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Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

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Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#471

Post by btinker »

judofyr wrote: post #239
stavros wrote: post #166

Apart 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…

> Apart 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? Ten years ago I would be very hesitant adopting ElasticSearch if I knew that they were the only ones…

> In my opinion it seems like Elastic wants ElasticSearch to still be perceived as the fully open source project (with all of its good connotations) it once was.

This. It is too bad they couldn't have satisfactory financial success building on open source and it is their right and perfectly fine to switch to a different model, but their justification as well as the SSPL dual licensing muddle the water unnecessarily.

At least the blogpost clearly states it is no longer open source, but then it goes "it's just definition, we're actually totally free and open, just, you know, not OSI free and open". SSPL software is not free software, it is not FOSS. Calling it "free and open software" is misleading at best.

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#472

Post by speeder »

CaptArmchair wrote: post #236

I 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…

I interviewed at Amazon, and researched their offerings to better prepare.

Until reading this news, I never realized ElastiSearch wasn't an Amazon product, I always believed ElastiSearch was Amazon's invention, because of how Amazon employees talk about (always "Amazon ElastiSearch" phrase, often dropping the "service" part of it, so is easy to assume it is "Amazon's ElastiSearch" like "Microsoft Windows")

So it is not just... "a few times too many", if I am interviewing for the company and got extremely confused, how other people wouldn't be confused too? And that is the whole point of trademark laws!

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#473

Post by pydry »

warkdarrior wrote: post #317
Blackthorn wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the companies can simply buy an alternate licence. What's the problem? They end up giving back in terms of $$$ then.

Some projects do not offer alternate/dual licensing.

I'm pretty sure a lot of projects would be open to doing it if offered $$$.

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#474

Post by mbreese »

stingraycharles wrote: post #444
judofyr wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apart 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? Ten years ago I would be very hesitant adopting ElasticSearch if I knew that they were the only ones…

I think AWS is a case of someone ruining it for the rest. Yes, they’re allowed to do that and there’s nothing wrong legally, but in the end everyone will be worse off. I would be much more hesitant choosing an storage solution if I knew the parent company has problems monetizing upon it.

> more hesitant choosing an storage solution if I knew the parent company has problems monetizing

You should be hesitant about choosing any mission critical product where you don't know how the vendor will make money. This is even the case with stable vendors. How many products has Google killed over the years because they could figure out how to make them profitable (enough)?

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#476

Post by tinyhouse »

stavros wrote: post #166

Apart 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…

The core of Elastic-search is Lucene, another OSS. I'm sure the ES team contributed a lot to Lucene, but do they share their profits with all the Lucene developers? You can think about Elastic as a hosted service around Lucene.

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#478

Post by VoxPelli »

detaro wrote: post #244
StavrosK wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, what's the difference between the BSL and Elastic's license?

Code converts to an open-source license after X (e.g. 4) years in BSL. Time will tell how it works out, especially for mature products it could just mean that everyone targets the 4 year old version.

Time will also tell how eg. SSPL will work if eg. Elastic becomes bankrupt, what happens if I can't get a commercial license for it anymore in 10-20 years? BSL:s expire clause ensures that old code never gets unavailable because the business entity has vanished. Does SSPL have any similar protection?

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#479

Post by Karunamon »

ensignavenger wrote: post #463
Karunamon wrote: post #253

I don't understand how the SSPL is substantially different enough from AGPL to warrant being called "non-OSS" as has been done multiple times in this thread. It is literally the AGPL, with even stronger copyleft provisions. It is anti-proprietary in the strongest conceivable way. How is that not open source? It does not infringe upon, and goes out of its way to protect, the four freedoms.

https://opensource.org/osd See in particular items 5, 6 and 9.

That doesn't parse. The SSPL does not discriminate against a person, a group, or a field of endeavor, any more than the GPL "discriminates" against people who distribute modified versions of a program by requiring them to distribute the source code of the changes. Further, the requirement of the SSPL does not cover "distributing with", so point 9 doesn't seem to make sense either.

Re: Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing

#480

Post by mbreese »

rossmohax wrote: post #459
M2Ys4U wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't you need permission to advertise your product with Coca Cola™? Not if what you're selling is Coca Cola

Genuine question: why Amazon EKS and not Amazon Kubernetes then? I noticed every single managed Kubernetes doesn't call it Kubernetes.

Huh?

EKS => Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service

Kubernetes is a little different here... it seems a bit more nebulous from an installation/instance point of view. It's a bit like saying we use "Linux". Which Linux? Debian? Ubuntu? RHEL? SUSE?

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