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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

#91

Post by alisonkisk »

elliekelly wrote: post #65
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…

> Then after a period of time, typically 3-4 years, but not more than 5 years, the restrictions lapse, and the source code automatically converts to an Open Source license, in our case Apache 2.0. I’m not familiar with this type of license. Any idea how/when this time frame is decided? Is it 3-5 years from software release? I guess I’m confused by the use of “automatically converts” with a vague timeline. If it’s aut…

https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-mariadb/

An individual instance of license will say "the covered code is usable under Foo license from Year-Month-Day"

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

#92

Post by Macha »

eznzt wrote: post #47
Jonnax wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things seem like Amazon went beyond just selling their hosted version of Elasticstack: "When the service launched, imagine our surprise when the Amazon CTO tweeted that the service was released in collaboration with us. It was not. And over the years, we have heard repeatedly that this confusion persists. NOT OK." "So imagine our surprise when Amazon launched their service in 2015 based on Elasticsearch and cal…

> "So imagine our surprise when Amazon launched their service in 2015 based on Elasticsearch and called it Amazon Elasticsearch Service. We consider this to be a pretty obvious trademark violation. NOT OK." I don't understand. If I have an ISP and I offer mysql servers, can't I call that offering "Eznzt MySQL Service"?

Given that Elastic are describing that they've tried every option, I including legal ones and Amazon elasticsearch service is still named as such, it would seem it at least isn't as clear cut as elastic believes

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

#93

Post by signal11 »

prepend wrote: post #79
gpm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSI does not have a trademark on the term open source, they tried and failed to acquire one.

I think they need one. Comically, this is why trademarks exist to prevent people from confusing the market with similar and reused terms. I think we need a CreativeCommons-like trademark for open source software before it’s too late.

I think "OSI Approved Open Source License" could easily be an OSI trademark, if it's not already.

Ironicallly, like many other organizations, Elastic themselves have used OSI's approval as a benchmark for 'open source'[1]:

> Is X-Pack now open source?

> Updated on 2018-04-24 with a link to the Elastic License

> Open source licensing maintains a strict definition from the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

> As of 6.3, the X-Pack code is open under the Elastic License. However, it will not be 'open source' as it will not be covered by an OSI approved license. The interaction model for open X-Pack will be identical to the open source Elastic Stack, including the ability to inspect code, create issues and open pull requests via our existing GitHub repositories.

[1] https://www.elastic.co/what-is/open-x-pack

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

#94

Post by api »

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…

The open source world needs to come together and create a license that is well crafted. Otherwise we will keep seeing these less suitable licenses.

So far the FOSS world seems to be pretending this problem doesn’t exist. Pretending a problem doesn’t exist doesn’t make the problem go away. It makes you go away as you become irrelevant.

There is the AGPL, but it's not quite right. It also has the letters G-P-L in it, which spooks a ton of people still influenced by Microsoft's billion dollars worth of anti-GPL FUD. (I'm convinced you could just rename the GPL and all those problems would go away.)

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

#95

Post by Pet_Ant »

> Our license change is aimed at preventing companies from taking our Elasticsearch and Kibana products and providing them directly as a service without collaborating with us.

I feel like I just said this a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25796849

The main value of open source to businesses is that support is truly commodified and there is no one with a stranglehold on it. ElasticSearch is trying to remove what makes open source appealing to businesses. No one wants to build their infrastructure on something with expensive IBM/Oracle-costing support. Basically, from now on, ElasticSearch has removed that benefit from their product and businesses are at risk. It's now much less appealing... is the remaining niche profitable? Only time will tell.

Note, why businesses find open-source appealing is not why developers find it appealing, or private individuals.

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

#96

Post by motives »

jjoonathan wrote: post #60
motives wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe the issue most are taking here is the license itself that elasticsearch now has, I think its the relicensing of existing contributions (ironically including those from AWS and their employees) which were originally under a true, well-accepted and liberal FOSS license. If elasticsearch had this license from day one, that would be fair enough, but many people do not freely contribute time and effort to…

> ironically including those from AWS and their employees Does AWS ever contribute anything that isn't an AWS integration? I'm not asking rhetorically -- those are the only kind of "contribution" I've ever seen from them.

Quoting another earlier comment from an elasticsearch thread here, credits to user _msw_ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25783509): https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/pull/61400 https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/pull/59563 https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/pull/57271 https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/pull/53643 .

None of the above appear to be related to AWS specific APIs and offer a small sample of total contributions from AWS employees.

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

#97

Post by dannyw »

prepend wrote: post #64

So I guess the options are now to use the “OpenDistro” [0] or the SSPL distro maintained by Elastic. It’s too bad that Elastic is no longer open source, but respect the companies choice to close source their stuff. Will be interesting if Amazon just maintains their fork or abandons it to make something else. I’m not familiar with elastic as a project and not sure how many community contributions they have, but expect…

Elastic is still open source for anyone but Amazon or other cloud providers trying to resell their work.

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

#98

Post by jameshilliard »

alisonkisk wrote: post #78
jameshilliard wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is incompatible with non-Affero GPL?

Yes, it's incompatible, although you might be fine if you aren't distributing it or running it as a service. SSPL requires re-licensing of all code to the SSPL, GPL has provisions that disallow re-licensing.

> the simple requirement that if you provide the product as a service, you must also publicly release any modifications as well as the source code of your management layers under SSPL

This provision is effectively impossible for anyone to comply with in practice. Calling this a "simple requirement" is a barefaced lie.

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

#99

Post by alisonkisk »

wokwokwok wrote: post #85
nrmitchi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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’…

Why do you feel the need to to free PR work for Amazon? Amazon has no respect for its business partners, let alone competitors or employees; why should the Elastic team have an obligation to not be mad? Mad is a human emotion.

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

#100

Post by sireat »

Elastic has the same problem that MongoDB has with Amazon: Amazon is commoditizing their product on a massive scale.

"Smart companies try to commoditize their products’ complements."

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

Not sure what other alternatives are there besides changing licensing.

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