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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

#321

Post by specialist »

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…

Amazon convinces investors to eschew profits. Unusual. Result: lower cost of capital.

Amazon benefits from extended tax holiday. Result: lower cost of doing business.

Amazon appropriates FOSS. Result: lower cost of development.

Amazon knocks off successful products, competing with their own partners in their own walled garden. Result: lower cost of product development.

Amazon allows counterfeit products, fake reviews, and other fraud. Result: lower cost of operations.

Amazon uses gig workers. Result: lower cost of labor.

I'm sensing a pattern...

Amazon's success, their prime (pun!) advantage, is built on aggressively avoiding costs normally incurred by other businesses. They perfected WalMart's strategy.

Sure, they've done some clever stuff. Throw enough spaghetti, some of it will stick. Free shipping with Prime membership is akin to Tencent's freemium (genius). And figuring out how to sell excess capacity was cool.

I'm sure a lot of other leaders would share Bezos' tolerance for risk, commitment to long term plans, if only they weren't micromanaged by Wall St.

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

#322

Post by nicoburns »

spinningslate wrote: post #260
StavrosK wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The trouble is that Amazon simply out-competes ElasticSearch with their own product when it comes to consultancy, services, etc. I don't know if it out-competes them on those terms exactly, rather than the advantage of "Well I'm already on AWS and they offer an ES service so why not just use that".

true - but that's exactly how it out-competes. It's a repeating pattern. Setting up an agreement with a 3rd party provider has friction. The bigger the client, the higher the friction. If $BIGCO has an enterprise agreement with $BIGCLOUD, then $SERVICE hosted on $BIGCLOUD is nearly always going to win against $SERVICE's own commercial offering.

Right, but that's the sort of setup that's detrimental to society and therefore we ought to consider regulating or otherwise setting up an environment that is disadvantageous to it.

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

#323

Post by dragonwriter »

api wrote: post #256
dragonwriter wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. If the creators get nothing, then why bother? Why slave away to make software just to give free labor to billion dollar companies…

> FOSS and its gift culture ethos just isn't working in today's world.

It absolutely is working the same way it always has (to which “gift culture” matters only around the edges). It doesn't work for people who want to start a business with a business model of using copyright law to extract monopoly rents, but then, it never has, and that's always been the point.

And, yes, it's not, for that reason, a good fit for narrow software entrepreneurship, but that's always been the domain of proprietary software.

What's new is startups building on OSS to build mind share, and then trying to shift to rent extraction while wanting to pretend to still be interested in OSS.

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

#324

Post by vinay_ys »

ardy42 wrote: post #271
acatton wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You would be surprised how many third party companies support closed source software product of another company. This is very common in enterprise world. It is also a common way for a vendor to get their foot into an enterprise entrenched with a competitor's product.

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

#325

Post by Omie6541 »

cactus2093 wrote: post #308
jamra wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the blog post? They are mad about trademark violation and an allegation that their commercial code has been ripped off by Amazon through a third party. They have Elasticsearch trademarked and you can't use their name with your name on it. In their mind, it is a violation.

Yes but how does changing their license affect a trademark? If they are legally in the right and this is a violation of their trademark they should win their lawsuit about it regardless. Also my initial question was not purely rhetorical, I would assume "Linux" is also trademarked so I'm wondering what is the difference there and why Redhat selling RHEL has not been the same problem.

I think it's not the same problem because Red Hat contributes heavily back to Linux kernel

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

#326

Post by ardy42 »

vinay_ys wrote: post #324
ardy42 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You would be surprised how many third party companies support closed source software product of another company. This is very common in enterprise world. It is also a common way for a vendor to get their foot into an enterprise entrenched with a competitor's product.

> You would be surprised how many third party companies support closed source software product of another company. This is very common in enterprise world. It is also a common way for a vendor to get their foot into an enterprise entrenched with a competitor's product.

I'm aware of that, and have even worked with such companies. However, IMHO it's way harder (and less effective) than supporting an open source product. For instance, it's way harder for a 2nd or 3rd party to diagnose and patch a bug if they don't have the source.

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

#327

Post by cratermoon »

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…

Amazon has become known for copying products and selling them as Amazon Basics. They either kick the original product off their platform or undercut the prices so drastically the original seller goes out of business.

https://fortune.com/2016/04/20/amazon-copies-merchants/

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

#328

Post by wolframhempel »

In a more general way, the Elastic/AWS case proves a more fundamental vulnerability of Open Source as a business model. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote this article called "Why I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one." trying to make this case and point out a couple of systemic pitfalls in OS as a business model (Apologies for the self-promotion, but I felt this might be relevant): https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-i-wouldnt-invest-open-sou...

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

#329

Post by j3th9n »

CaptArmchair wrote: post #236

I think I have grown a rather hard stance on this over the years: putting an open source license on a product isn't a business model. It's, by and large, a part of a larger business model. A license is a choice. It means you choose to not gain revenue by directly licensing the IP. Instead, you choose to put the code out there without any further legal obligations on your part as well as those who use that code. It al…

The problem here is that Amazon is infringing on copyright, using the "Elasticsearch" trademark and lying about a partnership in a tweet.

> A license is a choice. It means you choose to not gain revenue by directly licensing the IP. Instead, you choose to put the code out there without any further legal obligations on your part as well as those who use that code.

Open source doesn't mean you can infringe on its copyright and use trademarks everywhere you like.

> It also means that you have to find alternate ways of making revenue e.g. by providing consultancy, building services or licensing the trademark (which is an entirely different ball game from open sourcing the code!).

You didn't read the whole article?: "I took a personal loan to register the Elasticsearch trademark in 2011 believing in this norm in the open source ecosystem."

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

#330

Post by BossingAround »

cactus2093 wrote: post #258

What’s the difference between what Amazon does with Elasticsearch vs what someone like Redhat does with the Linux kernel? Or what every hosting provider including AWS does with the Linux kernel, sell access to a service that is running that software. I get that Elasticsearch wants to run their own company, but I really have no sympathy for their arguments here. They released open source software and now are mad that…

> What’s the difference between what Amazon does with Elasticsearch vs what someone like Redhat does with the Linux kernel?

Red Hat is a top 2-4 contributor to the Linux kernel though, depending on what source (and year) you take a look (e.g. [1]).

The big difference is that Amazon doesn't contribute back. The comparison seems misguided at best.

[1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Gi...

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