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AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

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Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#421

Post by pronik »

kodah wrote: post #384
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…

I don't really get how people get this twisted. ES and other companies have a business that sells a managed version of their product. This is how they sustain developers to continue working on Elastic Search. This model has worked for companies long before cloud providers were a thing. What AWS and others basically did is create identical services, keep all the profits, and exploit gaps in Open Source licensing to th…

> ES and other companies have a business that sells a managed version of their product. This is how they sustain developers to continue working on Elastic Search. This model has worked for companies long before cloud providers were a thing. What AWS and others basically did is create identical services, keep all the profits, and exploit gaps in Open Source licensing to this end.

First, Elastic sells a buckload of licenses for on-premises ELK, which is a vastly bigger market than managed services. And second, how is Amazon different from "other companies" you mention? Just because they're bigger and have a ton of experience with managed services they should be forbidden from offering managed ELK?

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#422

Post by cwyers »

ryukafalz wrote: post #409
kodah wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really get how people get this twisted. ES and other companies have a business that sells a managed version of their product. This is how they sustain developers to continue working on Elastic Search. This model has worked for companies long before cloud providers were a thing. What AWS and others basically did is create identical services, keep all the profits, and exploit gaps in Open Source licensing to th…

>What AWS and others basically did is create identical services, keep all the profits, and exploit gaps in Open Source licensing to this end. Gaps in open source licensing? The license Elastic chose explicitly allows anyone to take the code, run it as they wish, and not contribute anything back. There are other FOSS licenses that are slightly more strict about this; they could have chosen AGPL if they wanted someone…

> they could have chosen AGPL if they wanted someone hosting a service to publish their changes, for example.

So... you admit that the people who created the GPL decided their license wasn't sufficient to cover a certain usecase and revised it to cover it. But you think it's unfair to call this a "gap" that ES is now trying to close?

EDIT: I do think it's fair to point out ways in which the new license for ES is worse than the AGPL, but I do think it's important to point out that it's possible to believe in open source licenses and to think that the way AWS uses software violates the spirit of open source. The people who work on GNU seem to think that!

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#423

Post by bigiain »

danShumway wrote: post #408
bigiain wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The essential spirit of "open source" or of "free as in freedom software"? Because I don't think those two align as closely as many of the arguments here gloss over...

I don't know what distinction other people make, but when I capitalize Open Source, I'm referring to Libre software, specifically of the kind that Stalman or the OSI would talk about. Lower case open source is a term that I personally try not to use, specifically because of that confusion. I personally try to refer to that as source available or shared source when possible.

This is exactly the confusion I'm talking about.

Stallman and the OSI do _not_ agree on "Libre software" and "Open Source" - in a quite fundamental way.

"The terms “free software” and “open source” stand for almost the same range of programs. However, they say deeply different things about those programs, based on different values. The free software movement campaigns for freedom for the users of computing; it is a movement for freedom and justice. By contrast, the open source idea values mainly practical advantage and does not campaign for principles. This is why we do not agree with open source, and do not use that term."

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#424

Post by kodah »

ryukafalz wrote: post #409
kodah wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really get how people get this twisted. ES and other companies have a business that sells a managed version of their product. This is how they sustain developers to continue working on Elastic Search. This model has worked for companies long before cloud providers were a thing. What AWS and others basically did is create identical services, keep all the profits, and exploit gaps in Open Source licensing to th…

>What AWS and others basically did is create identical services, keep all the profits, and exploit gaps in Open Source licensing to this end. Gaps in open source licensing? The license Elastic chose explicitly allows anyone to take the code, run it as they wish, and not contribute anything back. There are other FOSS licenses that are slightly more strict about this; they could have chosen AGPL if they wanted someone…

CentOS and Fedora are both trademarks owned by RedHat and staffed by RedHatters.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#425

