Why does this read like a child wrote it?
I agree, I felt it was written very quickly without much editing or review.
Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing
301–310 of 708 posts
Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing
#302I run Apache licensed storage library. It is not big, but consulting fees cover my living. Some time ago I changed development model. Public facing version is still Apache 2 licensed. But now there are no unit tests and no integration tests, those are proprietary now. And I extensively use code generator which is also not public. It is still possible to fork/modify code. Merging pull request is bit more difficult for…
That's fine but that's not "Open Source" as the open source community sees it. That's just source-available. It's great: when I choose proprietary software, I'm much happier when I get the source code along with it since it can help with diagnostics and advanced cases. But it isn't "Open Source".
Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing
#303Apart from the general consternation about an OSS license becoming non-OSS, can we also talk about the problem that companies are formed, invest a whole lot of resources into creating a product, open-source it, and then have Amazon eat into their profits by just installing and maintaining that product as a service? No matter how you slice it, I think Amazon is bad for us end-users, and Elastic is good. Elastic could…
> companies are formed, invest a whole lot of resources into creating a product, open-source it, and then have Amazon eat into their profits by just installing and maintaining that product as a service? Why should we be mad at Amazon for adhering to the terms of the license that the ES developers chose? Software isn't born under the terms of Apache 2/MIT/BSD/a similarly permissive license. The people who developed it…
Because while it's true that Amazon is following the terms of the license, it's having real repercussions in that the people actually maintaining the Software are seeing decreased ability to grow the product because a huge company, belonging to the second richest man in the world, is offering it as part of their vertically-integrated oligopoly.
Reducing it to an issue of following license terms is short sighted, it's having negative repercussions on the software ecosystem and it's a dimension that has to be considered beyond merely a discussion on copyleft and the extent of it.
Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing
#304It seems like Amazon is using their retail strategy here. It is basically white labeling the product. Just find a popular product. Copy the apis and call it amazon x. Open source license make it even easier.
Which is fine as long as they respect the license e.g. keep the result software open source. Amazon is selling compute hours, not software.
Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing
#305Apart from the general consternation about an OSS license becoming non-OSS, can we also talk about the problem that companies are formed, invest a whole lot of resources into creating a product, open-source it, and then have Amazon eat into their profits by just installing and maintaining that product as a service? No matter how you slice it, I think Amazon is bad for us end-users, and Elastic is good. Elastic could…
On the one hand I don’t like the idea of a company like Amazon exploiting (in the classic sense) open source. I’ve not seen Amazon give much back to open source relative to what they’ve gained.
On the other hand if you open source something with a license that permits selling the software, well... what do you expect? You gotta hand it to Amazon. They’ve really hustled the industry by hosting open source code. The code is free, literally anybody else could have done this, but Amazon did it especially well.
Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing
#306I think I have grown a rather hard stance on this over the years: putting an open source license on a product isn't a business model. It's, by and large, a part of a larger business model. A license is a choice. It means you choose to not gain revenue by directly licensing the IP. Instead, you choose to put the code out there without any further legal obligations on your part as well as those who use that code. It al…
> The trouble isn't that Amazon decided to use ElasticSearch in their own offering. The trouble is that Amazon simply out-competes ElasticSearch with their own product when it comes to consultancy, services, etc.
I kind of disagree here, the main reason it outcompetes is based on the network of linked self serve services in the ecosystem. We spend a ton of money on Amazon in general, and I would not tout thier consultancy as being anything but ok if not underwhelming.
Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You're kind of right about this, but it's the issue that AWS just has a massive head-start with any client that already uses AWS. They don't really out-compete, they just use their existing vendor lock-in to gain an advantage. And really, by using your dominance in one "market" to gain an advantage elsewhere ends up feeling like a bit of a grey area. I'm not sure if it's actually a gray area, since I'm pretty sure…
> leveraging your market dominance in one area to compete in another is illegal Leveraging your monopoly to compete in another area is illegal. Leveraging a strong position isn’t and Amazon is a long ways from a monopoly.
> Leveraging your monopoly to compete in another area is illegal. Leveraging a strong position isn’t and Amazon is a long ways from a monopoly.
That really depends on interpretation, which has shifted over time and continues to shift. IIRC, recent interpretations of some types of anti-competitive behavior have been rather literal and required something very close to a literal monopoly, which has had the effect of neutering antitrust law in all but the most blatant of cases.
My understanding is that it's arguable that it's anti-competitive to leverage market share advantages more broadly (e.g. antitrust law could be used to constrain/break-up a duopoly).
Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing
#308What’s the difference between what Amazon does with Elasticsearch vs what someone like Redhat does with the Linux kernel? Or what every hosting provider including AWS does with the Linux kernel, sell access to a service that is running that software. I get that Elasticsearch wants to run their own company, but I really have no sympathy for their arguments here. They released open source software and now are mad that…
Did you read the blog post? They are mad about trademark violation and an allegation that their commercial code has been ripped off by Amazon through a third party. They have Elasticsearch trademarked and you can't use their name with your name on it. In their mind, it is a violation.
Yes but how does changing their license affect a trademark? If they are legally in the right and this is a violation of their trademark they should win their lawsuit about it regardless.
Also my initial question was not purely rhetorical, I would assume "Linux" is also trademarked so I'm wondering what is the difference there and why Redhat selling RHEL has not been the same problem.
Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing
#309As an AWS user, it bums me out how much vendors don’t integrate better with the marketplace and cloud formation stacks etc.
What I’m after is being able to pay a 3rd-party vendor to do all the work of setting up a cluster of machines, deal with HA, backups, upgrades, support etc - but stay out of my data, so that I don’t have to force all our enterprise clients to sign updates to our DPA.
I would gladly pay elastic.co for such a service. The only vendor that I’m aware that does is Cognitect with Datomic Cloud: https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/index.html
Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing
#310The cringe on this thread is appalling. Elasticsearch B.V. owes you nothing. The source code is still open source, but you should pay for re-selling or providing hosting services around it. They have salaries to pay. Period. Too many open source "believers" find themselves out of pocket, taking time away from their families and lives, only for companies like Amazaon and other WAANKs out there to make billions in prof…
What does the term WAANK stand for?