Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by technics256 » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

luisfmh wrote: post #80

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…

So what should we be using instead of elasticsearch for logs? To mitigate that licensing risk?

Loki and grafana are great, use it on all my clients eks clusters.

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

#152

Post by pritambaral » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

pyb wrote: post #114

This is tangential, but, speaking of intellectual property, was MongoDB entitled to strip the FSF copyright in the SSPL ? (as per https://webassets.mongodb.com/_com_assets/legal/SSPL-compare... line 5)

Given that the text of the SSPL amounts to a minor edit to that of the AGPL (at best): no.

The SSPL text is still a derivative of the AGPL text, which is copyrighted and licensed under the following terms (from https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html):

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

#153

Post by StavrosK » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

picodguyo wrote: post #116

This blog post strikes me as poorly written, overly emotional, and light on reasons to care. While not Amazon-sized, Elastic is itself a rather large company. Am I supposed to be upset that you're having difficulty getting even larger because of Amazon? Considering you're the experts on this product, shouldn't you be confident in your ability to differentiate from someone offering it as an afterthought? If anything,…

> shouldn't you be confident in your ability to differentiate from someone offering it as an afterthought?

They are. What they aren't confident in is their ability to differentiate from someone who offers it moderately competently, while not having to pay a single cent in development costs, unlike Elastic, which have to pay for almost all of them.

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

#154

Post by shawnz » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #86

danShumway wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's the immoral end? That more people are taking advantage of the technology offered in Elasticsearch? To me that seems like a moral and intentional end.

Or is the problem that Elastic can't effectively monopolize that technology which they purposely offered to the world for free? Well, of course not... how can both of those be true at the same time? The choice to release a product as open source is to intentionally prevent it from being monopolized.

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

#155

Post by franciscop » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

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 problem of the known open source licenses (vs this no-precedent one) is that they were made long time ago for other situations and they do a poor job at protecting open source authors from the abuse that we see from Amazon and similar.

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

#156

Post by prepend » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

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.

Imagine the sign says “(and that includes businesses with giant dump trucks, please bring it on)”

Because that’s what the license they used said.

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

#157

Post by dvfjsdhgfv » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #103

prepend wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or you might have a history of people being mad at you (for good reasons, like the story of security of the ELK stack). They know very well everybody will get mad again, so they precede all explanations by "don't worry".

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

#158

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

api wrote: post #94

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, w…

> The open source world needs to come together and create a license that is well crafted.

It has created several.

It hasn't created licenses well-crafted for purposes directly contrary to the purpose of having open source software, because that's not what the open source community is interested in.

> So far the FOSS world seems to be pretending this problem doesn’t exist.

From the point of view of the FOSS world, the issue here is not a problem; creators having an exclusive ability to monetize software as a service isn't a purpose open source is intended to serve; in fact, avoiding the lock-in that results from such exclusivity is a big part of the point.

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

#159

Post by pritambaral » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

brainzap wrote: post #122

why not make a license that requires to pay

Then they'd lose customers. Many people use their Open Source products because it's free (as in beer). The fact that the products are also free as in speech is merely co-incidental to them. Elastic Co. does not want to lose those customers.

On a broader note: Elastic Co. used Open Source as a marketing point for their product, but now no longer want to be held to the same standard.

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

#160

Post by R0b0t1 » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

yrgulation wrote: post #119

The cringe on this thread is appalling. Elasticsearch B.V. owes you nothing. The source code is still open source, but you should pay for re-selling or providing hosting services around it. They have salaries to pay. Period. Too many open source "believers" find themselves out of pocket, taking time away from their families and lives, only for companies like Amazaon and other WAANKs out there to make billions in prof…

Agree, the amount of people who license things as MIT is terrifying. There has been a couple of posts/rants on HN about this. A large company doesn't care about you, and licensing your code as MIT doesn't mean they're going to pay you. GPL actually gives you some teeth.