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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

#101

Post by alisonkisk »

motives wrote: post #32
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…

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…

Elastic is not and legally cannot change the license of code contributed in the past. That code will always carry the original license.

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

#102

Post by LukeEF »

AWS have recently invested in DevRel and open-source evangelist type employees (to be found on twitter much of the time). I assume they understand better than anybody that the dev and startup dollar is enormous and crucial to their future success. This type of thing - and their past willingness to leach off open-source - has to have a marketing and sales impact - at least at the 'startup' top of the funnel. Is it sufficient to push AWS to change direction? Would be good to see a RocksDB, Cassandra or the likes emerge from AWS.

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

#103

Post by colechristensen »

prepend wrote: post #75
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…

I find these kind of obscure, “don’t worry” posts to increase my worrying. Part of the simplicity of open source is that it’s available for easy audit. Having to hire lawyers to use a product means I probably won’t use it. I also think having people saying “we’re open, but read the fine print” is not good for open source collaboration as it increases confusion and complexity. Elastic is moving the way of a commercial…

Yup. If you, understanding your product, your users, and your licensing, write a post for your users not to worry, it means that you thought about your changes and came to a well informed position that there was reason for worry.

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

#104

Post by indymike »

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…

Most of the issues in the article were about misuse of the Elasticsearch trademark. This seems like a fairly simple problem to deal with. AWS should not be competing with Elasticsearch using it's own trademark. The licensing changes really do nothing to solve the bad behavior by Amazon.

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

#105

Post by longhairedhippy »

Could this potentially drive users to the Amazon fork? If I'm a business that may be impacted due to the licensing change, it would seem my safest (legal) option would be to freeze on the last version with a friendly license and then transition to the Amazon fork, since it will probably stay under a more open license. While maybe not the smartest technical decision, from a business standpoint it seems like a reasonable insurance policy, at least until someone else tests the waters in court.

Amazon doesn't have any interest in making their version closed because they want the money from hosting. Even if the product isn't that great, it's super easy if I'm already 100% in on AWS anyway (not necessarily reality, but it is an easy conversation to have and the service should be big enough to warrant investment from AWS).

I applaud the stand they are taking and it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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

#106

Post by matz1 »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #27
shawnz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the person you are replying to is making any kind of argument about legality. I think they are saying that when you tell people something is acceptable, then they can only assume it actually is acceptable to you.

> I think they are saying that when you tell people something is acceptable, then they can only assume it actually is acceptable to you. I think that is false. Most things that are said assume that the listener will self-moderate. If I have Crohn's or IBS and I post a sign on my front-lawn saying "bathroom free to use for those in need" I'm not expecting you to pull up a tour-bus full of tourists, move into it and us…

>I'm not expecting you to pull up a tour-bus full of tourists, move into it and use it as housing, or a sex den for turning tricks

But you should expecting that, you can't assume the listener will self-moderate.

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

#107

Post by gpm »

signal11 wrote: post #93
prepend wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Something along those lines is trademarked

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

#108

Post by indymike »

Macha wrote: post #92
eznzt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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

Or they have not had their day in court. Trademark litigation is usually pretty straightforward.

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

#110

Post by shiftpgdn »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #57

I don't think most of Amazon's behavior actually violates any norms and values of traditional open source communities. I think instead we are finding that norms and values of traditional open source communities are in some ways contradictory/inconsistent; that there can be competing interests where it isn't true that either one of them is the one that "opensource norms and values" privileges; or that the traditional…

Amazon doesn't give back to open source maintainers at all. They take and take with no return. This isn't normal in the open source community.
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