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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

#511

Post by cactus2093 »

hvis wrote: post #339
cactus2093 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because Linus has no problems with Red Hat? And because Red Hat employs a lot of the key contributors to the Linux kernel? Also: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2671387/linus-gets-tough-o...

I don't think Redhat could have built their whole business on the just the implied understanding that Linus is cool with it. I'm more talking about the trademark issue, did they legally get the right to use the Linux trademark in some way that Amazon Elasticsearch didn't? Just curious if there is any substance to what Elastic is claiming here or if it's purely a PR stunt.

Edit: based on the Linux Foundation link in another comment, it seems they have a clear process for sublicensing the trademark. So I guess Elastic is claiming AWS just launched their ES service without their legal team ever having bothered looking into the trademark? That seems very strange for such a large company.

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

#512

Post by cmiles74 »

tinyhouse wrote: post #476
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…

The core of Elastic-search is Lucene, another OSS. I'm sure the ES team contributed a lot to Lucene, but do they share their profits with all the Lucene developers? You can think about Elastic as a hosted service around Lucene.

The only obligation that Easticsearch has to the Lucene project is to donate back improvements to Lucene itself. I believe the Elasticsearch project has done this in the past.

No one is asking Amazon to share profits with Elastic. Many people do expect Amazon to honor trademarks of other companies. Many people expect Amazon not to package proprietary features as if they were free and open source.

Lucene is a library that makes it easier to provide indexing and searching of "stuff". It's not a commercial product with a sales and consulting team. I can't think of a more apples and oranges comparison.

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

#513

Post by ako »

specialist wrote: post #321
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…

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…

Yes, and we are all voting with our wallets by buying the cheapest products. Just like with China. And just like with Chinese production, we'll regret it when it's too late.

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

#514

Post by cmiles74 »

lacker wrote: post #389
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…

Amazon came in and took a bunch of that money while not giving anything back. Amazon is giving a lot back to the community, though. They are providing a really valuable service when they provide open source software as a service. They aren't giving back to Elastic the company, but it's important to note the difference, because Amazon isn't being a bad actor here. I think it's reasonable for both Amazon and Elastic to…

I would bet that if Elastic disappeared we'd see this offering stagnate. Amazon has put time and energy into work making the service but little (AFAICT) into the Elasticsearch product itself.

In my opinion this is a short-sighted way for Amazon to do business. If Elastic makes every new feature unusable by Amazon, do to licensing restrictions, Amazon's product will fall behind.

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

#515

Post by nenolod »

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…

Amazon contributed code to Elasticsearch. They are certainly allowed to profit from their code contributions.

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

#516

Post by kemitchell »

btinker wrote: post #471
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. This. It is too bad they couldn't have satisfactory financial success building on open source and it is their right and perfectly fine to switch to a different model, but their justification as well as the SSPL dual licensing muddle the water unnecessarily.…

I don't have any problem calling SSPL software "open source". Or AGPL software, for that matter. What's not free or open about applying copyleft to network services?

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

#517

Post by CRConrad »

notatoad wrote: post #467
M2Ys4U wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on jurisdiction. In the EU, it is "dominant market position" (and explicitly so) that's the threshold for the Commission to take competition action, for instance.

would AWS be considered "dominant" though? they are the indisputably the market leader, but there's plenty of competition (not trying to argue they aren't dominant. just curious)

Presumably they could. I mean, if the EU legislators had intended for a monopoly to be necessary to be considered “dominant”, then they could have written “monopoly”, couldn't they? They didn't write that, so it seems safe to presume they didn't intend that. And if anyone is dominant, then who, if not the market leader?

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

#518

Post by Conan_Kudo »

floatingatoll wrote: post #469
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…

The new license doesn't restrict others from operating Elasticsearch as a service. It restricts others from operating Elasticsearch as a service unless they release any source code patches, improvements, and/or functionality extensions they make to it. To me, that's exactly what you're saying you expected from liberal licenses, but it's delivered by a restrictive license, using the restrictions popularized by GPL lic…

> The new license doesn't restrict others from operating Elasticsearch as a service. It restricts others from operating Elasticsearch as a service unless they release any source code patches, improvements, and/or functionality extensions they make to it.

If this was AGPL, I'd agree with you. IANAL, but SSPL is so broad that it could be construed to cover the Linux kernel, which is a no-no. :(

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

#519

Post by nenolod »

patch_cable wrote: post #402
kstrauser wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon illegally uses the ElasticSearch trademark. Amazon illegally uses and distributes proprietary Elastic's code. Those are interesting and specific accusations. Got any proof?

There is a link in the article to a separate post: https://www.elastic.co/blog/dear-search-guard-users-includin... . I think this is what it is referring to.

I read that article and it is very redolent of what SCO argued back in the day. If they had actual proof, they would take legal action against the author of that plugin.

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

#520

Post by kemitchell »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #95

> Our license change is aimed at preventing companies from taking our Elasticsearch and Kibana products and providing them directly as a service without collaborating with us. I feel like I just said this a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25796849 The main value of open source to businesses is that support is truly commodified and there is no one with a stranglehold on it. ElasticSearch is trying t…

> No one wants to build their infrastructure on something with expensive IBM/Oracle-costing support.

What's stopping you from running Elastic without paying for support under the new license?

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