AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana • Hacker News Board

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#821

Post by soenkeliebau » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

mvanbaak wrote: post #770

Closi wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

'AND THEY WILL ALWAYS DO IT CHEAPER BECAUSE THEY DONT HAVE TO FUND FURTHER DEVELOPMENT.' Well, they DID actually contribute patches as the whole ES project was 'upstream-first', this is mentioned in the post with proofs. From what I can find online, it looks like DocumentDB is actually a layer on top of the AWS Aurora PostgreSQL offering. This means they created a MongoDB compatible API, but are not offering a hosted…

Without wanting to come down on either side of the argument I'd like to say that the Pull Requests they reference in the blog post are over a span of roughly two years and touched somewhere in the vicinity of 1k lines of code. One of them changed one line by adding a synchronized modifier to a function..

I'd not consider that actively developing a product and adding new features.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#822

Post by sokoloff » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

cmiles74 wrote: post #818

klintcho wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agree with this. Free is free, you could always argue that there is "a spirit to open source"; but as with everything there's always going to be people exploiting and using it, that comes with the free. To me it boils down to if you think that it's worth it: whenever I put MIT or Apache 2.0 on my public Github projects, I don't mind anyone going out making millions on them. Other side of the coin; if I make mil…

It's worth keeping in mind that we don't always know which projects will truly become successful. The precursor to Elasticsearch, Compass, wasn't hugely popular. When I started looking hard at Elasticsearch, with plans to actually use it, I had to spend a lot of time explaining why I didn't want to use Solr, which was much more popular at the time. In my opinion, the bottom line is this: if Amazon's exploitative beha…

Another OSS project has chosen to switch to a closed license in response to competition from Amazon.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#823

Post by cmiles74 » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 2:19 PM UTC

andrewmutz wrote: post #501

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…

Elastic wants to get the benefits of permissive licenses without the drawbacks. Having a permissive license is a massive asset for getting people to adopt your software, but it means you will have no control over what they do with it. They want the goodwill and other benefits of a permissive license without loss of control that these licenses bring.

I have to disagree, I see no reason to think that Elasticsearch is seeking to avoid "the drawbacks" of a permissive license. I believe the project has been using a permissive license since it's first release in 2010.

What they are objecting to is having their project co-opted by Amazon, one of the largest and wealthiest technology companies in the world. Elasticsearch and Amazon have been battling this out for a couple of years now, this is the latest move in that battle.[0] They have been very clear that the reason they are changing the license is Amazon, not "the drawbacks" of an open source license.

[0]: https://searchaws.techtarget.com/news/252471650/AWS-faces-El...

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#824

Post by cmiles74 » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #822

cmiles74 wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth keeping in mind that we don't always know which projects will truly become successful. The precursor to Elasticsearch, Compass, wasn't hugely popular. When I started looking hard at Elasticsearch, with plans to actually use it, I had to spend a lot of time explaining why I didn't want to use Solr, which was much more popular at the time. In my opinion, the bottom line is this: if Amazon's exploitative beha…

Another OSS project has chosen to switch to a closed license in response to competition from Amazon.

I'm not sure what value the word "chosen" has in this context.

Amazon is one of the largest and wealthiest technology companies in the world with a large captive audience of customers locked into their AWS product. On what terms could Elasticsearch compete with Amazon, especially when any improvements to the product would effectively be improvements to Amazon's product as well?

While I may step out of the way of an oncoming train, is it really a choice? No, it's clear that an oncoming train forces people to step out of the way.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#825

Post by andrewshadura » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

annilt wrote: post #345

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…

So after witnessing all these problems, more projects will start closed source or with restrictive licenses(GPLs) instead of OSS or more permissive licenses. This is how OSS community is being degraded. A few tech giants are disrupting entire OSS community. It may be legal/morally ok(or not I dont care) for AWS to do this but it is for sure we’ll have less OSS because of this.

