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OpenSearch: AWS fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana

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Re: OpenSearch: AWS fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#361

It's hard for me to know whether to feel bad for ES in this case. Did they bring it on themselves? Is Amazon too big and a bully? From my perspective, Amazon has made most of its profit price gouging consumers on bandwidth after vendor locking them into their ecosystem, where they bootstrap new services by wrapping open source software with some provisioning scripts, management dashboards and cookie-cutter API / cons…

Only good one I can think of is Amazon Java, not sure how essential it is though

Re: OpenSearch: AWS fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#362
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time when Apache or MySQL started out was very different. Imagine where the internet would be if cloud computing itself didn't take off. Do you remember a time when there were hundreds of hosting providers? Do you remember WebHostingTalk where admins would go to check hosting offers from suppliers around the world? The monopolies finished that era. So I don't think that software companies trying to adapt now can…

There are more hosting providers today than in the era you are talking about. AWS has a "monopoly" simply because large companies are using it, and back in the day those companies would have run their own datacenters not used a shared PHP host. For a personal site or startup you have a thousand other options.

I think you need to get a reality check. I have worked as an early engineer to 12 or more startups in the last 15 years and am very active in communities ranging from HN, IndieHackers, OnDeck or a dozen others.

I have not come across a single founder in the last 5-6 years who does not start with AWS credits or is not craving for them.

AWS is nothing but monopoly and they have utilized access to their cash to buy early customers. The same goes for Google and MS. The smaller hosting providers that you believe exist actually are stuck with whatever customers they used to have or a chance new WordPress blog.

Re: OpenSearch: AWS fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook: Relay, Cassandra, React Native, RocksDB, Presto, Reason, btrfs, osquery. Apple made significant contributions to LLVM and Clang Hell IBM has more open source contributions (many through the Apache foundation and standards committees) than Amazon, which is saying something.

>Cassandra This is an interesting one in the context of this discussion. It likely does not exist as we know it without Amazon's Dynamo paper.

Yes that's true. Also interesting is, AFAIK, DynamoDB does not follow the Dynamo paper. DynamoDB uses an architecture based on single-leader replication, and the Dynamo paper describes a process where a coordinator node is in charge of replicating to each node. If I am not confused, any node among the top N nodes in the preference list can act as the coordinator.

(This information may be slightly out of date at this point)

Re: OpenSearch: AWS fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#364
I feel this is a very scary trend starting. I have not come across a single founder in the last 5-6 years who does not start with AWS credits or is not craving for them.

AWS is a monopoly and they use their cash to buy early customers. Initially it was Amazon's money, but now AWS has enough cash of their own to push whatever they wish to. The same goes for Google and Microsoft.

AWS directly building up the software side of what started out as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is only going to hurt software vendors. We can only expect new software players or ones with low capital to restrict their licenses even more.

Open source licenses are not only for ideological freedom, but very necessary for companies (end users) to integrate and modify products on their own. We will migrate more toward source-available licenses instead since big giants are going to corner the small companies.

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Re: OpenSearch: AWS fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#365

I feel this is a very scary trend starting. I have not come across a single founder in the last 5-6 years who does not start with AWS credits or is not craving for them. AWS is a monopoly and they use their cash to buy early customers. Initially it was Amazon's money, but now AWS has enough cash of their own to push whatever they wish to. The same goes for Google and Microsoft . AWS directly building up the software…

I find it fine for software to not be open source. Source-available but closed-source (in terms of freedom) is perfectly fine from a commercial standpoint and should be the gold-standard for mission-critical software in the backend. The problem comes from companies touting their software as open source purely for the marketing aspect in order to bring in customers and get free work done by people who don't get paid.

Re: OpenSearch: AWS fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#366

I have been perfectly happy with ES cloud services. Is this done by honest intentions from AWS or is it simply based on the fact that ES are making a lot of money of the cloud services?

Well, now nobody can provide a competitor to ES cloud services for newer versions. If you upgrade to v7.11 or above, you're locking in your choice for 'managed hosting for ES/Kibana' to ES cloud services.

> Is this done by honest intentions from AWS or is it simply based on the fact that ES are making a lot of money of the cloud services?

Is wanting to make money considered honest intentions? ES released v7.10 under the Apache license on purpose, so they knew that any form of license change would mean people can still use earlier releases without having to adhere to the SSPL, and anyone could legally fork it or run it on non-ES hardware without having to pay the piper.

Re: OpenSearch: AWS fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL carries no restrictions if you don't distribute the software. The AGPL on the other hand, was a huge mistake, IMO.

The AGPL was the first step in addressing a critical need to protect the users' right to run the software they use, the SSPL just continues that, as many services wouldn't be runnable without the support code around them.

I hear what you're saying, but those whose mission is to encourage open source software don't call the SSPL anything but a source-available, proprietary software license. Like literally the organization that defined what "open source software" is.

While you may disagree, you aren't going to convince me to take your word over theirs, especially when I have come to the same conclusions they did on my own.

Re: OpenSearch: AWS fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SSPL conveys no new stipulations not permitted by GPL-based licenses, it is just more inclusive in doing so. If SSPL isn't open source, neither is the GPL.

GPL carries no restrictions if you don't distribute the software. The AGPL on the other hand, was a huge mistake, IMO.

On a moral principle, AGPL levels the playing field fairly much like the GPL license, just the terms of distribution are updated for an age of software as a service. No one is exempted to the rules in AGPL like SSPL - it is intentionally viral, even if you'd dislike using it in many of your projects (though I think it's fair to say lawyers don't like the ambiguity of the language).

Just like some projects are best under LGPL instead of GPL, AGPL has its place in the toolkit of free software licensing.

Re: OpenSearch: AWS fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add Kotlin to Google's credit. But I think it's important to note that these companies don't contribute to open source out of any moral obligation, do they? I think they do it to tie more developers and development around their eco-systems and products. Maybe Amazon should get smart and start doing something similar. Or maybe they don't need that. But in any case I don't hold it morally against them that they…

Kotlin was created by the Jetbrains team behind Intellij/Resharper. It's named after a city outside of St. Petersburg, Russia. It has nothing to do with Google...

Kotlin is an island, not a city. City is called Kronshatd.

Re: OpenSearch: AWS fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#370

It's hard for me to know whether to feel bad for ES in this case. Did they bring it on themselves? Is Amazon too big and a bully? From my perspective, Amazon has made most of its profit price gouging consumers on bandwidth after vendor locking them into their ecosystem, where they bootstrap new services by wrapping open source software with some provisioning scripts, management dashboards and cookie-cutter API / cons…

Coincidentally, AWS hasn't open-sourced anything that they use internally. Zilch. Nada. And yet they are using 'open source' developed by another firm (smaller is inconsequential here) to market themselves. IMO, FOSS licensing is completely broken. Its definitions (of what is free/open) are from a boomer's era that is no longer sustainable. At least I wouldn’t want any of my FOSS projects become “corporate strategy”…

gplv3 was supposed to fix this though no?
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