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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

#441
post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) vol…

> 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. Even if they start out as labors of lov…

Very few OSS projects get popular enough and are structurally amenable to that kind of group contribution scenario. Of those that are, in most cases it results in an unusable hodge podge of crap rather than a well crafted product.

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

#442

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…

The point of Free Software is, in part, that other people can use it.

That includes nice people like you and me

It includes reprobates like Amazon

The horrid games they were playing with trade marks is part of why Amazon is a reprobate.

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

#443
post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dual licensing (using the GPL and a separate proprietary license) is kind of a hack solution that takes advantage of the fact that business hate the GPL. It can introduce some problems (it effectively bars you from accepting contributions unless you use a CLA, which many contributors won't do). However, while community is an important part of Open Source, the most important part of Open Source is the lack of restrictions on how people use/modify/share the code, so while people can debate whether or not dual licensing is a good idea, that doesn't mean the GPL stops applying.

Any code that is GPL licensed is Open Source. It might be distasteful to some people to force contributors to sign a CLA, you might get some criticism from some segments of the community, but it's not problematic in a way that means it's fundamentally non-FOSS.

BSL on the other hand is not Open Source, but becomes Open Source at the point where the BSL license expires and is replaced by an Open version.

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Personally, I might get some pushback on this, but I actually kind of like BSL more than dual licensing. Dual licensing relies on the fact that people find the GPL toxic. It feels much more to me like a temporary solution, and one that only works by kind of dragging the GPL through the mud. Even among people who don't hate the GPL, it encourages them to think of it as a tool to enforce 'fairness', rather than as a complicated way to use copyright to push towards a world where every user has the rights guaranteed in the GPL for every program they run.

TBH, I vaguely suspect that some of the movement towards SSPL is an evolution of people's attitude towards dual licensing, where they thought that the un-attractiveness of the GPL was the point of the GPL, and now feel like it's not living up to it's 'promise'. The fact that Amazon is able to use GPL code to provide commercial services is seen by those people as a bug, not a feature.

Many of the downsides and restrictions around community contributions with BSL are also present in dual licensing because of the implicit CLA requirements in dual licensed projects. So it's not clear to me that BSL is more harmful to community-built software than dual licensing, and given the above trend, it seems a bit more honest (for lack of a better word).

Because dual licensing doesn't really affect companies like Amazon, it kind of encourages people into these arm races where people say that the GPL has failed in its job because some companies don't hate it (again, the point of the GPL is not to be impossible for companies to use). BSL on the other hand is very straightforward, and because it's upfront about its goals, it's not subject to the same kinds of weird arm races and escalations. You release software as proprietary, we all recognize that it's proprietary and that you want compensation for it, and then at some point it becomes Open Source. That's a really simple model to think about and build around.

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But all that being said, code that is licensed under the GPL is Open Source, period, regardless of what other licenses it is simultaneously offered under.

BSL licensed code before it expires is not Open Source or FOSS: it's proprietary code that later is Open Sourced once a certain amount of commercial value has been extracted from it.

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

#444

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…

> 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? Ten years ago I would be very hesitant adopting ElasticSearch if I knew that they were the only ones…

I think AWS is a case of someone ruining it for the rest. Yes, they’re allowed to do that and there’s nothing wrong legally, but in the end everyone will be worse off.

I would be much more hesitant choosing an storage solution if I knew the parent company has problems monetizing upon it.

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

#445
post #47
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things seem like Amazon went beyond just selling their hosted version of Elasticstack: "When the service launched, imagine our surprise when the Amazon CTO tweeted that the service was released in collaboration with us. It was not. And over the years, we have heard repeatedly that this confusion persists. NOT OK." "So imagine our surprise when Amazon launched their service in 2015 based on Elasticsearch and cal…

> "So imagine our surprise when Amazon launched their service in 2015 based on Elasticsearch and called it Amazon Elasticsearch Service. We consider this to be a pretty obvious trademark violation. NOT OK." I don't understand. If I have an ISP and I offer mysql servers, can't I call that offering "Eznzt MySQL Service"?

Last time I checked, no, you couldn't. You could instead call the offering "Eznzt Service for MySQL".

A long time ago I had an open source project to manage mysql replication topologies, and I called it mysql-ha. At some point, they reached out to me about the trademark infringement.

They were nice about it, I did not get a legal notice or anything, just a contact from a MySQL employee pointing me to their policy (as in my response to your example: I could have called it ha-for-mysql), and requesting that I changed the name to make it compliant. I ended up with a full rename (called it highbase) and they were kind enough to give me a one year free subscription to MySQL Enterprise as a token of appreciation for my change.

In way that I think is interesting regarding the AWS and Elastic situation, what MySQL's trademark policy intended was to avoid the situation in which a third party could be confused by a product or project name (mysql-ha in my case) as to believe that MySQL, the company, was behind the offering. So any use of the trademark that made it clear they were not involved (as in the "X for MySQL" vs. "MySQL X") was ok.

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

#446

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…

This. Elastic produced a product that is popular because it's open source. (The closed source version of ES is called Splunk or DataDog.) Now they are pissed off that they can't profit from its popularity. I feel their sadness, but I don't think Amazon is the problem. Even before Amazon many non-Elastic hosted ES offers appeared (logz.io ?).

I would hate to be in their shoes, but it brings a valuable lesson to future entrepreneurs: Do fill the "unfair advantage" box in your business canvas.

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

The real problem that Elastic doesn't like is that amazon reimplements features as part of their core offering that ES tries to charge for. I'm sure they would have no problem contributing back but Elastic doesn't want these features to become part of the core offering.

This sounds like the Docker Inc and Red Hat dance again. Red Hat wanted tighter integration with systemd, Docker Inc not. The debate ended with Red Hat doing:

  alias docker=podman

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

#448
post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Though there's no confirmation I could find, there's an indication that they may/are:

Let’s take a quick look at the features that we are including in Open Distro for Elasticsearch. Some of these are currently available in Amazon Elasticsearch Service; others will become available in future updates.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-open-distro-for-elastic...

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

#449
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't matter what they say, read the license. I would love to but the terms within the ElasticSearch codebase on Github are quite confusing. Here's the text of the LICENCE.TXT file. Source code in this repository is covered by one of three licenses: (i) the Apache License 2.0 (ii) an Apache License 2.0 compatible license (iii) the Elastic License. The default license throughout the repository is Apache License…

Does this even work? ES was considered 'one work' at some point, right? It's developed together, not file-by-file. How is it possible then to license it file-by-file? Wouldn't most of those files be derivative works of the old 'one work' anyway? (Meaning they have to keep the original license, meaning "the default license, Apache License 2.0"?) Sure, at some point someone started to create a plugin for ES (let's say…

If ES is the sole copyright holder, they can license it to whomever they wish under whatever license they wish. IANAL, but it seems perfectly coherent to me that they can say "If you build the software this way, we release it to you under X license. If you build it that way, we release it under Y license."
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