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AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

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Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#731

Post by mytherin »

rcconf wrote: post #214

I am so delighted to hear this. Open source wins again. Open source is the right for you to do whatever you want with the software, AND YES, that includes monetize it. I've been sitting on the sidelines reading the different perspectives, but I just cannot see how you can be on the side of Elasticsearch. How can they take all the work from the OSS community and add a clause that THEY only can monetize it? I will tell…

I'm really confused by your perspective. How is this a win for open source? A big open source project has just shifted away from open source to protect their revenue stream, and now serves as (yet another) warning against other companies to open source their code because Amazon will eat your lunch.

No matter what you believe is right I fail to see how events such as this are anything but bad for open source. This will directly lead to fewer companies working on open source code, fewer jobs available writing open source code, and fewer code being available outside of the closed-source moats of tech giants for smaller companies to use.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#732

Post by xorcist »

dathinab wrote: post #481
mixedCase wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think this is a "gap in Open Source licensing"? Is it not more easily explained as Elastic's business plan having a gaping hole instead? Don't put the cart before the horse. They built on top of a license that gave the user a set of freedoms they don't want the user to have. End of story. Now they've patched this hole, but they want to keep the goodwill that comes from Open Source licensing instead of…

> 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…

> A hole which didn't exist in this way 10 years ago.

Wordpress hosting was huge ten years ago.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#733

Post by IAmNotAFix »

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…

> AWS knows that if they take too much of ES' market that they won't survive.

If they can take the market like that they'll do it, that's what companies do. The limits of taking the market has never been ethics, but sales.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#734

Post by kgwgk »

petejohnson wrote: post #181
imgabe wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can call someone a dick for abiding by the terms of the agreement that you set out, but that doesn't mean you're right. "Hey here is some software. You are free to use it without paying me." "Ok, we'll use it and not pay you" "What, how dare you?! You dick!"

That's not the exactly what's been happening. I'll give you a more accurate timeline Elastic: Hey here is some software. You are free to use it without paying us Community: Awesome! ... years go by and the community is loving it, Elastic is loving it everything is great AWS: Wow! Free, popular software. Millions of dollars already invested in it so we don't have to. We'll take it for free and sell it. ... years go by…

> AWS (and their fans): What, how dare you?! We've made millions by reselling it as our own, and not you are going to restrict us doing exactly that. You dick!

The latest event is more like

AWS: Ok, your choice, we'll keep developing and making available an open-source version with the original license.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#735

Post by solidasparagus »

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…

I don't know. I've worked for a couple of companies who open source their software and they don't open source because they believe it's good for the world (they may or may not, but it isn't the driving motivation), they open source because it's a near requirement for building a profitable business. It's easier for a no-name company to convince enterprise clients to use your software when the code is open source - it's often a non-starter if your code is closed-source. It's easier to get developers and keep them happy. It's easier to get community contributions. It's easier to get your name out there (you lose a LOT if you have a software product without a GitHub).

As long as open-source is a near requirement for getting traction, I don't think there is much to worry about.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#736

Post by signal11 »

Closi wrote: post #709
markvdb wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Staunch free software proponent here. Clearly, as you say, there's nothing wrong here legally. By choosing this license, Elastic explicitly allowed anyone in the world to do what Amazon is doing now. Ethically, I can't find anything wrong about this either. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't a "spirit of open source". Open source is a way of doing business. Elastic made a business decision. The company has to live…

I think it does say something about the future of the open source model though. Namely, that if you have a company that offers something like a database as a service, search as a service or some other API, and plan to support it's development by offering your own managed service - DO NOT OPEN SOURCE IT WITH PERMISSIVE LICENCES, AMAZON WILL UNDERCUT YOU. AND THEY WILL ALWAYS DO IT CHEAPER BECAUSE THEY DONT HAVE TO FUN…

Even if MongoDB was closed-source, it would not stop anyone from creating a product that was compatible with the MongoDB API. Put another way, your API cannot be your USP.

Lots of companies offer S3-compatible APIs, for instance. They compete not on the API, but around reliability, price, features.

Of course, we have Oracle v Google coming up in the US Supreme Court, so things could change, but this is the way things are now.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#737

Post by jojo2000 »

aws steamrolling at its best. big tech at its worst. Even worse is the PR stunt "for the community".

Lies lies and lies. Wake up. They could have done things by the book by collaborating with the ES team. They didn't. Don't ever let them feed on lack of true knowledge. Build infrastructures that can be deployed anywhere. Support the OSS products you buy if you can. Reevaluate.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#738

Post by AnotherRainyDay »

Can you have a license that cuts AWS, Amazon and all of their subsidiaries from doing this?

It feels predatory and although Elastic is a huge company by the numbers that keep getting touted here, they're a rounding error on Amazons scale.

Amazons practice in sections of their online market place has been clone / re-brand what's selling well in the market, slap an amazon basics logo on it. Then harass, ban or in the best case put the margins so low (or in the negative until the competition bleeds out) that the original seller can no longer compete. To me, this feels like the OSS equivalent.

I'm anti-Amazon though and not sure if I'm just jaded at this point.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#739

Post by xorcist »

kodah wrote: post #641
random5634 wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disappointing to see Kodah discounting all the open source contributors to ES. Please read this before you support folks like Kodah and Elastic hijacking ES. In short - this feeling that Elastic owns Elasticsearch (other than maybe trademark) is totally false. Many people contributed and adopted BASED on a real open source license. https://drewdevault.com/2021/01/19/Elasticsearch-does-not-be...

Interesting take, and I can see why Drew feels it's valid. He's ascribing to the maximalist interpretation of open source licensing. Licensing which never had any idea that Open Source would one day take over the world, licensing which never could've imagined that cloud providers would begin to undermine and influence projects to their own ends. The problem that Drew is willfully ignoring here is that corporations se…

Hosting open source software has been a popular business model since day one.

My organization uses open source precisely because we can choose between competing providers.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#740

Post by signal11 »

nkellenicki wrote: post #633
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…

> ES and other companies have a business that sells a managed version of their product. Therein lies the flaw in the argument. If a company decides to develop something and open source it, it's not a product. If the company chooses to assign their time and resources to help develop it, great, but the moment it no longer becomes beneficial for them to keep supporting it, they'll drop it and leave it to the community.…

> Building your business around something that you give away for free

Although it’s great for new entrants to the market who’re looking to build mindshare and marketshare. Because it’s hard for incumbents to compete with Free.

“Open Source bait and switch” has been a thing for a while now. Elastic is just the most recent/high profile example.

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