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AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

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Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#531

Post by nine_k »

sa46 wrote: post #495
nine_k wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here comes the difference between GPL / AGPL and dual licensing, and the easy BSD / MIT licenses. Linux is GPL2, and there can't be a closed-source fork. FreeBSD is BSD, and see how widespread it is, in comparison.

GPL2 doesn't prevent a closed fork of Linux. It requires that if you distribute your closed fork outside of your organization, you must also distribute the modified source under the GPL2 license. Large tech companies run their own forks of Linux without providing the source.

Yes. And this limits the risk of making a proprietary fork dominant, or even widespread, in the industry.

This of course does not have the limiting effect on SaaS.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#532

Post by pabs3 »

jehb wrote: post #480
kotxig wrote: post #435

Elastic made the mistake of building a whole business on open source software by relying on the poor experience and artificial overhead to launching that software independently and in a production ready fashion. It's no surprise then that people in the community identify that this value is somewhat artificial. If you bridge that gap (either cloud providers providing it or someone contributes containerized/terraformed…

> I can't for the life of me find a job that pays to write a new framework or some piece of interesting software because opensource completely devalues code. Could you put some more color around this part? I don't understand the argument you're making here. It sounds like you're arguing that there's not market demand for the thing you'd like to be paid to make because it already exists and that the version that exist…

Being paid to write open source is the exception rather than the norm and very hard to break into even after decades of voluntary open source contributions.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#533

Post by ocdtrekkie »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #235
Roybot wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contributor efforts are remaining open source. The change in license goes into effect in the 7.11 release. Code contributed under Apache stays that way. Typically open source projects have only a handful of core developers - with a large majority being pass-by contributors interested in fixing their problems/use case. Characterizing it to sound like all these developers are being slighted is strange. Not being able t…

> Not being able to reap what you sow is a problem with open source. I don’t doubt we are seeing less great software being shared in the open because of it. If we want more useful software shared as open source we should fix this. The Amazon problem doesn’t help. I’m with Elastic. Simply put, this is a naive and entitled attitude. And here's my proof of that: Elastic is a success story. They gave away software for fr…

On the contrary, this is win-win for everyone: Amazon now has to make their fork competitive with Elastic's, so they'll have to invest more resources in open source development. Elastic is also still free to grab their Apache-licensed improvements.

Meanwhile, if Elastic's future improvements are better than AWS', it'll drive use of their services over Amazon's.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#534

Post by StopHammoTime »

majormajor wrote: post #81
weego wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

It wouldn't have been picked up by the community if it weren't Open Source. Yes, you may have used it if the current product just appeared on the market with a source available license but that's not what happened.

People used and recommended the software for years because it was Open Source. People contributed to the project because it was Open Source. It became popular BECAUSE of Open Source.

Your argument doesn't work because you wouldn't have known about it if it wasn't Open Source.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#535

Post by marcosdumay »

TheDong wrote: post #251
worldsayshi wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My two cents: Open source is a type of generosity. Generosity is good in the software world because the rules of the game benefits everybody the most when everybody are generous. I believe it's similar to prisoners dilemma but with even bigger benefits when we are all generous. However, it's also a tit-for-tat game. When others start to be greedy it makes some sense to be greedy yourself. Thus short circuiting the ga…

> Yes, open source contributors doesn't expect something back but they can only hope that others at least pay it forward. If they want to ensure others "pay it forward" (also release their source code), they should be contributing to copyleft projects instead. The AGPL would ensure users of elasticsearch, whether hosted by elastic or AWS, have access to the source code of the software they're using.

> If they want to ensure others "pay it forward" (also release their source code), they should be contributing to copyleft projects instead.

But Amazon is releasing their source code. Even more of it than Elastic.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#536

Post by nine_k »

toyg wrote: post #477
RMPR wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux is GPL2, and there can't be a closed-source fork. FreeBSD is BSD, and see how widespread it is, in comparison. Is it really because of the license? I am more inclined to think it was just a matter of timing.

Linux had many reasons for its success, but overall governance was definitely one of them. People felt free to contribute meaningful code in the knowledge that the GPL would “defend it” against a future as free fodder for corporations. Corporations treated it with kid gloves because they were scared of the GPL, and this left the ecosystem free to breathe; and Microsoft’s all-out war on the “communist” licence effecti…

Exactly. For corporations, it was like the guaranteed mutual destruction which keeps peace stable. They felt safe to contribute because their competition could not steal the contribution from the communal pot.

A similar setup is needed for the SaaS age. AGPL is a good step but is problematic for corporations because of the patent grant clauses, the way GPL2 is not.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#537

Post by intricatedetail »

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…

But is it in the spirit of the license to have multi billion company appropriate it without paying fair share to contributors?

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#538

Post by kdtsh »

At the end of the day, all this really demonstrates is that the business model of producing open source software for free and charging for support or hosted solutions either does not work or does not scale. Part of the point of open source software is that anyone who uses it can inspect the source and make changes. If your business model depends on users not providing their own services for the software you have developed, that is on you.

This is also why, if you have a customer or competitor who makes changes to the software and does not release those changes if they convey the software to others, you are not protected by using a permissive open source license. If AWS was allegedly not committing back to Elasticsearch/Kibana, they are within their rights to do so, whether Elastic like it or not. Elastic should not have used a permissive open source license like APL. The only thing that protects users here is strong copyleft, in this case a license like AGPL.

At the end of the day, these licenses protect users. Maybe something else is needed to protect the interests of businesses which also respecting users - whatever that is, it is not necessarily one of the stated goals of free or open source software, so assigning an open source license and expecting support to cover the costs is not going to end well for you if you get big enough to matter.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#539

Post by mr_toad »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #496
dathinab wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plan having a gaping hole instead? A hole which didn't exist in this way 10 years ago. But well you could have seen it coming tbh. > all the while acting as if their license does not violate one of the core values on Open Source Definition So you are saying if you do open source you must be fine with being exploited? If so then why do GPL and similar exist, which are normally considered as Open Source? It's just th…

The hole did exist ten years ago, though. The AGPL was released in 2007, three years before Elasticsearch was created, to fix this exact problem. …except Elastic doesn't want to use the AGPL because anyone using Elasticsearch would have to open-source their whole codebase — a non-starter for most companies. Elastic wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want the wide adoption of open source software, while als…

This FUD about the AGPL drives its unpopularity more than any reality.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#540

Post by nine_k »

germansm wrote: post #524
cwyers wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wors…

Open source is not about the license but the philosophy

Like, contributing back? AFAICT Amazon did contribute back to ES, in the form of code.

Running a profitable business to service free software has nothing to do with the philosophy.

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