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AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

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Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#281

Post by bigiain »

parasubvert wrote: post #228
syshum wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where the Free Software, ideology, and the "open Source" ideology really show its difference I view SSPL as a Copy Left style License for the SaaS age. They picked the wrong license in the first place with Apache, they should have used GPL, AGPL, or some other copy left anyway I generally oppose Apache, MIT and other non-copy left license exactly because it allows Amazon and other large companies is leech off…

I suspect the Free Software foundation would strongly disagree. Copyleft licenses such as AGPL are open source licenses, because they preserve user freedom. The SSPL is not an open source license (and likely not even Copyleft) because it restricts user freedom that have usually been guaranteed by FLOSS. https://opensource.org/node/1099 Open source isn’t about guaranteeing a for-profit company a business model. “Leech…

I _mostly_ agree here.

But...

I do note that the original "open source definitions" were drafted back in the late 90s (and from memory, built on older pre existing Debian docs of similar nature).

The world was different back then, I wonder what the authors of those docs would have considered "user freedom" to be in the age of AWS/GAE/Azure?

(I guess Stallman, for all his flaws, is a reasonable guide to what the free software movement would have thought. It'd be illuminating to hear his opinion on these new licenses. I suspect I know the answer, and it'd very strongly agree with your comment...)

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#282

Post by z77dj3kl »

There is an important thing that gets ignored a lot in these conversations where an organization that stewards an open-source project close-sources it.

That software grew largely because it was open-source, and it really makes a difference. It's not only those who contributed to the software and made PRs (which is sometimes a surprisingly small number of devs), but the software often only exists because it was taken up by a large number of projects that then created an ecosystem and a userbase around it.

Importantly, software is never "finished", so when the single large company behind a popular open-source project close-sources it, it often means the end of that project as an open-source alternative. It's frustrating if for example the existence of that killer open-source project in the past stopped other projects from blossoming.

The close-sourcing of several projects has made me cautious nowadays about using software that is backed by a company that exists only around that product.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#283

Post by __blockcipher__ »

wyaeld wrote: post #182
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its arguable that Elastic simply hasn’t come up with an open-source compatible business model, and that’s fine. But its not Amazon’s fault. Exactly this. Or more accurately, Elastic is pretending it doesn't have an open-source compatible business model. The actual truth is, they've built a great business. $500MM in yearly revenue, with 40+% y/y growth, for a valuation of like $15B last time I checked. And yet they'…

ES had a business model. It was open-core, but with critical features like Security and Access-Control hidden behind their paid support. The core disagreement was that Amazon (and many other contributors) wanted to add that to the base distribution, and Elasticsearch fought them for years on it, deliberately breaking any community plugins that got a solution working. Enough blame for the current situation on all side…

Yeah, I simplified things for the sake of argument, but just to be clear, the whole open core business model was a huge conflict of interest and has convinced me that open core is a way worse conflict of interest than other ways to monetize (enterprise support, operating cloud service etc).

So, to call Elastic a successful open-source business model isn't quite accurate, and you're correct to point that out.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#284

Post by inssein »

dijit wrote: post #7

And I, for sure, will never use them. The AWS version of ES has been abysmal- it’s only saving grace is that it’s “in the ecosystem”- I was convinced by an AWS zealot on my team. Never again.

Might want to elaborate a bit.

It is true that from a feature point of view, Elastic's own offering wins out, but from a perspective of uptime, cost, and performance, AWS wins.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#285

Post by elygre »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #209
motiejus wrote: post #125

I don't trust aws will do a good job with the fork. Can anyone tell me a FOSS project led by amazon that's not for accessing their services (boto)? Now that elastic.co is going sideways, sphinxsearch (best search server experience I've had) non-foss since circa 2017, what are the good search server options for a small shop dealing wth geo search? Edit/disclaimer: former aws employee

I see this as similar to Corretto. AFAIK they have done a good job supporting Java 8 well past what Oracle is willing to do.

Corretto is explicitly not a fork, though. They take the source code from openjdk, and builds their own distribution. This is how the openjdk is meant to be used, and all parties are happy.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#286

Post by seneca »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #187
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd phrase it backwards: these people think it should have the appearance of open source and get all the benefits (contributions from community, widespread adoption), but legally and ethically speaking it's closed source and they get to make all the money. They seriously have this entitled attitude that because you used the free software project that they started, that now they're entitled to that money. It's patentl…

> contributions from community Good point. When I willingly contribute to open source with no compensation, it's with the understanding that it's because my contribution is available to anyone under the same terms, I'm contributing to a "commons" open to all, willingly for the public good. If anyone wants to use it for profit-making purposes, that's generally fine with me, because everyone can on an equal basis. If i…

Your comment and the one you're replying to actually just changed my mind on this topic.

Up to now I've had a sort of knee-jerk response of "it's Elastic's software, they can do what they want", but I think you're actually right. They're reaped the benefits of open source, including free work from the community, and now they want to claim exclusive rights to profit off of it. It's basically the perfect example of wanting to have the cake and eat it too.

I love having my opinion changed. Thanks for that.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#287

Post by mathnode »

caymanjim wrote: post #63

AWS are the good guys here. Elastic built a popular product off the work of countless open source contributors. That's how they became a market leader in this product space. It's how open source works. The people who contributed to the product did so with no expectation of reward except that their efforts would remain open source. Elasticsearch got popular, and now Elastic wants to reap all the rewards and make money…

MariaDB came out with the BSL license for projects like maxcale to help protect against AWS nonsense (and the like). The mysql -> mariadb response is completely different, but no less terrible.

This is history repeating itself as Amazon, once again, attempt to gut open source efforts.

For a short while Amazon did contribute to some MariaDB projects.

MongoDB now have similar license and AWS offers compatible API's.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#288

Post by sg47 »

bigiain wrote: post #226
majormajor wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about the new ES license would've prevented me from using it for free in the previous places I've used it for free, as far as I can tell. Yet it would've prevented AWS from undercutting their paid offering in the place I'm at now that would rather pay for it than self-host it. The lesson I'm taking away from this is just use a license like they're using now from day 1. Totally "open" open source only works if…

> Nothing about the new ES license would've prevented me from using it for free in the previous places I've used it for free, as far as I can tell. Maybe. I can no longer tick the "does it use an approved open source license" compliance checkbox any more. Sadly, for me, there's now a very strong incentive to move forward with an Apache2.0 licensed Amazon fork instead of the Elastic one.

How many developers does AWS have contributing to ES vs Elastic? Besides those 9 PRs, what has AWS contributed back to ES?

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#289

Post by waynesonfire »

perfect response, this is exactly, by design, what open source is about.

now this is just the beginning; for they will need to throw money at their fork to make sure it's successful. And isn't that ultimately what this was about, money? Now Amazon has the opportunity to hire the core engineers to contribute to the TRUE open source project.

Everything by design as intended. Go Amazon.

Don't start an open source projects if that's not what you want to be. Or did you forget what made you successful to begin with?

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#290

Post by heavyset_go »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #187
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd phrase it backwards: these people think it should have the appearance of open source and get all the benefits (contributions from community, widespread adoption), but legally and ethically speaking it's closed source and they get to make all the money. They seriously have this entitled attitude that because you used the free software project that they started, that now they're entitled to that money. It's patentl…

> contributions from community Good point. When I willingly contribute to open source with no compensation, it's with the understanding that it's because my contribution is available to anyone under the same terms, I'm contributing to a "commons" open to all, willingly for the public good. If anyone wants to use it for profit-making purposes, that's generally fine with me, because everyone can on an equal basis. If i…

Why are you contributing to projects with CLAs if you disagree with their terms?
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