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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

#571

Post by viraptor »

anticristi wrote: post #446
cactus2093 wrote: post #258

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…

> The closed source version of ES is called Splunk or DataDog.

No, these are services which probably use some kind of search/indexing service in their implementation. They don't provide a database interface.

The closed alternative would be something like Algolia or Azure Search.

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

#572

Post by lovehashbrowns »

notyourday wrote: post #416
michaelmior wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't a big part of the reason Amazon can offer better pricing because of the scale of their existing client base? I'm not saying that they are doing this, but they could if they chose operate on very thin margins or even at a lost to keep their hold on clients and make up with it on other products in their ecosystem.

In my experience it is that Elastic does not understand the market. About four years ago we have attempted to get their software . It felt like I was dealing with Cisco sales people circa 1998. They were clueless on how to do a multi hundred thousand dollar deal - think slow, inefficient, inflexible, unwilling to compromise on extra $500 add on that would have ended up being a rounding error.

That's how it is for a lot of companies, not just Elastic. We have to deal with jfrog, who has separate billing teams for SaaS and on-prem so for us to switch from on-prem to SaaS is a pain in the ass. If AWS ever offers artifacts storage with more artifact types, then obviously we're switching. And that's just 100% so we don't have to deal with jfrog's dumb ass contracts anymore, never mind pricing.

ugh the pain that comes from negotiating our contract every year. Or the pain that comes from trying to get trial licenses. Or the pain we're seeing now from switching to SaaS.

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

#573

Post by nwallin »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #538
dd_roger wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of these issues have anything to do with the license. Either Elastic's code used by Amazon is indeed stolen proprietary code and no licensing change is needed to obtain reparation, or Amazon is making lawful use of FOSS source code and the question boils down to "if I publish code under a FOSS license, can anybody use it?", to which the answer is obviously yes. And if you'd prefer it to be "no" then don't pub…

IANAL but I don't think this is infringing. Your allowed to sell Apple Macs and advertise them as "Bob's Apple Mac store" without paying any royalties to Apple. Similarly, Amazon can deploy the open-source ElasticSearch product, and deploy it, unaltered using the trademark.

> Your allowed to sell Apple Macs and advertise them as "Bob's Apple Mac store" without paying any royalties to Apple.

I don't think you can name your store "Bob Apple Mac Store". You can advertise that you can buy an Apple Mac at "Bob's Computer Store".

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

#574

Post by ydlr »

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 illegally uses the ElasticSearch trademark.

If we accept Elastic's interpretation of trademark law, all retail is illegal.

I bought some break cereal at Walmart this morning that clearly displayed a "Kellog" trademark. Walk down any isle of the store, unauthorized use of trademarks as far as the eye can see. NOT OK.

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

#575

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#576

Post by Nexxxeh »

stingraycharles wrote: post #444
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…

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.

"Just because you CAN, doesn't mean you SHOULD."

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

#577

Post by eins1234 »

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…

I don't really want to get into the moral rabbit-hole of who's right and wrong as that's clearly super controversial and subjective.

But I did want to add my personal anecdote to serve as a canary-in-the-mine on what effect the status quo could perceivably have on the proliferation of open source software over the long term:

I think we can all agree on the basic premise that having more open source software is a good thing for society.

For the longest time I dreamed of creating my own open source tools and products and simultaneously monetizing it to create a comfortable life for myself and maybe even eventually turning it into something bigger, and leave my mark on the world.

However, as the years past and events like ElasticSearch v Amazon unfolded, I became more and more disillusioned on the realistic prospects of such an outcome.

Today, I'm in the process of building something that would probably see more success in terms of adoption and do more good in the world if it's released as open source software, but at this point I've basically made up my mind to release it as proprietary software to have a realistic shot of monetizing it to achieve financial independence and eventually build a company around it.

Basically I've weighed the tradeoffs and chose to put my own ability to capture the value of what I created over trying to maximize the value my software could create if open sourced.

This was not a easy decision for me to make, but I suspect I'm not alone in having thought about these tradeoffs and reaching these same conclusions. And as more and more people witness the struggles of companies trying to build viable businesses on top of open source software, more and more people could make the same decision, and thus society would be robbed of all the value that having these pieces of software as open source could have created.

I think the chilling effect these kinds of case studies have on the proliferation of new open source software, and the loss incurred by society as a whole as a result, is at the core of what we should be trying to figure out a solution for, not some philosophical discussion around who's in the right or wrong.

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

#578

Post by jmiserez »

amenod wrote: post #361
twobitshifter wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hack the source code to grant yourself access to our paid features without a subscription, or the use of modified versions in production. I think the change that you can’t modify the code and use it yourself in production is a big change that is glossed over. ES is now free as in beer. You can look at the code but you can’t touch it or change what it does. Edit: I was wrong about this. The license itself does not s…

This is false. License [0] clearly states the conditions under which you can do it and they seem pretty reasonable. Nothing that a normal user, faced with an issue they want to fix, wouldn't accept. I imagine Amazon would have trouble accepting those and other terms, but that's the whole idea. [0] https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license

No, you are both correct. You are talking about the SSPL, the parent poster you are replying to is talking about the Elastic License which does in fact prevent you from modifying the code and running it in production:

See 2.2 Restrictions: https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/blob/master/license...

With the dual-licensing you have a choice of Elastic license or SSPL, but they both have terms you might not like. And if you use the binaries you automatically use the free as in beer Elastic license.

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

#579

Post by kuon »

I am working on SAAS, and I want to open source the codebase. But I'd like to avoid a big commercial entity to run my software as a competitive service.

What is the best license to use for this use case? I want to allow as many uses of my code as possible, like on premise deployment, schools, ... But with the exception of using it commercially to run the same service as me.

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

#580

Post by ramoz »

Think this is just where tech is headed. Software eating itself. Big OSS will need to shift if their value is in providing licensed commercial versions.

This is like a new modern evolution of internet. Cloud, data, apps, etc all becoming utilities in a highly-automated/converged platform.

For the platform providers, it looks like a new oracle lock-in era, but instead of dotcom boom for the rest, its a net-negative because developer jobs and integrators will find most of their work automated (not necessarily a bad thing, just, whats next?).

--- tangent ---

AI becoming a commodity should really open our eyes. Need to realize that most enterprise and commercial apps facilitate a digital process. Our need to "build", "analyze", or "iterate" through processes are becoming areas of automation / embedded analytics.

Cool potential for new user experiences and capability in new era modern apps. Also wonder what the future need for digital apps even encompasses vs augmented reality experiences.

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