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Elasticsearch is open source, again

elastic.co

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Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#211

Post by prepend »

arp242 wrote: post #197
prepend wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the logic goes something like: 1) Amazon is powerful, thus bad 2) we’re discussing Amazon 3) find something potentially bad 4) use confusing and negative language to throw shade to discredit my target because #1 It’s really frustrating to experience these types of conversation. People explicitly choose to donate their work to the world under an open source license. Complaining they someone uses without contri…

This is not the argument at all. Software (open source or otherwise) is not created for free; devs gotta eat, pay rent, etc. The business model of Elastic and similar is to offer a SaaS. They feel that Amazon offering a SaaS is directly competing with their business model, and because half the world runs on AWS it's not too different from Windows shipping IE back in the day killing Netscape. Elastic feels Amazon is e…

Developers willingly choose to donate their work under an OSS license. So yes there are costs and thankfully people release without the expectation.

It’s perfectly fine to sell your software. There’s trillions of dollars worth of companies that do that.

But I make sure I eat through other methods so I’m able to donate my time.

If Elastic doesn’t want Amazon to use their software, then they shouldn’t release it as OSS. It’s quite simple.

But it’s ridiculous, I think, to claim Amazon is doing anything wrong by abiding by the license.

Elastic shouldn’t feel that Amazon is eating their pie because they chose to put their pie out with a “free pie for everyone” under ASL. If they feel bad, that may be so, but their feelings aren’t as important as what their intellect should set up.

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#212

Post by arp242 »

prepend wrote: post #211
arp242 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the argument at all. Software (open source or otherwise) is not created for free; devs gotta eat, pay rent, etc. The business model of Elastic and similar is to offer a SaaS. They feel that Amazon offering a SaaS is directly competing with their business model, and because half the world runs on AWS it's not too different from Windows shipping IE back in the day killing Netscape. Elastic feels Amazon is e…

Developers willingly choose to donate their work under an OSS license. So yes there are costs and thankfully people release without the expectation. It’s perfectly fine to sell your software. There’s trillions of dollars worth of companies that do that. But I make sure I eat through other methods so I’m able to donate my time. If Elastic doesn’t want Amazon to use their software, then they shouldn’t release it as OSS…

I'm not really interested in discussing the merits of the argument (or lack thereof); I've done this a dozen times over the last few years and I have no interest in repeating it.

I am just saying your post hugely misrepresented the argument.

That you think the argument is a load of bollocks changes nothing about that.

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#213

Post by coredog64 »

outop wrote: post #101
ezekg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, yes, the ELv2 did introduce significant friction?

Yes, except that since Amazon have infinite resources, the friction didn't stop them doing anything, and the fork was always going to be perfectly viable.

It’s very clear in the post ZIRP era that none of the hyperscalers have infinite resources. AWS just discontinued, er, de-emphasized Cloud9 and CodeCommit. Neither of these were free, and both were substitutes for paid products that AWS customers can get elsewhere.

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#215

Post by FeepingCreature »

pooper wrote: post #181
quyse wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's their intention. Elastic wouldn't be able to integrate Amazon's patches back into their codebase without losing the ability to change the license in the future. Even more, since it's AGPL, they'd have to get rid of their other licenses immediately.

> Elastic wouldn't be able to integrate Amazon's patches back into their codebase without losing the ability to change the license in the future. (I anal, even if I were a lawyer, I am definitely not YOUR lawyer, yada yada) If I were Elastic, I would require Amazon dot com or anyone else who wants to contribute code to Elastic to sign a CLA. Depending on how the CLA is structured, this could allow Elastic to continue…

In this scenario, Amazon doesn't want to contribute to Elastic, Elastic wants Amazon's changes from Amazon's fork (Opensearch). So they can't demand Amazon sign a CLA, because they can't offer Amazon anything for it. Amazon is fine just ... not signing and continuing on their open fork.

Elastic have lost the Schelling monopoly on what constitutes the "mainline".

