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

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

#341

Post by jahewson » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

no_wizard wrote: post #254

I never understood why its so hard for Corporations (specifically, US Corporations) to just give back to these projects via corporate charity contributions. I know, this takes away from other worthy causes too in some ways, however, I think we could get massive boosts that help all tides in the long run. After all, US corporate giving, from a cursory search, in 2019 alone was 21.09 billion USD [0] if even 1% of that…

Open source software development isn’t regarded as a social good (legally in the US), it has to be fulfilling some broader charitable purpose.

But such a system would completely change the dynamics of open source, likely in undesirable ways. Keep the money out, I say.

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

#342

Post by BossingAround » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

fuball63 wrote: post #297

throw8932894 wrote: post #180

I run Apache licensed storage library. It is not big, but consulting fees cover my living. Some time ago I changed development model. Public facing version is still Apache 2 licensed. But now there are no unit tests and no integration tests, those are proprietary now. And I extensively use code generator which is also not public. It is still possible to fork/modify code. Merging pull request is bit more difficult for…

This is a pretty interesting approach, but what is the point of it being open at all if it is prohibitively difficult to develop on without tests? To me it seems like a happy medium of being accessible while still protecting your livelihood.

> This is a pretty interesting approach, but what is the point of it being open at all if it is prohibitively difficult to develop on without tests?

Personally, I wouldn't use a proprietary library/framework unless absolutely necessary. I think it's a great strategy, actually; OP is sacrificing outside contributions while making it much more difficult for someone to just fork the project and bypass them entirely.

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

#343

Post by rsstack » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

BossingAround wrote: post #335

rsstack wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine but that's not "Open Source" as the open source community sees it. That's just source-available. It's great: when I choose proprietary software, I'm much happier when I get the source code along with it since it can help with diagnostics and advanced cases. But it isn't "Open Source".

> That's fine but that's not "Open Source" as the open source community sees it It's Apache 2. It's as "Open Source" as you can get [1]. [1] https://opensource.org/licenses/Apache-2.0

But the actual source isn't Apache 2. It's just a build artifact that's licensed this way. It's "Open Package" not "Open Source".

I can take a screenshot of Windows 10 and publish it under an Apache 2 license, but that doesn't make the Windows 10 source code "Open Source".

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

#344

Post by jrv » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

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.

See https://www.linuxfoundation.org/the-linux-mark/

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

#345

Post by twobitshifter » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #270

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…

From a purely utilitarian perspective, I can live without Elastic far easier than I could live without AWS. From a legal perspective, AWS are faultless in using OSS for their own purposes. The only losers are Elastic's investors. And there's no way they couldn't have seen this coming with their business model as it is.

I think Amazon infringed on the trademark. I’m not sure how that didn’t lead to an agreement between ES and Amazon. Perhaps Amazon just had the better lawyers.

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

#346

Post by paxys » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

no_wizard wrote: post #254

I never understood why its so hard for Corporations (specifically, US Corporations) to just give back to these projects via corporate charity contributions. I know, this takes away from other worthy causes too in some ways, however, I think we could get massive boosts that help all tides in the long run. After all, US corporate giving, from a cursory search, in 2019 alone was 21.09 billion USD [0] if even 1% of that…

Elastic is a $15 billion company. Its investors aren't looking for charity.

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

#347

Post by api » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #323

api wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 na…

I don't think I totally disagree, but here's the problem: if OSS is not a good fit for software entrepreneurship, then it puts a really severe cap on how advanced, polished, easy to use, or well supported OSS can be, because pushing really hard on software development and implementing tens of thousands of hours of fine-grained polish is far beyond what the vast majority of people can afford to (or are willing to) volunteer for free.

It places really polished products beyond the realm of OSS. If you're fine with that, then there's no problem. Perhaps OSS has achieved its goal, namely creating a free and open software ecosystem for nerds and by nerds.

I can't think of a single OSS project used (directly) by a large number of the general public that does not have a company behind it. I think that says something.

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

#348

Post by r-w » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

I wonder if you can send them a cease-and-desist.

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

#349

Post by pas » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

jacobr1 wrote: post #237

pas wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's especially ... ironic, that they think Amazonification is not-ok, but Enterprizificaion (open core) is a-ok. That said hosting ES is basically the same as building a carwash, or a gas station, or let's say a printing house. You get the machinery and build your own support services around it. Even the unit economics are not that different. AWS spent probably millions of dollars to push the marginal price down. Th…

The cloud providers would just build a competing service if they couldn't co-opt an existing popular open source solution. Or anoint an adjacent solution, like solr in the case of elasticsearch. But what can be done and we really haven't seen a "open-core" type infra component try this yet: is require open-sourcing changes. The opendistro approach sorta gets us there, in a hard-fork sense, but seems in adequate and i…

... a bit theoretical, but how is the GPLv3 with the anti-Tivo provision okay?

OSI definition 10: License must not restrict interface, and def. 9. License must not restrict other software it gets distributed with. (So I can't put my encrypted bootloader and verifier into the same thing.)

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

#350

Post by alextheparrot » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

wolframhempel wrote: post #328

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://ww…

In your post you talk briefly about licensing -- effectively (1) MIT/Apache are common and very permissive (2) AGPL sometimes gets shut down by legal (3) Changing licenses is hard.

Given these primitives, do you think one solution to the problem is just what we see here, a new licensing structure for some types of open source? Elastic's move here, attacking the issue through licensing, is one way that this sort of business model is becoming more robust over time and would be instructive for other founders looking to create revenue generating software that is also open source.

As a developer, the main reason I _love_ open source is that I help patch issues or inspect the code to get a better understanding. Which is great because the changes Elastic are making to their license are orthogonal to the value prop for your average developer.