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AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

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Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#51

Post by macksd »

evilsnoopi3 wrote: post #25

The fact that AWS doesn't link to the Elastic License is hilarious to me. The plain reading of the license is "APLv2 but AWS Can't Sell a Hosted Version" so of course AWS forks the last APL version and plows ahead. Note, I'm not trying to side with either AWS or Elastic here and I fully recognize that both Elastic re-licensing and AWS forking are within each org's rights. I really just think it is funny how beside th…

To be fair, it was actually extremely difficult for me to find the license text after Elastic's announcements too. All the announcements and FAQ's etc. seemed to omit a link to the actual text.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#53

Post by floatingatoll »

markphip wrote: post #27

I do not get why people are coming down on AWS here. Elastic made the software available under the Apache License. That gives AWS the right to offer this service. Maybe they did not have right to trademarks, there are courts to settle that. AWS contributes improvements to the project. This is just about Elastic and their business model. They could have not made it open source and it probably just would not have been…

Interpreting your point to be "If it's legal, it's automatically acceptable", I can offer you clarity on why some people are coming down on AWS here:

They feel that Amazon's decision is unacceptable for whatever reasons, regardless that it is permitted by law.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#54

Post by marcinzm »

crb002 wrote: post #6

Elastic was suing them for trademark breach. Hosting didn't bother them - it is FOSS. Lying that they were in partnership with Elastic did.

>Hosting didn't bother them - it is FOSS.

They literally changed the license to one that's only different in not allowing people to host it the way Amazon did.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#55

Post by mminer237 »

markphip wrote: post #27

I do not get why people are coming down on AWS here. Elastic made the software available under the Apache License. That gives AWS the right to offer this service. Maybe they did not have right to trademarks, there are courts to settle that. AWS contributes improvements to the project. This is just about Elastic and their business model. They could have not made it open source and it probably just would not have been…

Obviously Amazon has the legal right to make a fork, but I think it's understandable why people would still prefer that the people who actually did the innovation and the majority of the work get their cut of the insane profits AWS is making.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#56

Post by __blockcipher__ »

Havoc wrote: post #26

>Stepping up for a truly open source Elasticsearch Seems like a rather disingenuous way of announcing it given the reason for the license change is (allegedly) a direct response to Amazon. Not that I'm a fan of Elastic's stance either...

No, you've got things reversed - as do most in this thread.

Elastic's original announcement was disingenuous, they titled their blog post "Doubling Down on Open" when they were making Elasticsearch and Kibana no longer open source. Furthermore, Elastic promised in the past that ALL FUTURE VERSIONS of the open core of Elasticsearch would remind Apache 2.0. They broke that promise when they switched to proprietary licenses only with 7.1.1.

BTW, while the reasoning from Elastic is that they did it because of Amazon, the actual effect is just to make organizations like the one I work for (a non-profit that refuses to run proprietary software in prod) have to use one of these Apache 2.0 forks, while not stopping Amazon from operating their Elasticsearch service at all (since Amazon is always free to operate an Apache 2.0 service and indeed that's the whole damn point of the license)

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#57

Post by alexchamberlain »

my123 wrote: post #30
alexchamberlain wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rightly or wrongly, they are joining a long line of OSS maintainers trying to protect themselves from the clouds profiting from them. It seems reasonable to me at least to say: you can use this software for free, but you can't resell it. If you want professional support, please support someone who is maintaining the software.

It is not OSS if it does that, because you limit what the software can be used for. It becomes just source-available software. Being open-source to get a user base and then change the license isn't that great, they should have started as proprietary and that'd have been fine.

I don't think they were disingenuous here: I think they probably chose a license somewhat randomly (acknowledging it wasn't copy left probably?), then got developing. Down the road, they saw someone using the software in a way they didn't like and decided that as they were now bigger, they could afford to get a license drawn up with their values in mind. I doubt there was a nefarious plan to use a licence for it's reputation.

Now, I do think we are missing a standard license in this space - everyone seems to be writing their own, which limits those that can use them to larger projects.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#58

Post by weego »

markphip wrote: post #27

I do not get why people are coming down on AWS here. Elastic made the software available under the Apache License. That gives AWS the right to offer this service. Maybe they did not have right to trademarks, there are courts to settle that. AWS contributes improvements to the project. This is just about Elastic and their business model. They could have not made it open source and it probably just would not have been…

It feel like live by the sword, die by the sword to me.

Elastic because a highly successful business off the product being open source and then leveraging that into funding and enterprise licensing and maintenence.

To turn around after and go 'we love open source... No not like that' is disingenuous at best. The license choice was always yours to make, you took the one that gave you the best growth model that got you here.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#59

Post by __blockcipher__ »

iimblack wrote: post #38
mirthflat83 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t want that, maybe don’t open source your code with a license that allows others to do that?

Elastic are alleging that Amazon abused the Elasticsearch trademark and stole code from the proprietary (not open-source) part of their product. > I took a personal loan to register the Elasticsearch trademark in 2011 believing in this norm in the open source ecosystem. Seeing the trademark so blatantly misused was especially painful to me. Our efforts to resolve the problem with Amazon failed, forcing us to file a l…

> Elastic are alleging that Amazon abused the Elasticsearch trademark and stole code from the proprietary (not open-source) part of their product.

Sure, but that allegation has absolutely nothing to do with Elastic breaking its earlier promise to the community and making Elasticsearch/Kibana no longer open source. Indeed, the license change will have no effect on Amazon except to make Amazon's fork more successful because it's now been made necessary.

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