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AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

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Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#241

Post by ksec »

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…

Forgive me, which part of [1] even mentioned Profits, Revenue, Business Models, CopyLeft ?

And which part of the same article ever said Elastic are not OK with Amazon providing a Services using their Open Source Software? Which they are legally allowed to do so with Apache 2.0? They even mentioned and I quote:

"We collaborate with cloud service providers, including Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, Tencent, Clever Cloud, and others. We have shown we can find a way to do it."

What they are not happy with was the TradeMark. Amazon usage of that Trademark to mislead customers and this isn't some recent things either. It has been going on for 5 years. ( And yes the court should be used to settle that. )

So majority of HN; including its previous threads with 1000+ comments, is basically making allegation that Elastic is making the changes because of their Business Model. Until that can be proved, allegations remain merely assertions.

But right now it is being stated as Facts. And it is now being spin into ethical debate.

And I was under the impression, should Amazon be forced to fork it, which they did as announced, would have to use a different name. Instead they choose to use ElasticSearch again.

[1] https://www.elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-AWS

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#242

Post by __blockcipher__ »

floatingatoll wrote: post #69
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong with what Amazon is doing ethically. They're creating value for their customers, and releasing open source software while doing so. Indeed it's Elastic who tried to get all the positives of open source with none of the negatives (as evidenced by them making Elasticsearch/Kibana no longer open source) BTW, not that it's super relevant but the narrative that Amazon is driving Elastic bankrupt is…

It is absolutely possible that something legal can still be ethically unacceptable. This is an instance where people believe that it is ethically unacceptable for Amazon to do what they've been doing, so strongly that they are relicensing open source software to prohibit Amazon from continuing to benefit from their work on it. Ethics are not as simple as law, especially in technology, and very especially in open sour…

> It is absolutely possible that something legal can still be ethically unacceptable.

I didn't say that wasn't the case.

I specifically made this claim:

It is not just legal for Amazon to do this, but it is also ethical. They are contributing value, not just to their paying customers but to the whole FOSS community. That's a moral good under my framework. You may have a different ethical framework; that's fine.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#243

Post by dvnguyen »

motiejus wrote: post #125

I don't trust aws will do a good job with the fork. Can anyone tell me a FOSS project led by amazon that's not for accessing their services (boto)? Now that elastic.co is going sideways, sphinxsearch (best search server experience I've had) non-foss since circa 2017, what are the good search server options for a small shop dealing wth geo search? Edit/disclaimer: former aws employee

https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker

Disclaimer: current AWS employer. My job is not related to ES or Lambda.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#244

Post by tomaszs »

What I understand is that Elastic is upset AWS used the name for it's service promotion, stole propertiary code and alleged business partnership with Elastic.

So Elastic felt loosing due to AWS using is assets, so changed the licence to compensate.

Now AWS announces it cuts ties with Elastic by forking Elastic. So what AWS seems to announce is that it will continue to earn from Elastic , still will be using the name and further more it will openly compete with Elastic?

It is an extremely aggressive move, take all and destroy, or am I missing on something?

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#245

Post by that_guy_iain »

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 read the first paragraph and just though jesus AWS are dicks. They literally frame it like they're doing this for the betterment of everyone when in reality they're being cheap. It is legal, but it is immoral just like lots of things Amazon does. That's why they are coming down on AWS.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#247

Post by fastball »

Roybot wrote: post #142
caymanjim wrote: post #63

AWS are the good guys here. Elastic built a popular product off the work of countless open source contributors. That's how they became a market leader in this product space. It's how open source works. The people who contributed to the product did so with no expectation of reward except that their efforts would remain open source. Elasticsearch got popular, and now Elastic wants to reap all the rewards and make money…

Contributor efforts are remaining open source. The change in license goes into effect in the 7.11 release. Code contributed under Apache stays that way. Typically open source projects have only a handful of core developers - with a large majority being pass-by contributors interested in fixing their problems/use case. Characterizing it to sound like all these developers are being slighted is strange. Not being able t…

How exactly is what Elastic is doing helping the problem?

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#248

Post by munk-a »

dragonwriter wrote: post #103
mminer237 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously Amazon has the legal right to make a fork, but I think it's understandable why people would still prefer that the people who actually did the innovation and the majority of the work get their cut of the insane profits AWS is making.

With for-profit corporate open source, you are either giving it away because doing so benefits you in some other way, or you are doing it wrong; expecting downstream open source users to pay you is “doing it wrong”. Its arguable that Elastic simply hasn’t come up with an open-source compatible business model, and that’s fine. But its not Amazon’s fault.

> Its arguable that Elastic simply hasn’t come up with an open-source compatible business model, and that’s fine. But its not Amazon’s fault.

I think this is precisely correct, and it's really strange to me that a company developing innovative software would decide to apache license all of their work but I still feel for them. I'm guessing that they wanted to build a thing and make some money off of it while mostly just contributing to moving tech forward and that's a super noble goal... but that noble goal would have been much better served by using a license better tailored to OSS free use for non-commercial purposes and pursuing individual agreements for commercial use.

Then again, if it was launched with such stringent requirements would so many contributors have helped them develop into such a usable product?

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#249

Post by SXX »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #36
crb002 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lower cost. AWS usually has huge premiums over the raw EC2/S3/EFS costs.

Better quality is a better answer. AWS charges a big premium for Elasticsearch and I don't think they'd drop their prices to try to squeeze Elastic - for one, it would be unlikely to even work - but even so it's always best to differentiate on being the better quality/"value" than the lowest cost. Having used AWS Elasticsearch, it has a lot of deep problems with it in its current state so Elastic can compete on value…

> AWS charges a big premium for Elasticsearch and I don't think they'd drop their prices to try to squeeze Elastic

Your margin is my opportunity. (c)

Though AWS still growing too fast atm so they value quantity of services over quality. But once they have capacity they can squeeze out of business almost anyone.

Re: AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana

#250

Post by julianmarq »

glogla wrote: post #186
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah let's talk about greed for a second. Elastic, at this moment, is pulling in half a billion dollars in revenue per year. They're growing at at least 40% y/y. They're valued at $15B at this very moment. So, tell me again why this license change is so necessary? Oh right, it's not, it's just a disingenuous move to try to monopolize the market they're in. Except, the irony is, this isn't even going to increase the m…

[flagged]

> people who like open source (generally left-wing people doing stuff for betterment of society)

Do you really think that liking open source is in any way correlated with politics?[1] I'd like to read a source on that one, because it's certainly not been my experience. Maybe we've contributed to different projects and/or read different people.

But even that aside, you think that everyone who likes open source is condemning amazon and on elastic's side? That is even more suspect. Just as an example, the creator of sourcehut has been criticizing elastic all week, and all of his posts—at least one of them explicitly saying that Amazon is definitely allowed to do what it's doing—have reached the front page here. And he's someone whose "liking open source" credentials are good enough, I think.

[1]: I'm not even going to get into other implication, that wanting to improve society is also in any way related to any given political leaning.

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