use for offering Elasticsearch-as-a-service so long as it's based on the current Apache2-licensed code rather than the SSPL-licensed code that will be in effect as of the next Elasticsearch release.

There are certainly valid criticisms of this decision, but a blanket statement that "thousands of individual contributors" are the losers here is an exaggeration.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#162

Post by confiq » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

Areading314 wrote: post #82

This is an alarmist headline. The SSPL license to which they are switching only requires your code to be open sourced if you are providing Elasticsearch itself as a service. This change is directed at cloud providers who take open source software and then provide them as a service for payment without contributing to the project. If you are using Elasticsearch on your backend to build search-enabled products or websit…

AFAIRemember, RedHat dropped MongoDB because of "controversial SSPL"

> So essentially, anyone is free to modify MongoDB. It’s only when you offer MongoDB as a commercial service that the conditions of the SSPL state that you must open source the entire service.

https://hub.packtpub.com/mongodb-withdraws-controversial-ser...

Is this a difference like GPLv2 and GPLv3? Does this means that AWS now must open internal service (probably not but I'm trying to be devil advocate)

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#163

Post by Drdrdrq » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

mfreed wrote: post #58

LukeEF wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, Timescale is not like the others, their shift was to make the formerly proprietary enterprise only code source available. Remarkably they went MORE open rather than less (as it the case for all the others). You have to give them respect for approaching things differently.

Thanks for the clarification, Luke. For a bit more background for the HN community: When we initially launched the Timescale License in Dec 2018, we didn't relicense any of our Apache-2 code -- that was and has always remained licensed under the Apache 2 license. Instead, we effectively were "pre-announcing" that some future advanced features (yet to be developed) would instead be released under the Timescale License…

TimescaleDB licensing is mightily confusing. Instead of clarifying here, you might want to provide clear licensing info for all your products on your webpage.

Happy (non-paying) user otherwise, but this is a bit shady in my eyes.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#164

Post by wylie » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

Xylakant wrote: post #148

PeterZaitsev wrote: post #76

I wonder how many people contributed to Elastic which do not work for Elastic.co ? Those folks have reasonably counted on having fruits of their labor to be available under Apache 2.0 and now they only get to use them with SSPL restrictions

elasticsearch had a contributor license agreement in place for about as long as I can think, requiring full copyright assignment for all changes you’d contribute.

That's not accurate: there is a contributor agreement but it does not assign copyright. https://www.elastic.co/contributor-agreement

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#165

Post by ignoramous » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

matthewowen wrote: post #131

ignoramous wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA explains why Elasticsearch switching to SSPL is indeed a cause for concern. Money quotes: > Basically, it’s a hostile proprietary license masquerading in open source clothing. By using an SSPL project in your code, you are agreeing that if you provide an online service using that code then you will release not only that code but also the code for every supporting piece of software, all under the SSPL. > It’s not…

How true is this, in practice? I hear software folks say this sort of thing somewhat frequently, but I haven't heard it from a _legal_ person. And my general sense and understanding is that although an FAQ style clarification is not _perfect_, it _does_ carry non-trivial weight. Judges are not totally capricious people making arbitrary decisions: the notion that in a dispute they would just cast aside one party's _cl…

I'd rather stick to the license text (than rely on mental gymnastics to justify any interpretation based on a FAQ) to be upheld in the Court of Law.

Btw, note how MPLv2 FAQ page clearly points out that the FAQ doesn't give anyone a license to freely interpret the license itself:

> ...while this FAQ is intended to be accurate and helpful, it is not the license, and may not cover important issues that affect you and your specific situation. As a result, reading the FAQ should not serve as a substitute for reading the license itself, or for seeking legal advice from a lawyer.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/FAQ/

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#166

Post by opsunit » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:53 PM UTC

It is interesting to note that elastic.co is hosted on Google Cloud: https://runson.cloud/search/elastic.co

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#167

Post by __blockcipher__ » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #134

veselin wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt elastic intended to offer it for free to the cloud providers from the start. They wanted to offer it for free to end users. This is why I expect new products will now start with these more restrictive licenses.

I highly doubt anybody chooses an explicitly free and open source license without intending to offer their software to users under the terms of that license.

And to flip it around, the question isn't whether Elastic envisioned use case X. The whole meaning behind FOSS is that you're explicitly saying "I don't care what your use case is, you're free to use it".

So to later turn around and say "hey we never envisioned Amazon et all turning around and selling Elasticsearch as a service" is looking at it backwards. When you release something under Apache 2 (or a similar non-restrictive license) you're intentionally telling people to do what they want with it.

Anyway, my thoughts on these kinds of situations is that it usually implies there's some disconnect between how Elastic Co wants to make money versus how they actually are making money.

---

There's a related issue of open source maintainers/devs feeling "exploited". Now while having users submitting issues with unfortunate tone/wording that implies that you're obligated as the maintainer to spend your time fixing their issues is frustrating, it's also part of the game. I'm getting really frustrated with the whole "it's not fair that company X is using my free software without contributing back". That's literally what you agreed to have happen when you released under a non-restrictive license!

If you want a restrictive license, that's fine, but don't release under Apache 2 or BSD and then turn around and act shocked when people use your free software for free. It is unreasonable to put something out there for free and then suddenly expect money for it. That doesn't mean that companies shouldn't be contributing back to software they rely on - that's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned - but it does mean that nobody should be surprised when someone does choose to "consume" software without contributing back.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#168

Post by confiq » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

ahachete wrote: post #137

> This change in source code licensing has no impact on the overwhelming majority of our user community How come? If you switch open source to proprietary software (as much source-available as it may be), there's a significant impact: a % of users won't use proprietary software; those who may will not find this software packaged on package managers; derivatives and companion projects may stop being developed. Where's…

I assume if you run ES in your own datacenter or you use SaaS, you will be fine!

I guess they target AWS but not AWS users...

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#169

Post by baq » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

confiq wrote: post #162

Areading314 wrote: post #82

This is an alarmist headline. The SSPL license to which they are switching only requires your code to be open sourced if you are providing Elasticsearch itself as a service. This change is directed at cloud providers who take open source software and then provide them as a service for payment without contributing to the project. If you are using Elasticsearch on your backend to build search-enabled products or websit…

AFAIRemember, RedHat dropped MongoDB because of "controversial SSPL" > So essentially, anyone is free to modify MongoDB. It’s only when you offer MongoDB as a commercial service that the conditions of the SSPL state that you must open source the entire service. https://hub.packtpub.com/mongodb-withdraws-controversial-ser... Is this a difference like GPLv2 and GPLv3? Does this means that AWS now must open internal ser…

more like the difference between GPL and Affero GPL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#170

Post by jethro_tell » Thu, Jan 14, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

lacker wrote: post #143

I'm glad that the SSPL is becoming more of a standard for this sort of "open source minus AWS" software. One of the benefits of standard open source licenses is that it's easier for companies to give blanket permission, "you can use software that's MIT licensed". Hopefully it becomes easier for companies to just pick whether they say "we allow the use of SSPL'd software" or "we do not allow the use of SSPL'd software…

My guess is that sspl software is going to be on the block list or in speak to a lawyer territory. Most places don't or shouldn't open source willy billy as they have business obligations that have to be met before doing so.