> As I understand it the only prohibition of use is to offering the software as a cloud-hosted solution of the software itself.
You very profoundly and deeply misunderstand what the SSPL actually says, which is understandable because Elastic have helped promulgate this misinformation. Please go read the license. It is not straightforward, it's very vague and exposes an organization to enormous uncertainty. If you don't want to read the license itself, then start with https://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2021/01/14/elasticsearc...
Additionally, organizations that commit to running free software, are forced to drop Elasticsearch now (or more accurately, they're all going to just run the best fork of 7.1.0 and call it a day). So Elastic's statement that it doesn't impact users is just a complete lie.
Finally, this whole discussion is irrelevant because the license change won't actually protect Elastic's business. Amazon is going to behave no differently, except that now they have a better codebase to work with because they don't need to worry about Elastic rejecting pull requests that cannibalize their proprietary features.
> You may disagree with this strategy, but I think you should also explain another way for companies that develop these frameworks to be financially viable. Because I think there is an issue of how people can sustain a business centered around open source.
Absolutely not, I refuse to explain that for you, because you're reversing the responsibility here. If you want to build a company around giving away software for free, you better have a way to monetize the giving away of the software for free. There's plenty of strategies to do this, such as the famous "Commoditize your complement", OR you can be a redhat and sell enterprise support, OR you can be elastic and sell cloud services.
And guess what? Elastic HAS built a more than financially viable business with Apache 2.0 licenses. They pull in $500M revenue per year, with 40%+ y/y growth. They're valued at $15B right this moment. And you seriously believe that this organization is on the verge of bankruptcy?
Do the math, you're being tricked by a dishonest company. A company that so many of us had respect for until they started down this path a couple years ago.
And for the love of god, I implore everyone in this thread, please give up the whole "won't somebody think of the poor company?" argument. Open source is not a business model in and of itself. It never has been. If anything, the rise of these companies that build their brand image around being open source and then re-license to proprietary as soon as it's convenient is the literal problem. They're polluting the whole spirit of open source, which was always "I'm giving this away freely, and I don't ask for anything in return except you can't infringe my trademark" (for apache 2.0). You guys have the open source mentality totally backwards.
And don't get me wrong, I'm an AnCap. I'm as capitalist as it gets. So I'm not criticizing the mentality out of some misguided hatred of private ownership; rather, all I'm saying is if you talk the talk you better be prepared to walk the walk. All these entitled companies that make their software successful BECAUSE it's open source and the community feels safe building stacks upon it, and then clutch their pearls when someone else makes money from that software, are totally absurd and should be laughed at.
Sorry for the rant, I drank too much coffee today. But for the love of god, can't you see how, ethics of lying to the community aside, this licensing change doesn't even help protect Elastic's business interests, but rather just strengthens their competitors?