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AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

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Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#681

Post by antonvs »

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…

> a lot of people talking about the license forget that there's an entire spirit to open source

If your multi-billion dollar company depends on the spirit of your competitors, you're going to have a bad time.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#683

Post by Xylakant »

jasontedor wrote: post #592
bawolff wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if I am a cloud provider.

Jason from Elastic here. I want to clarify this. Building a SaaS product with Elasticsearch or Kibana on the backend is okay and not prohibited, as long the service is not “managed” Elasticsearch nor Kibana. For example, a music service that uses Elasticsearch on the backend to provide music catalog search is okay. A service that offers site search powered by Elasticsearch is okay. A log search service powered by Ela…

What exactly does `provided it doesn’t expose Elasticsearch functionality` mean? Is exposing KQL via a search field in violation or not? Is exposing the Lucene query language okay or not? Is selling an on-prem monitoring solution that uses ES/Kibana as datastore and visualization interface ok? Is accepting payment from a client to run and maintain that solution in the clients datacenter okay? Is running that solution in a clients private cloud okay?

Can I get that in writing from someone with the power to make binding legal statements?

The problem is never in the clear cases, it’s in the edges. Now, all of a sudden, when thinking about features a legal dimension enters the picture, something that hasn’t been there before.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#684

Post by jazzkingrt »

2bitencryption wrote: post #402
mylons wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the correct take. AWS and Elastic are both acting out of self interest with varying levels of gains for the customer in each.

I'm about to make a really petty and possibly off topic comment, so sorry for this -- "this is the correct take" is like my least-favorite Twitter-ism of them all. it's so ridiculously authoritative and final. Like, "Whoa, okay, everyone stop the discussion. @SandwichGuy87 has identified the correct take. Thanks for bringing us to reality, @SandwichGuy87."

I think if you read the two parent comments to "this is the correct take", they also take an authoritative mood.

Rather qualifying a statement with "I think", or "I believe", they basically assume some reality to be true and then describe it. And that's ok, as readers we assume that the author is giving their opinion.

So "this is the correct take" should be read as "in the reality that I believe is true, this is the correct take".

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#685

Post by jabl »

ryukafalz wrote: post #447
kodah wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sure, of course. They're still both free software, they're still both used by companies who aren't paying for Red Hat subscriptions, there's no shortage of consulting companies who will provide support for CentOS or Fedora like Red Hat would for RHEL, etc. That's the point: Red Hat has plenty of competition, including from others using their own software, and that's fine! EDIT: And honestly the fact that Red Hat owns…

Yes, but, while RH is the 900lb gorilla in the "pure OSS" business (and yes, we should be thankful for their contributions all over the OSS ecosystem even if we aren't RH customers), from a business perspective they are not that spectacular. Looking at wikipedia, the company was formed in 1993, has a revenue of $3.4 billion, and 13400 employees. By IT sector standards, that's decent but far from spectacular.

Partly due to releasing all their code as OSS, they have poor pricing power over their primary product (support and services (RHEL)) as that's a commodified market with a bunch of competitors who are happy to take their business (offering support for CentOS or other RHEL rebuilds) if they charge too much, or customers might just decide they have the in-house knowledge to support themselves.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#686

Post by daitangio »

It is like Chess

ElasticSearch move was very easy to conter-attack.

Amazon does not lack smart guy to its side. Anyway the way cloud providers are using open source project can become a issue and "drain" day by day the open source community, especially smart startup creating a value in the day by day.

I think there is some space for new ideas and new startup to find out a way to balance these forces and find out a deal in a win-win scenario....what do you think?

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#687

Post by fastball »

skolsuper wrote: post #662
fastball wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, exploitation has always required the exploited party not having a choice. Customers of AWS ES vs. Elastic ES definitely have a choice in this matter and have done so deliberately.

Oh I'm sorry, I'm referring to AWS exploiting the free software, not their customers, but I can see how I was not clear. The rest of the 500+ comments here do a good job arguing both sides of it so I won't rehash that. Just saying that I can see that AWS taking the free thing and using it as a loss-leader (i.e. no possible way Elastic can compete) could be construed as exploitation of the free thing.

First-off, it's not clear to me ES is a loss-leader for Amazon, they seem to charge for it commensurate with their other hosted services, which from their filings all seem profitable.

Even if it is though, I'm just not sure I find the idea of free software being a loss-leader a bad thing. Having a loss-leader implies that AWS is providing + capturing value elsewhere. In this case, you assert this is from Data Transfer. But regardless of where the cost-centers are, AWS is delivering value to their customers and charging for it. There is competition in the cloud space, and in all honesty moving clouds generally isn't a huge deal, at least if you've architected your systems with that in mind (which any SysAdmin worth their salt should be doing in 2021).

The fact is, customers like having all their cloud managed under one roof. Customers like the exceedingly strong uptime guarantees provided by AWS. If customers have choice (which they do), and they're choosing AWS, why is it a bad thing if Elastic can't compete? If AWS is winning, it's because they have a holistic offering that customers like better.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#688

Post by staticelf »

Fuck Amazon is all I have to say. This just adds yet another reason why I would never use AWS. People that defend Amazon are the ones ensuring no other companies will release their software as open source since you'll get exploited by shitty companies like Amazon.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#689

Post by dinglejungle »

eins1234 wrote: post #557
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…

I don't really want to get into the moral rabbit-hole of who's right and wrong as that's clearly super controversial and subjective. But I did want to add my personal anecdote to serve as a canary-in-the-mine on what effect the status quo could perceivably have on the proliferation of open source software over the long term: I think we can all agree on the basic premise that having more open source software is a good…

From https://www.elastic.co/about/press/elastic-n-v-reports-stron...

> First Quarter Fiscal 2020 Financial Highlights

> Total revenue was $89.7 million, an increase of 58% year-over-year, or 62% on a constant currency basis.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#690

Post by HorkHunter »

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…

And that's exactly what the GPL advocates have been saying for ages.
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