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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

#271

Post by ardy42 »

acatton wrote: post #218
stavros wrote: post #166

Apart from the general consternation about an OSS license becoming non-OSS, can we also talk about the problem that companies are formed, invest a whole lot of resources into creating a product, open-source it, and then have Amazon eat into their profits by just installing and maintaining that product as a service? No matter how you slice it, I think Amazon is bad for us end-users, and Elastic is good. Elastic could…

> Elastic could have released ES as closed source, but they didn't, and the OSS ecosystem is better for it. A relevant question is "would they have been that successful if Elastic were 'just another closed source enterprise product'." Elastic was successful because a lot of companies tried it out for free and then purchased licenses, or because hobbiysts used it on their personal project and then pushed for it at wor…

> A relevant question is "would they have been that successful if Elastic were 'just another closed source enterprise product'."

> Elastic was successful because a lot of companies tried it out for free and then purchased licenses, or because hobbiysts used it on their personal project and then pushed for it at work.

That model is not actually incompatible with closed source. You can always distribute binaries with a liberal usage license. And if your model is selling support, that might actually be helpful, since it's even less practical for a 2nd or 3rd party to support software when they don't have access to the source code, so you'd sell more support contracts

I think Amazon's behavior may end up just harming open source, by punishing the idealism that leads companies to try to make commercialized open source business models work.

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

#272

Post by detritus »

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'm just a bystander in this regard as it's not really my domain, but have played around with AWS a bit and I must admit, I didn't realise that ElasticSearch wasn't Amazon's own product per se.

Seems to me that Amazon has grossly overstepped fair play here.

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

#273

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

cortesoft wrote: post #193
stavros wrote: post #166

Apart from the general consternation about an OSS license becoming non-OSS, can we also talk about the problem that companies are formed, invest a whole lot of resources into creating a product, open-source it, and then have Amazon eat into their profits by just installing and maintaining that product as a service? No matter how you slice it, I think Amazon is bad for us end-users, and Elastic is good. Elastic could…

> Elastic could have released ES as closed source, but they didn't, and the OSS ecosystem is better for it. Except elasticsearch was created before the company Elastic even existed. They couldn’t have released it as closed source because they weren’t there to release it at all. It was written by one guy and it was based on previous open source code in Lucene. I am ok with them making money off their project, but it i…

They actually have their billion dollar company, if they think they're owed it - Elastic has a market cap of over $14 billion.

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

#274

Post by [deleted] »

stavros wrote: post #166

Apart from the general consternation about an OSS license becoming non-OSS, can we also talk about the problem that companies are formed, invest a whole lot of resources into creating a product, open-source it, and then have Amazon eat into their profits by just installing and maintaining that product as a service? No matter how you slice it, I think Amazon is bad for us end-users, and Elastic is good. Elastic could…

[deleted]

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

#275

Post by fakedang »

StavrosK wrote: post #232
pjc50 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is almost, but not quite, the "Tivoization" that prompted the creation of the GPL3. The requirement to give something back and/or avoid taking profit from the work of others is something the OSS world has a complicated relationship to. GPL is quite clear that there's a requirement to pass on source changes, if not explicitly to give them back, and many people were outraged by even this limited requirement and in…

> There aren't simple clear answers to these questions, only a slowly evolving discussion. Certainly, and I think that if we want OSS to thrive we need to move towards a future where it's easy for companies to make a return on their investment by releasing OSS. I think Amazon and all the "I provide your software as a service" providers eat into that and hinder that future. Yes, GPLv3 was meant to fight Tivoization, b…

I believe in a previous thread, someone suggested OSS except companies having this much of a revenue (since market cap is a bit of a variable metric). Why wouldn't that be a viable model?

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

#276

Post by nrmitchi »

JCM9 wrote: post #233

Elastic’s arguments are problematic considering the history of the codebase. They didn’t invent “elasticsearch” from scratch, rather they took someone else’s codebase (Lucene) and made it better. Fundamentally that’s what AWS did too... they took open source code and improved on it to offer a very popular managed service. Elastic seems annoyed that AWS has executed better on the managed service front but aren’t offer…

I'm really starting to dislike this notion of "Oh well Elastic deserves this since they build on an open source project, Lucene!"

There are two main differences here.

1. The scope of the change. My understanding is that Elasticsearch may use Lucene under the hood, but extends it in ways and for use cases that Lucene was not designed for. The same can not be said about AWS taking Elasticsearch and running it as a drop-in replacement.

