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Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

elastic.co

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Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#191

Post by z77dj3kl »

brasetvik wrote: post #72
worldsayshi wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will this entail for when you're building Elastic Plugins?

> This change does not affect how you build or license plugins to Elasticsearch or Kibana. For the avoidance of doubt, building a plugin to be used in Elasticsearch or Kibana does not constitute a derivative work, and will not have any impact on how you license the source code of your plugin. - https://www.elastic.co/pricing/faq/licensing#im-building-plu...

FAQ is not the license, it's their rosy interpretation.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#192

Post by darkarmani »

artembugara wrote: post #84

It's just a change to make sure that those who resell ES as a service share their code. We use AWS's ES. And, as far as I'm concerned they already open-source their version. SSPL is actually helping the open-source community here

Which means AWS is going to fork their own version of ES and not push their fixes upstream.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#193

Post by slaymaker1907 »

lacker wrote: post #144
kam wrote: post #119

Are there any known instances where a company offering Mongo or another SSPL-licensed app as a service has complied with section 13 by releasing the “Service Source Code” of everything supporting the service? If not, that basically confirms the OSI's rejection of the SSPL as an open source license -- If that provision is too onerous to be followed, it might as well say "you can't offer this as a service".

You could say the same about the GPL - the practical effect is almost never to make a company release their previously-proprietary source code, the practical effect is to make companies not use it in the first place. Which is fine, as long as it's clear what the rules are, and the rules seem clear enough to me.

I don't think this is correct. It definitely seems like code that would otherwise be proprietary does end up being open sourced in the case of the Linux kernel with certain drivers.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#194

Post by AmericanChopper »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #178
AmericanChopper wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's reasonable to attribute motive to the contributors in this way. Changes like this protect the elastic enterprise, whether they align with the motives of contributors would have to be evaluated on a per-contributor basis. I've made several contributions to ELK, and my only motive has been that it's useful open source software, and I want to make it more useful. I personally don't care who profits of…

> I've made several contributions to ELK, and my only motive has been that it's useful open source software, and I want to make it more useful. I personally don't care who profits off the codebase, I think anybody should be free to. I personally would object to anybody trying to lock down how it can be used, and would see any attempt to do so as running completely counter to my personal motivations as a past contribu…

I very strongly agree. It's always seemed like a quintessential tragedy of the commons to me. Everybody benefits from open source software, no matter what they're doing. Proportionally, very few people/organisations contribute to open source, and I would guess that nobody contributes to every open source project that they consume. I've always seen one of the core aspects of the value of open source being the common utility they provide. The idea that an open source consumer should contribute back value in some way proportional to the value they derive runs counter to that. The moment you start to restrict access to open source software based on some model of deservedness, you start to undermine the principles of common good that a lot of open source values are based on.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#195

Post by ender341341 »

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…

> Judges are not totally capricious people making arbitrary decisions: the notion that in a dispute they would just cast aside one party's _clear and well documented intent_ to narrow the scope of the burden they place on another is... well, it doesn't seem all that credible to me.

My (non-lawyer) experience tells me the same, judges don't like people who try to argue one thing to a judge while clearly documenting on their website the opposite isn't going to go well, but as others pointed out that doesn't make it a smart choice to depend on, or that corporate lawyers will agree is worth the risk.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#196

Post by jamesblonde »

CSDude wrote: post #140
nopzor wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they’d still be able to innovate their own fork, but they will no longer be able to pull future upstream elastic code into it. so it becomes more of a hard fork. if elastic continues to innovate it will be difficult for open distro to remain competitive with it.

AWS ES has major problems, have been a pain us for years. Pretty sure they cannot be competitive with a hard fork

My guess, from AWS experience, is that you're right. What specific pain points did you experience?

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#198

Post by __blockcipher__ »

softwaredoug wrote: post #67
andr wrote: post #64

In my mind, this strongly constrasts with the words [0] of WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg. He says they want to own roughly 5% of the WordPress market, and instead of growing their share of the pie, grow the pie itself. [0] https://fs.blog/knowledge-project/matt-mullenweg/

Is this because the Wordpress market is huge (almost every website)? Whereas Elastic, Mongo, etc market share is not as huge?

Wordpress is huge precisely because it was open. Elastic is already quite large and would keep growing massively if they stay non-restrictive. Now that they've switched licenses, this may have a significant enough effect over the long-term that they're leaving a lot of "opportunity pie" on the table.

Re: Licensing changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana

#199

Post by __blockcipher__ »

pietrovismara wrote: post #115
davexunit wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would no longer be FOSS if they did that.

In practice it would only affect corporate thieves, so I think it's actually necessary to protect the open source ecosystem.

Let's be clear here: You build something. You release it under a license that says, "do what you want with it, profit with it, I don't care". Then someone comes and builds on top of it, and you call them a thief? For using something you told them they could use without restriction?

Related: I find it really bizarre how many in the tech community seem to outright just not believe in capitalism...

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