Elasticsearch is open source, again • Hacker News Board

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#271

Post by KingMob » Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 8:03 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #141

davidgerard wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Examples?

Grafana https://grafana.com/blog/2021/04/20/qa-with-our-ceo-on-relic... RethinkDB http://web.archive.org/web/20161003231505/https://rethinkdb.... BerkeleyDB http://web.archive.org/web/20170211004058/http://www.infowor... MongoDB tried the shakedown but I guess it didn't work http://web.archive.org/web/20240202161503/https://www.mongod...

Those links are all generic pages related to their licenses. I'm not seeing how they support the idea of a "shakedown", which is criminal extortion.

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#272

Post by thelittleone » Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 8:06 AM UTC

_pdp_ wrote: post #265

adrianco wrote: post #257

Here’s the initial AWS response to the license change that they made in 2018, which I helped write. At the time we didn’t think a new license made sense, as AGPL is sufficient to block AWS from using the code, but the core of the issue was that AWS wanted to contribute security features to the open source project and Elastic wanted to keep security as an enterprise feature, so rejected all the approaches AWS made at…

Unfortunately many companies charge extra for security where security should be the default. Truth to be told there some some situations where extra security costs could be justified but there are not many if charge is necessary it should be considered as a temporary measure. My $0.02.

Including the recent trend of access to SOC2 reports requiring an "Enterprise" tier subscription.

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#273

Post by KingMob » Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 8:08 AM UTC

remram wrote: post #171

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #161

Too late. We just deployed a new project with OpenSearch after learning from an Elastic salesperson that their licensing fees would eat up significant portions of the projects profits. Also, since it's not spelled out clearly, I'm supposing huge parts of vital functionality are still subject to a paid license, even if the core functionality is technically open source now.

Plus they lost all trust now. Who's to say they won't pull the same thing again if developers were to come back? It's not like they stopped requiring a CLA...

To be fair, though, every project of a certain size requires you to sign away your rights via CLA, so I don't think that can be held against them. (Though I admit, dispensing with a CLA would be an amazing gesture of good will.)

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#274

Post by KingMob » Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 8:12 AM UTC

outop wrote: post #107

troyvit wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what new tricks ~FAANG~ MAMAA companies come up with to get as much as they can from open source without giving anything back I suppose.

Whatever you think of those companies in a wider sense, it's totally inaccurate to suggest that Microsoft, Google or Amazon haven't given anything back to open source.

Hyperbole aside, they certainly haven't given as much as they've gotten, though.

E.g., remember when Heartbleed hit, and the world learned that OpenSSL was maintained by one person getting only $2000/year for it? Fixing Heartbleed was estimated to cost half a billion dollars world-wide.

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#275

Post by nklmilojevic » Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 8:12 AM UTC

nullify88 wrote: post #230

Since Elasticsearch changed their license, Loki has also appeared as a competitor and the Grafana machine have released a suite of tools that cover the observability categories. It may also be that the license change encouraged users to look for alternatives and there are more now than just being graylog and Elasticsearch. Clickhouse has proven to also be a very capable database for logs and there are stacks that use…

Loki and Clickhouse are not really excelling in what ES is. For example, full text search.

VictoriaLogs is very promising in this regard!

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#276

Post by frankjr » Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 8:13 AM UTC

"Changing the license was a mistake, and Elastic now backtracks from it"

This could have been the entire article and it would make more sense than whatever this is.

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#277

Post by orra » Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 8:15 AM UTC

SteveNuts wrote: post #36

orra wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The service is more than the code base: it's who is offering it, who supports it. Besides, I'd be shocked if that analogy is how the law works. Perhaps if you'd bought an individual license then sure, you could resell it with the brand name, just like the car. But wholesale is a completely different situation.

> Besides, I'd be shocked if that analogy is how the law works. There's not really much actual law at work here, it's all civil matters.

That's splitting hairs. It's trademark statute which make trademarks enforceable.

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#278

Post by VMtest » Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 8:19 AM UTC

tyre wrote: post #195

remram wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AGPL is actually pretty clear: > if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version > To "modify" a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the m…

It’s not the network call, it’s what you do with it. Let’s take redis, pretending it’s AGPL. Adding a new command to the source code: definitely a modification. Adding a new feature to the redis client: also a modification. Creating a class (RedisPlusClient) that inherits from its client and adds a feature: Maybe a modification? Feels modification-adjacent. Building a microservice that uses the redis client and expos…

just leaving this here for reference

https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#279

Post by perryizgr8 » Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 8:20 AM UTC

adrianco wrote: post #257

Here’s the initial AWS response to the license change that they made in 2018, which I helped write. At the time we didn’t think a new license made sense, as AGPL is sufficient to block AWS from using the code, but the core of the issue was that AWS wanted to contribute security features to the open source project and Elastic wanted to keep security as an enterprise feature, so rejected all the approaches AWS made at…

I don't know if this was part of the issues but adding authentication to Elastic APIs and Kibana is so confusing and complicated that it is almost impossible to do unless you go for a managed solution. I'm sure that one factor alone motivates a lot of users to buy the service instead of hosting their own using the available source.

Re: Elasticsearch is open source, again

#280

Post by wg0 » Fri, Aug 30, 2024, 8:21 AM UTC

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #161

Too late. We just deployed a new project with OpenSearch after learning from an Elastic salesperson that their licensing fees would eat up significant portions of the projects profits. Also, since it's not spelled out clearly, I'm supposing huge parts of vital functionality are still subject to a paid license, even if the core functionality is technically open source now.

Bit hard to trust - plus OpenSearch would continue to go strong because lot many companies have built business on top of it. Most of the centralised logging providers come to mind.

Grafana and Elasticsearch with their AGPL, are not deployable for teams that don't even want to provide a competing service because even basic security features (group membership via external OAuth source for example) are only available in Enterprise Edition (TM)