2. Perhaps most importantly, Elasticsearch didn't build on top of Lucene, and then decide to call itself Lucene. If you think there is so little differentiation between the product you built and the product you built off of, that you are better off highjacking the name, then I question if you made any meaningful differences.

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

#277

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

StavrosK wrote: post #232
pjc50 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is almost, but not quite, the "Tivoization" that prompted the creation of the GPL3. The requirement to give something back and/or avoid taking profit from the work of others is something the OSS world has a complicated relationship to. GPL is quite clear that there's a requirement to pass on source changes, if not explicitly to give them back, and many people were outraged by even this limited requirement and in…

> There aren't simple clear answers to these questions, only a slowly evolving discussion. Certainly, and I think that if we want OSS to thrive we need to move towards a future where it's easy for companies to make a return on their investment by releasing OSS. I think Amazon and all the "I provide your software as a service" providers eat into that and hinder that future. Yes, GPLv3 was meant to fight Tivoization, b…

But imagine where we'd be if this discussion had happened 30 years ago, in the days when the monetization model was charging a distribution fee. How much of the modern Internet would have had to be excluded from free software licensing to protect that? I have no issue with tweaking OSS licenses to respond to the circumstances of the times, but tweaking them in order to ensure I can make lots of money seems anti-competitive and anti-innovative.

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

#278

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

gpm wrote: post #168
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think there are valid differences in opinion in what “open source” means Disagree. It's a well standardised term of art: it means what the OSI define it to mean. It's pretty precise, and is not a meaningless marketing term like premium . Similarly free software (and especially Free Software ) means what the FSF defines it to mean. When people start using these terms to mean whatever they feel like it should mean,…

> Tellingly, such redefinitions are generally broader than the accepted OSI definition, so as to include whatever product someone is trying to push. I disagree. In fact I'll present the counter example of "myself". I don't agree with the OSIs definition of open source, I think it run contrary to the plain meaning of the term, and is contrary to pre-OSI use of the term. I've argued that numerous times on this forum (a…

Frankly I don't get why OSI proponents are so angry about the use of the term Open Source, when they can just unambiguously use "OSI Approved License" instead.

It's borderline gatekeeping and it irks me to no end.

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

#279

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 »

ABeeSea wrote: post #242
pjc50 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is almost, but not quite, the "Tivoization" that prompted the creation of the GPL3. The requirement to give something back and/or avoid taking profit from the work of others is something the OSS world has a complicated relationship to. GPL is quite clear that there's a requirement to pass on source changes, if not explicitly to give them back, and many people were outraged by even this limited requirement and in…

> many people were outraged by even this limited requirement It isn’t a limited requirements. There is a very real legal risk that using GPL software in an enterprise code base means you have to open source of your entire code base. That is an unacceptable risk for almost any business so GPL software doesn’t get used.

> That is an unacceptable risk for almost any business so GPL software doesn’t get used.

And this, right there, is how MySQL AB was purchased for a billion dollars in 2008: you dual-license your software. Release it under a copyleft license that bigco's don't want to touch (AGPL3 is tempting today!), and offer a commercial license that gives your customers the freedom to use it as they need.

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

#280

Post by StavrosK »

35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #251
StavrosK wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should we be mad at Amazon for adhering to the terms of the license that the ES developers chose? We shouldn't. But you can't have your cake and eat it too, and say "well these are the terms you chose so why be mad at someone following them" and then ALSO say "hey, you can't change your terms!". They're their terms, they can change them if they want to.

> But you can't have your cake and eat it too, and say "well these are the terms you chose so why be mad at someone following them" and then ALSO say "hey, you can't change your terms!". I haven't said that. And as far as I know, Amazon hasn't either. Have I missed something from them? You seem to be the only person passing value judgements: > Amazon hinders that, period. I don't think Elastic is in the wrong here, I…

> I haven't said that. And as far as I know, Amazon hasn't either. Have I missed something from them?

I'm talking about the general sentiment here. Either Amazon have been playing by the rules and Elastic is within their rights to change those rules, so no problem anywhere, or Amazon has been harming a part of the OSS ecosystem and forced Elastic to make an unpopular change.

> Amazon used Elastic per terms of the license

Maybe I shouldn't have used "in the wrong" and said "is the problem" instead. I don't so much care about whether the rules are being followed as I care that more companies are encouraged to release their software as OSS because they can make money for it. That's a win-win situation to me.

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