The GPL is an open-source license.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#826

Post by cmiles74 » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

markphip wrote: post #782

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 have been involved with open source since 2000. I have been a member of the ASF for many of those years and worked with Apache licensed projects throughout. I have been in the position Elastic is in where I managed the employer-sponsored team working on an employer-sponsored Apache licensed project, though thankfully not against a behemoth like AWS. I have some sympathy for Elastic, but I just do not agree that AWS…

Given that Amazon's customers are inside Amazon's proprietary AWS environment, I think it's unreasonable to expect that an outside company can meaningfully compete inside that environment. In terms of customer preference, AWS customers will _always_ prefer a product offered by Amazon to a similar offering from an outside company. Amazon will always be less expensive and better integrated with other AWS services.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#827

Post by deetsb » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

pas wrote: post #769

rightbyte wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> revenue of $3.4 billion, and 13400 employees. By IT sector standards, that's decent but far from spectacular. That revenue is the budget of the police force in my country. Why would being bigger then that necessarily be a good thing.

Revenue is meaningless, profitability is the important thing. Amazon was net income 0, but it was always enormously profitable, it immediately spent that money on growth. RedHat wasn't really that profitable. Sure it also spent billions on growth, but Amazon spent hundreds of billions on growth. (Sure, Amazon is a conglomerate, from books to gadgets to groceries to basically everything and the biggest digital infrast…

I'm not quite sure I agree with your words here; generally speaking, net income is profit (accounting profit, to be precise -- there are other profits but we normally talk about accounting profit).

Secondly, revenue is super not meaningless! It's the capacity for you to be profitable! Amazon had 0 net income but were able to spend money on growth because they had revenue, and were able to classify their R&D as an expense, which pushed their profit/net income down. Without that, they would've been a positive net income/profit company who then reinvested net income/profits into R&D.

You can do all the expense classification shenanigans you want to to muck around with profit (ex. have profit & spend that on growth, or classify your growth as an expense and have no profit), but it's a lot harder to grow without having the money to put to growth. You'll get that of course in two ways -- increasing capital (equity/liabilities), or well, revenue!

EDIT: Had some typos so cleaned them up.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#828

Post by throw234786 » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

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…

This might very well have been your intention, but the license you chose (SSPL) is extremely vague in describing this (section 13, IIRC).

For one data point, my company attorneys interpreted that, even if we present a search box in a web page, allowing visitors to search our own indexed data, it could be understood that we "offer a service" -- and thus forced us to abandon Elasticsearch and figure out alternatives. We might be unique, but I doubt it.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#829

Post by liuliu » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

worldsayshi wrote: post #348

Spivak wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open Source makes the most sense when your position is “I made this because it solved a problem I had and am giving it away so that it might solve problems for you.” We might actually be better off with Amazon as the steward because they don’t need to make money on the software itself.

> need to make money on the software itself. It would make a lot of sense for them to slowly close it down or modify it so that it eventually only makes sense to use it on their platform. Or something similar. And given what I've seen from their behaviour I would expect them to exploit whatever market leverage they can.

What you described is exactly what Elastic doing now, and it triggers a fork. We will be fine if it happens again.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#830

Post by kreeben » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

bww wrote: post #581

I have no affection for Elastic Co, but why should they sit there and let Amazon eat their lunch? Maybe I’m forgetting something but I can’t think of a single significant open source project created by Amazon. As far as I can tell they prefer to keep their differentiating services proprietary to their platform. That’s about as far from open source as you can get. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but I do think…

The reason Amazon is eating Elastic's lunch though, is because Elastic offered a eat-all-you-want buffet, a decision that was applauded by people who think food should be mostly free, but they didn't expect a guest to arrive who had unlimited appetite.

They asked the guy: please sir, would you care to have just one last serving of rib-eye and then we'll offer coffee and desert and then perhaps you could leave? But they didn't leave. They just grabbed another plate full of rib-eye and told the desert people to stand down, stand by.

On the one hand you have someone who tried to make an offer nobody could refuse. On the other hand you have someone who tried to take advantage of that offer to its capacity.

If Amazon had been a small operator, perhaps even a startup, HN would be completely and 100% on their side.