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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

#371

Post by spzb »

j3th9n wrote: post #329
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 copyr…

You don't fix trademarks disputes by changing software licenses. Elastic appear to have a sound argument on the trademark front but to conflate that with changing the license of their product is disingenuous.

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

#373

Post by aprdm »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #72
aprdm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s still an oss license elasticsearch, they packed a lot of extra features to compete with Amazon distro and that bundle has a different license

I think you are mistaken and have missed the recent news which OP is about, but I'm not totally sure what you are talking about. Which license do you consider an OSS licensed elasticsearch?

The apache license, https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/blob/master/LICENSE...

If you don't use any of the x-pack features (which used to be paid) you're all good.

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

#374

Post by srockets »

nrmitchi wrote: post #257
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…

> Amazon simply out-competes ElasticSearch with their own product when it comes to consultancy, services You're kind of right about this, but it's the issue that AWS just has a massive head-start with any client that already uses AWS. They don't really out-compete, they just use their existing vendor lock-in to gain an advantage. And really, by using your dominance in one "market" to gain an advantage elsewhere ends…

> They don't really out-compete, they just use their existing vendor lock-in to gain an advantage.

For the customer, the biggest advantage of AWS' SaaS offerings over a 3rd party's (hosted on AWS) is the billing. AWS Marketplace negates that. Maybe at some cost to the provider, but I just found ScyllaDB and RedisLabs there, so it must be working for some.

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

#375

Post by ethbr0 »

julienb_sea wrote: post #358
nicoburns wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do enterprises make it difficult to add a new vendor? Because they are careful with their data and legal obligations. Regulatory and auditing obligations are no joke and onboarding a new vendor is a nontrivial problem to do in a compliant fashion. The only aspect of this which is "detrimental to society" arguably is the legal requirements, but even then you might argue its better for a large organization to pay a…

The key enabler here is IAM and data (at rest and moving).

If we want to encourage free markets, the GDPR et al. need to be very careful to disincentivize "traffic within different parts of the same entity."

As is, if my regulatory compliance is satisfied through AWS's data and IAM handling, then if an Amazon-hosted service better integrates with those components, it strictly dominates competition.

That's a pretty unregulatable quality, and one easily optimized by Amazon (for itself), and impossibly by everyone else (on Amazon).

This weaponizes data protection regulation into a moat around large everything-and-the-kitchen-sink I/PaaS providers.

There needs to be balance between (a) protecting data & (b) ensuring a competitive ecosystem with multiple viable solutions.

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

#376

Post by sjg007 »

Elasticsearch has to enforce their trademark otherwise they will lose it. This is crucial.

Preserving their trademark will forbid Amazon from advertising their service as elasticsearch which may help them find and retain customers.

Elasticsearch should lobby for an antitrust investigation into AWS. Here the market is cloud computing is AWS. This is similar to antitrust in the mainframe market or the PC market etc... However, right now it's not clear what the antitrust remedy will be. In those markets things evolved, most recently from desktop PCs to cloud delivered web apps etc...

Beyond that Elastic needs to innovate or join up with someone bigger.

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

#377

Post by toomuchtodo »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #294
StavrosK wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I think it's generally "tweaking the rules so they can stay alive" at this point, ie not about increasing an already big revenue stream.

That's certainly what it looks like Elastic is trying to imply, but their revenue was over $400 million last year.

For comparison, AWS does about $40B/year in revenue.

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

#378

Post by nicoburns »

julienb_sea wrote: post #358
nicoburns wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do enterprises make it difficult to add a new vendor? Because they are careful with their data and legal obligations. Regulatory and auditing obligations are no joke and onboarding a new vendor is a nontrivial problem to do in a compliant fashion. The only aspect of this which is "detrimental to society" arguably is the legal requirements, but even then you might argue its better for a large organization to pay a…

The other way in which they are detrimental to society is by taking revenue away from companies such as elastic that are actually developing technology. In general there is economic hazard with any large company. There are also benefits and I don't think they should be eliminated entirely. But I do think they should be curtailed and the economy biased towards smaller companies.

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

#379

Post by ethbr0 »

spzb wrote: post #371
j3th9n wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 copyr…

You don't fix trademarks disputes by changing software licenses. Elastic appear to have a sound argument on the trademark front but to conflate that with changing the license of their product is disingenuous.

I read their argument as 'suing Amazon in the courts for trademark infringement is an insufficiently expedient remedy.'

It does OSS no good if Elastic prevails on merits the day after they go out of business from lost revenue.

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

#380

Post by osdev »

danShumway wrote: post #287
eropple wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will define freeloading by those with the capacity to do otherwise as immoral any day of the week (and AWS functionally does a lot of that), yes, and I will define it in those moral terms regardless of the legal letter of a license. There is an implicit social contract that open source software absolutely and without question relies upon--and yes, large actors owe more in response than small ones in that calculus.…

Reusing code is not freeloading in the Open Source (capitalized) movement -- at least, not the kind of freeloading that we'd like to discourage. I don't know what else I can do as an Open Source developer in my projects and my terminology to imply that when I say, "you can reuse my code for any reason" I actually mean it. I guess traditional Open Source advocates could abandon the entire term and go off and create a…

What’s your stance on Dual licensing? I honestly have had mixed Opinions on this, but I finally settled on Dual licensing and/or BSL 1.1 as a nice compromise. I think open source developers create a lot of value, and should have the facility to be compensated and have their passion become their job. Plus this whole Re-Licensing trend toward SSPL/BSL/Dual is IMHO the natural evolution of open-source strategies.
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