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#216

Post by okbro »

lsh0 wrote: post #134
echelon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, let's praise and reward the hyperscaler and not the small company that is 1% of the size of AWS. AWS got Elastic's goodies for free. They just came in and gobbled up all of that value for themselves like vultures. Meanwhile the people putting in the work effectively got robbed. Small companies should stop doing open source and switch to source available + MAU/ARR restriction clauses.

> the small company that is 1% of the size of AWS What on earth? Elastic is a multi-billion dollar company. They are no indie startup, scrappy underdog nor are they victims here. AWS took the high road during this fiasco despite Elastic's mudslinging and flailing about.

> What on earth? Elastic is a multi-billion dollar company. They are no indie startup, scrappy underdog nor are they victims here.

> AWS took the high road during this fiasco despite Elastic's mudslinging and flailing about.

They didn't start as a multi-billion dollar company. In fact, AWS started shipping their Elasticsearch Service in 2015. Public records show that Elastic's annual revenue in 12 months after their IPO in 2018 was ~200m with I'd argue that Elastic is a multi-billion dollar company _in spite_ of AWS.

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#217

Post by cortesoft »

master_crab wrote: post #120
phoronixrly wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you've fully shifted to exploiting (without contributing anything) to OpenSearch. I think Elastic will be just fine without your company or Amazon.

They are paying Amazon for Opensearch resources. To Amazon, that’s enough contribution to continue supporting the source code.

Not necessarily. You can run opensearch on your own hardware and pay nothing to Amazon.

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#218

Post by cortesoft »

ok_dad wrote: post #156
samspenc wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the GP, and I don't have a dog in this fight, but I think what they are complaining about is this sequence of events: - ElasticSearch was open-source - Amazon offered ElasticSearch open-source as a paid service - ElasticSearch was not happy about this and changed their license - Amazon forked ElasticSearch (the open-source version) and created OpenSearch based on that, continuing to serve OpenSearch - (Few ye…

What, when Amazon forked an open source project, as was allowed by the license, and continued to support that open source license even when the original company abandoned theirs? I’m not an Amazon fan, but they did the same thing (forking) that many others do, and they did it perfectly legally according to the license.

No one ever accused Amazon of breaking the law.

The issue that Elastic had is that their entire business model was offering a managed elasticsearch solution. Amazon then created their own offering of the same thing, but of course since it is Amazon it was more tightly coupled with AWS and benefited from being a native AWS solution. There was simply no way for Elastic to compete with that.

Now, there can be a lot of opinions on whether that is a good thing or a bad thing for the open source community, but it should be pretty obvious why elastic didn’t like it. They were a company who had a product they were selling, and then the biggest competitor in the world starts selling THE EXACT same thing with the EXACT same name. They needed to do something to compete.

So they did, and forced Amazon to change the name of their offering to opensearch instead of Elasticsearch. Once they achieved that, they reverted the change.

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#219

Post by cortesoft »

arp242 wrote: post #197
prepend wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the logic goes something like: 1) Amazon is powerful, thus bad 2) we’re discussing Amazon 3) find something potentially bad 4) use confusing and negative language to throw shade to discredit my target because #1 It’s really frustrating to experience these types of conversation. People explicitly choose to donate their work to the world under an open source license. Complaining they someone uses without contri…

This is not the argument at all. Software (open source or otherwise) is not created for free; devs gotta eat, pay rent, etc. The business model of Elastic and similar is to offer a SaaS. They feel that Amazon offering a SaaS is directly competing with their business model, and because half the world runs on AWS it's not too different from Windows shipping IE back in the day killing Netscape. Elastic feels Amazon is e…

This is kinda funny, because I am arguing both sides a bit here in my reply to different comments, mostly because I am not actually sure what my final belief on this topic is.

But maybe we shouldn’t fund open source development via companies whose entire revenue is selling support for that product? I feel like my favorite OSS projects are ones that are created and maintained by developers working for companies whose business model is based on something entirely separate from the OSS project, but who need the OSS project to support that business. They, and many other companies who have the same need, pay developers to work on the project so they can get what they need from it, but they keep it open source because it isn’t core to their business and being OSS makes it easier and cheaper to maintain.

In this way, there is no conflict of interest between the open source needs and the companies business model.

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