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

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

#431

Post by throw8932894 » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

zokier wrote: post #384

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…

> And I extensively use code generator which is also not public. 2. Source Code The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably downloading via the Internet without cha…

I distribute output from code generator. It is fully readable with comments. I also receive some patches on generated code, which I port back to generator.

I agree it does not fit strict definition of OS, but it fits Apache 2 license.

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

#432

Post by josho » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

indymike wrote: post #139

josho wrote: post #45

This is fine. No seriously. Hear me out. If you are a proponent of capitalism then this is how the system works. The little fish grow into big fish. The big fish eat the little fish. The ecosystem suffers. It has always been this way. Many of us remember Microsoft in the nineties. Fewer will remember the phone or oil industry doing the same. Don’t fight this issue. Fight the system that tolerates this pattern. Money…

Capitalism is simply an economic system defined by private ownership of the means of production. I'm not sure you are using capitalism correctly here.

You are right. I think it's that we allow companies to become dominant in their industry and abuse their market position. I incorrectly called out capitalism when it's really unregulated markets combined with a legal system that makes it possible for large companies to avoid consequences, or at least defer consequences until they've wiped out their competition that the consequence is merely a minor fine.

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

#433

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #307

notatoad wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> leveraging your market dominance in one area to compete in another is illegal Leveraging your monopoly to compete in another area is illegal. Leveraging a strong position isn’t and Amazon is a long ways from a monopoly.

> Leveraging your monopoly to compete in another area is illegal. Leveraging a strong position isn’t and Amazon is a long ways from a monopoly. That really depends on interpretation, which has shifted over time and continues to shift. IIRC, recent interpretations of some types of anti-competitive behavior have been rather literal and required something very close to a literal monopoly, which has had the effect of neu…

[deleted]

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

#434

Post by hallqv » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

Open source provider complaining that it's software is being used openly. Am I missing something?

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

#435

Post by lovelearning » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #6

StreamBright wrote: post #4

I wish there was something better than Elastic for indexing large volume of text.

Yes. AWS should build a real serverless alternative to it or buy Algolia or something...

Kendra is their Algolia-like service. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kendra/latest/dg/in-adding-docum...

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

#436

Post by the_reformation » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #322

spinningslate wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is increasing consumer choice and offering a cheaper product detrimental to society? It's beneficial to everybody besides Elastic's shareholders.

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

#437

Post by jaaron » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #363

Amazon illegally uses the ElasticSearch trademark. Amazon illegally uses and distributes proprietary Elastic's code. Why do people in the thread keeps repeating that it's OK while it's very obviously abuse by a too-powerful company? More generally I can't understand (and can't stand either) why people keep defending monopolists on HN. Monopolies are bad, morally, economically, in all sort of ways. They fuel abuse and…

Amazon's poor behavior doesn't excuse Elastic's poor behavior.

Amazon's violation of Elastic's trademark is an issue between two companies: Amazon & Elastic. Elastic has the courts available to them to pursue their case.

Elastric's change of license affects the larger open source and technical communities and it's understandable that contributors who supported the open source project are upset when Elastic changes the nature of the relationship.

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

#438

Post by inssein » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

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…

Agreed.

We actually were customers of Elastic's offering for a while, but they went down 3 times in a quarter, which was simply unacceptable. We had to switch, and have been okay since. Our bill is also more than half of what it used to be.

The AWS implementation is quite limited in many ways, and there could be a point where we switch back or host it ourselves.

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

#439

Post by kronin » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #356

c0l0 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion of Open Distro for ES being "a fork" is, in my opinion and as of last I checked, overblown. Yes, they bundle a bunch of freely licensed stuff to make up for features that Elastic themselves have paywalled off (or sealed behind their free-to-use, but non-libre, custom license where they don't show/include sources either), but they rely on and effectively install the (hitherto) Apache-licensed upstream relea…

You should consider opening an issue on their github [0]? AWS, from what I know, takes security seriously, and given they themselves use OpenDistro internally, this should become a top priority for them. [0] https://github.com/opendistro-for-elasticsearch/opendistro-b...

Have you ever found confirmation that they use OpenDistro internally? I've looked and have been unable to find such a statement.

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

#440

Post by mbreese » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

sammax wrote: post #396

rjmunro wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't confuse trademarks and Copyrights - they are entirely separate things. Using a trademark is not infringing Copyright. It may or may not be infringing the trademark, but that's a whole different thing. In general, anyone can use your trademark as long as they are using it about you or your product. I can say "I like Coca Cola, it tastes great" or even "Coca Cola is disgusting" but if I put Coca Cola on th…

Don't you need permission to advertise your product with Coca Cola™? Or in this case, would Amazon not need Elastic's permission to say "we use Elastic" to advertise AWS?

Trademark law is very different than copyright law. You are allowed to use trademarks in certain circumstances. You can’t imply a relationship that doesn’t exist, but AWS saying - this is a hosted version of Elasticsearch would probably be okay (but IANAL).

Where they’d get into trouble is if they said they offered a hosted Elasticsearch, but under the hood it was something else. But, even then they could probably say that their offering was Elasticsearch compatible.

The real question is: was AWS misleading customers? I don’t make any claims one way or the other about this specific case. But I wanted to point out that you don’t always need permission to use another’s trademark.

From [1]:

> Nominative use permits the use of a trademark – even in commercial contexts – if it is the most accurate way to refer to a good or service without misleading consumers as to its source.

[1] https://google.github.io/opencasebook/trademarks/#fair-use-d...