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Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

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Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#81

Post by Proven »

jameshilliard wrote: post #59
z77dj3kl wrote: post #38

"And to be clear, this change most likely has zero effect on you, our users. It has no effect on our customers that engage with us either in cloud or on premises." No, that's just not true. So many users, from small hobby side-projects, to large open source projects, and mega-corps care about the licensing of dependencies, each for their own reason, and will not want to build on top of proprietary software that impos…

Yep, it's also incompatible with virtually all copyleft open source licenses. So if you were using any AGPLv3 code with elastic you now have to switch to Amazon's fork.

"with" Elastic how?

I doubt that is true, in fact it seems like a completely random FUD statement. At least GP tried to make heir FUD ambiguous.

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#82

Post by alisonkisk »

alex_young wrote: post #61
z77dj3kl wrote: post #38

"And to be clear, this change most likely has zero effect on you, our users. It has no effect on our customers that engage with us either in cloud or on premises." No, that's just not true. So many users, from small hobby side-projects, to large open source projects, and mega-corps care about the licensing of dependencies, each for their own reason, and will not want to build on top of proprietary software that impos…

This lack of clarity in law will likely result in huge issues in the sale of your startup if you ever go that route. Who wants to buy a potential lawsuit because of a database selection?

There are always "potential" lawsuits, and stripes already use many many licensed dependencies with various proprietary licenses.

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#83

Post by mariuz »

dhd415 wrote: post #10

Elastic's other blog post with a clarification about their recent license change is also interesting: https://www.elastic.co/blog/license-change-clarification . Apparently, they're considering further license changes such as MariaDB's Business Source License in which code is usable for anything other than offering the product itself as a service but becomes fully open source (including SaaS) after 3-5 years. That mak…

Related article Uproar: MariaDB Corp. veers away from open source https://www.infoworld.com/article/3109213/open-source-uproar...

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#85

Post by wokwokwok »

nrmitchi wrote: post #19
patrickaljord wrote: post #9

Their license literally says they have the right to use this code as they're doing, shouldn't be mad at them for that. Imagine putting a sign on your lawn that says people can walk on your lawn and are even allowed to poop on it if they feel like it and then getting mad at them when they do so. That being said, I support their right to change their license to whatever they like if it helps them survive as a business…

> Imagine putting a sign on your lawn that says people can walk on your lawn and are even allowed to poop on it if they feel like it and then getting mad at them when they do so. I mean, sure. Someone can poop on the lawn. There is a difference between that, and some business coming along with a dump truck full of shit that they then dump on the lawn, and I'm sure you understand that.

This is meaningless analogy; no one is pooping here.

Whats happening is they’re selling the same product; legally they’re entitled to do so.

They’re selling it in a deceptive (perhaps even legally dubious way), and thats not ok; but forget that, this has nothing really to do with being the good guys for open source and amazon being the bad guys, thats just the narrative that the elastic PR folk are putting out.

What’s happening here is being out-competed by people selling the same product, because despite being technically inferior (in my view) the competition can sell more of it more cheaply and not really care about the margins.

So... yes, I’m sympathetic, but this PR dance we go through every time pains me.

Just say it: we’re struggling. We cant compete with Amazon on equal terms, so we’re changing the license to force them to pay us royalties, or stop selling it.

You’re not doing it from the goodness of your heart, and if amazon wasn’t kicking your ass, you wouldn’t care, you’d just be laughing at them “trying to run a cloud version of elastic, ha!”. ...but amazon is very very good at that, actually, and very good at selling it.

Who’s going to judge you for not having amazons scale? No one; but they’re not being dicks, they’re doing their jobs, very successfully.

If you don’t like losing, that’s perfectly ok, no one does... but it doesnt make them bad, it just means they’re better at it than you.

Changing things to preserve your competitive edge is totally ok; but I don’t think its right to spin this us-them AWS is the evil empire narrative; youre in this situation because of the decisions you made, take a bit of humble pie and acknowledge responsibility for it as well.

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#86

Post by eropple »

danShumway wrote: post #56
d3nj4l wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not the point. There is legal and there is good - and simply reiterating that something is legal is unproductive and pointless.

This isn't really the spirit of Open Source though. The point of Open Source is that reuse and modification isn't just technically allowed legally, it's encouraged . I fully support their right to change their licensing, and I understand they may not have thought through the implications of their license -- and I empathize with that. I also empathize with criticism that Amazon isn't doing a great job of supporting th…

Open source may be a moral system, but Karl Popper had a thing or two to say about actors who take advantage of the morality of a system for immoral ends. At some point, whether you or I appreciate it, the open source world was bound to have to reinvent a solution to that.

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#87

Post by elliekelly »

rovr138 wrote: post #76
elliekelly wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the whole linked article and was disappointed there was no explanation of the license changes they made - only justifications for the change.

I think the title covers that this is "why" the change occurred. Not the explanation of the license they changed to.

That’s fair, if perhaps a bit pedantic. I suppose I was expecting some explanation of why the language of the new license would address these “whys” as opposed to just a list of grievances.

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#88

Post by Proven »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #72
aprdm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s still an oss license elasticsearch, they packed a lot of extra features to compete with Amazon distro and that bundle has a different license

I think you are mistaken and have missed the recent news which OP is about, but I'm not totally sure what you are talking about. Which license do you consider an OSS licensed elasticsearch?

Earlier you didn't say OSS - you said open source

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#89

Post by toast0 »

rkangel wrote: post #2

I assume the trademark thing should be a slam dunk? That seems like the most blatant trademark violation ever.

What else would you call the Amazon Elasticsearch Service?

Isn't that just Nominative fair use: referencing a mark to identify the actual goods and services that the trademark holder identifies with the mark?

Especially when it launched and there wasn't a fork.

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#90

Post by whitepaint »

josho wrote: post #45

This is fine. No seriously. Hear me out. If you are a proponent of capitalism then this is how the system works. The little fish grow into big fish. The big fish eat the little fish. The ecosystem suffers. It has always been this way. Many of us remember Microsoft in the nineties. Fewer will remember the phone or oil industry doing the same. Don’t fight this issue. Fight the system that tolerates this pattern. Money…

There are no better alternatives.

And about the ElasticSearch, they should have just used a different license.

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