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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

#451

Post by Spivak »

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…

If it ends up being ruled that Amazon infringed on Elastic's trademark (their case here is pretty flimsy) or copied Elastic's proprietary code then Amazon deserves to get raked over the coals for copyright infringement.

But Amazon offering hosted Elasticsearch and forking the project is something that I think is okay. It sucks for Elastic but it's good for customers. Amazon is driving the cost of hosted Elasticsearch down closer to its real costs which will always out-compete Elastic who's trying to use their margin to fund development as well. So many businesses fall into the trap of not charging for their actual value and get eaten when someone else is better at their paid complementary services. Elastic's value is the software, not their hosting abilities.

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

#452

Post by babarock »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #160
yrgulation wrote: post #119

The cringe on this thread is appalling. Elasticsearch B.V. owes you nothing. The source code is still open source, but you should pay for re-selling or providing hosting services around it. They have salaries to pay. Period. Too many open source "believers" find themselves out of pocket, taking time away from their families and lives, only for companies like Amazaon and other WAANKs out there to make billions in prof…

Agree, the amount of people who license things as MIT is terrifying. There has been a couple of posts/rants on HN about this. A large company doesn't care about you, and licensing your code as MIT doesn't mean they're going to pay you. GPL actually gives you some teeth.

Is it possible that people licensing things as MIT don't mind that a multi-billion company makes money off their work?

I don't mean to make generalities about "open source", but a serious chunk of the community genuinely don't care.

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

#453

Post by babarock »

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…

What's the point of "open sourcing" if you get annoyed at people redistributing your work? Honest question here.

I'm really not interested to know who's in the "right" or in the "wrong". I want to know, what's the motivation for opensource if not "reuse my code please"

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

#454

Post by hallqv »

sjg007 wrote: post #376

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...…

Why antitrust? The cloud market is highly competetive and AWS only have about 1/3 market share.

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

#455

Post by StavrosK »

babarock wrote: post #453
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…

What's the point of "open sourcing" if you get annoyed at people redistributing your work? Honest question here. I'm really not interested to know who's in the "right" or in the "wrong". I want to know, what's the motivation for opensource if not "reuse my code please"

That question makes the wrong assumption. You assume "OSS" is a given and "getting annoyed at Amazon" is the issue. In reality, "getting annoyed at Amazon" is the given and "OSS" is the issue.

Then, you can ask "if they get annoyed at Amazon, why open source?" and the answer is "indeed, and now that they realized their mistake they're changing it".

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

#456

Post by fipar »

eznzt wrote: post #47
Jonnax wrote: 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"?

I checked again, and the guidelines with Oracle are similar to what they were with MySQL AB: https://www.oracle.com/legal/trademarks.html

Specifically to your example (I think), see "Company, Product or Service Names ", where it states the following:

> Do not use Oracle trademarks or potentially confusing variations as all or part of your company, product or service names. If you wish to note the relationship of your products or services to Oracle products or services, please use an appropriate tag line as detailed above. For example, "XYZ for Oracle database" not "OraXYZ or XYZ Oracle"

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

#457

Post by specialist »

remram wrote: post #381
specialist wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Any single entry on that "clever stuff" lists directly hurts someone and destroy the ecosystem in the long run.

Poor phrasing on my part. I mean decisions which weren't obviously correct beforehand.

I certainly didn't grok AWS for way too long.

And there was plenty of concern trolling about free shipping, eg "how long can they sustain this loss leader?!". Very long when you have free capital, certainly more than anyone else. It fortuitously parlayed into amazing customer retention and upselling. What Prof G (Scott Galloway) has coined the rundle (recurring revenue bundle). Proved so effective, in fact, that everyone's now doing subscriptions for everything.

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

#458

Post by [deleted] »

ddevault wrote: post #25

Elastic was an open source project, and now it's not. This was done because they believe it will be more profitable. It does affect you, especially if you contributed to the project, in which case they're basically spitting in your face as thanks for your hard work. This is not materially different from when Oracle infamously killed OpenSolaris, something they were rightfully crucified for by the community. They're n…

[deleted]

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

#459

Post by rossmohax »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #429
sammax wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Don't you need permission to advertise your product with Coca Cola™? Not if what you're selling is Coca Cola

Genuine question: why Amazon EKS and not Amazon Kubernetes then? I noticed every single managed Kubernetes doesn't call it Kubernetes.

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

#460

Post by treis »

tshaddox wrote: post #333
judofyr wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> In my opinion it seems like Elastic wants ElasticSearch to still be perceived as the fully open source project (with all of its good connotations) it once was. That’s my attitude towards most of these license changes or “open core” pivots. These companies want all the good will and community contributions of “open source” while still being able to wield intellectual property protection laws against other companies…

It's somewhere between bait and switch & dumping. It's very hard to compete against free. And it's very hard to make money when you give away your product for free. Cloud hosting was a way out of that conundrum. But that window is now closing as the big cloud operators move in + the rise of Docker making hosting much easier.
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