Post by basilgohar »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #108
mminer237 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Forgive me for expressing my frustrating for a moment here: What is with this new generation of developers (I don't mean new as in young since I meet people in their 40s espousing these ideas), who make all these high-minded arguments about how evil it is to profit off of someone else's work, when literally that's what proprietary software is for. If you don't want someone to make money with your code, don't give it…

I think the fact that you've been downvoted only validates your point. I agree that I think the idea of "open source" has veered so far away now from Free Software ideals that this is the only reasonable outcome, even if it was not desired. The Open Source vs. Free Software people kept saying they were fundamentally the same but one was more palatable to commercial entities, but the (granted, not the most pleasant) "free software fundamentalists" called this outcome a mile away.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#426

Post by throwarayes »

AWS has known all along what they are doing with this OSS strategy. They are the only provider that doesn't lose by having heavily commoditized, open source backend software - they can support profitable operations at a much lower cost point than these mid-sized companies like Elastic/Mongo

Elastic, and the "open source business model" companies certainly should have seen this coming. But the attitude in the early 2010s was 'lol open source fun, figure out business model later' and somehow VCs bit and a company like Elastic could take off. They shouldn't have been surprised.

I would rather live in a world where a mid-sized company like Elastic could thrive than an AWS monoculture. Most things Amazon make me feel icky... but I also feel like this is the reality of open source... its not really open source if it's entirely associated with one company..

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#427

Post by atonse »

paxys wrote: post #99

The sad part is that while I really want to support Elasic here we are likely going to have to move to Amazon's Apache-licensed fork for our internal use because SSPL is incompatible with our company's open source policy.

Same here. I manage a handful of projects (10+ websites) and won't touch Elastic with a 10 foot pole now that they aren't Apache anymore. It actually doesn't matter how much they yell about their "intent." – It's an unproven license with some restrictions and I don't even want the headache and cost of having to talk to lawyers about why "it'll be fine!!" or even waste a minute during a meeting about the license impacts of solving any of the problems we face.

The ambiguity is just simply not worth the cognitive overhead. I have enough to worry about without this silly game Elastic's playing where we (customers, users) are left having to figure out the legal ambiguities and wink-winks of their new license.

And right now, we're actively searching/researching a self-hosted log analysis solution. And we've been looking at Elastic's offering and comparing it to self-hosting. Not anymore.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#428

Post by pronik »

NDizzle wrote: post #418
bigiain wrote: post #226

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. 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.

Nobody can afford to use an Apache 2.0 license when an Amazon type company also uses your product in the same way.

Not everything is a cloud-based VC-backed startup. As big as AWS is, they still miss out on a giant chunk of companies who don't want or are not allowed to go into the cloud, which is why AWS-on-premise exists.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#429

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

paxys wrote: post #107
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…

It's possible for there to be no good guys in a fight. They are both multi-billion dollar corporations looking out for their shareholders' interests. "Open source" is being thrown around by both sides as a marketing/goodwill tool, nothing more.

“Acting out of self interest” doesn’t make you the bad guy. In fact, it makes you the good guy because you chose to align your own interests with something that is good. This is why Apple is the “good guy” when it comes to privacy and Google is the “bad guy” (relative to each other at least). Sure, Apple is acting in their own interest when they advertise how privacy focused they are. But they chose to make that a selling point for themselves, while Google did not.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#430

Post by MoOmer »

IgorPartola wrote: post #411
kodah wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really get how people get this twisted. ES and other companies have a business that sells a managed version of their product. This is how they sustain developers to continue working on Elastic Search. This model has worked for companies long before cloud providers were a thing. What AWS and others basically did is create identical services, keep all the profits, and exploit gaps in Open Source licensing to th…

So Amazon forking ES is then ensuring that if Elastic dies, ElasticSearch doesn’t go away, right? Part of the problem here really is that if I am using AWS for the rest of my stack, why would I run my search elsewhere, introducing latency, etc? Elastic’s opportunity was to approach AWS and try to get bought. But their business model really isn’t as good as it seems.

Elastic's Cloud offering runs in the major cloud providers [0].

https://www.elastic.co/subscriptions/cloud

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