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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

#601

Post by chillfox »

johncena33 wrote: post #554
mbreese wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)?

> How many products has Google killed over the years because they could figure out how to make them profitable (enough)? HN never ceases to amaze me. This is a post on pattern of exploitative and anti-competitive behavior of AWS. Somehow HN crowd found a way to whine about Google. Every single day multiple anti-Google posts on HN front page was not enough.

It is simply the effect of Google spending their reputation as if it is a never ending fountain of free cash.

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

#602

Post by no_wizard »

jahewson wrote: post #341
no_wizard wrote: post #254

I never understood why its so hard for Corporations (specifically, US Corporations) to just give back to these projects via corporate charity contributions. I know, this takes away from other worthy causes too in some ways, however, I think we could get massive boosts that help all tides in the long run. After all, US corporate giving, from a cursory search, in 2019 alone was 21.09 billion USD [0] if even 1% of that…

Open source software development isn’t regarded as a social good (legally in the US), it has to be fulfilling some broader charitable purpose. But such a system would completely change the dynamics of open source, likely in undesirable ways. Keep the money out, I say.

The whole issue with OSS software is there isn't any money coming in with significant quantity to fund projects, many, many of which are fundamental to technologies we all take for granted, take the OpenSSL story for example, as alluded to in this press release when corporations got shamed for taking advantage of this project with little funding:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160610144229/http://www.linuxf...

Now imagine if projects like this could receive real, significant ongoing funding. Maybe charity isn't right, (non profit would be a better word here I think). I see it as a net gain.

It doesn't mean it wouldn't be complicated and add more overhead to certain projects of x size though.

Please do elaborate more though if you think it would strongly result in a net negative.

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

#603

Post by no_wizard »

paxys wrote: post #346
no_wizard wrote: post #254

I never understood why its so hard for Corporations (specifically, US Corporations) to just give back to these projects via corporate charity contributions. I know, this takes away from other worthy causes too in some ways, however, I think we could get massive boosts that help all tides in the long run. After all, US corporate giving, from a cursory search, in 2019 alone was 21.09 billion USD [0] if even 1% of that…

Elastic is a $15 billion company. Its investors aren't looking for charity.

Speaking to the broader issue this pertains to though, I think my point still has some merits on that basis. This is really a proxy for an industry wide problem, whether is a for profit company or not behind the open source software

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

#604

Post by Xylakant »

Yeroc wrote: post #490
prepend wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m confused too. IANAL but this seems like it’s a clear use of trademark. Amazon sells Hershey bars through its site. I don’t think it needs to get permission to say “here’s the subscribe and save service to buy Hershey bars.” I think the confusion is whether ElasticCo is endorsing or part of the service offering. So it should be clear that the offering isn’t by ElasticCo. Back to the chocolate example, as long as A…

It's a bit more muddled then that since AWS isn't using the true ElasticSearch bits but rather an OpenDistro fork of it that they created themselves. So is it still ElasticSearch? Mostly, but it's not exactly the same thing either. But of course AWS would want to leverage the name recognition of ElasticSearch...

Opendistro is not a fork, it’s a collection of plugins that work with the open source elasticsearch distribution, basically it replaces what used to be called x-pack (security etc.)

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

#605

Post by astrange »

peterwoerner wrote: post #560
astrange wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting investors to give Bezos free money for being Bezos was actually pretty good for customers and got everyone free one-day shipping. Amazon is an investor charity like Uber, not a business.

Right now it is better for the customers, but that doesn't mean it will continue to be this. You assume that once/if Bezos crushes the rest of the competitors he won't start significantly increasing prices. We saw something similar in the 90s where health care prices plummeted as the now winners developed and convinced the public that their monopolies were good. Now they are able increase prices by 15-20%/yr into the…

There appear to be more competitors than ever to me. Amazon doesn't have much of a moat in their retail business (they do in AWS) since your lock in is only that you've bought Prime for the year; they're merely very good at it.

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

#606

Post by nenolod »

joshuaissac wrote: post #586
nenolod wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah? SCO sued a bunch of people too. They haven't won, though.

Elastic and Floragunn are unrelated to SCO.

They share a similarity: the Floragunn litigation is unresolved (and clearly Floragunn continues to distribute their plugin). SCO, too, failed to resolve their litigation favorably to SCO.

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

#607

Post by prepend »

pietrovismara wrote: post #362
prepend wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make products that use that package. I want all the packages I depend on to be compatible with my license. I don’t want to run into an audit years from now during due diligence that I have some liability from an incompatible license. I can’t afford lawyers to determine compatibility today. And I suspect that they would say “not compatible, pay to be safe.” That’s the difference to me as a user.

This sounds more like an issue with the licensing world itself than with this license, which by itself is pretty simple and won't affect you except in the case you offer your products containing Elastic as a service to third parties.

I don’t have have that problem with well known licenses like OSI or proprietary, commercial licenses.

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

#608

Post by joshuaissac »

nenolod wrote: post #606
joshuaissac wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elastic and Floragunn are unrelated to SCO.

They share a similarity: the Floragunn litigation is unresolved (and clearly Floragunn continues to distribute their plugin). SCO, too, failed to resolve their litigation favorably to SCO.

That is a very tenuous connection. Floragunn has not resolved the litigation in their favour, either.

If we are going off similarities, Napster also continued to distribute their software while their lawsuit involving the RIAA was unresolved. The court still ruled against them eventually.

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

#609

Post by TheKarateKid »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #538
dd_roger wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of these issues have anything to do with the license. Either Elastic's code used by Amazon is indeed stolen proprietary code and no licensing change is needed to obtain reparation, or Amazon is making lawful use of FOSS source code and the question boils down to "if I publish code under a FOSS license, can anybody use it?", to which the answer is obviously yes. And if you'd prefer it to be "no" then don't pub…

IANAL but I don't think this is infringing. Your allowed to sell Apple Macs and advertise them as "Bob's Apple Mac store" without paying any royalties to Apple. Similarly, Amazon can deploy the open-source ElasticSearch product, and deploy it, unaltered using the trademark.

Trademark law goes by category. Elastic uses theirs for a software product as well as a service, whereas Amazon is using it for their cloud services (not as a standalone software product). This is why Apple Corps (music, Beatles) and Apple Computer Inc. were allowed to coexist.

This situation is a very fine line between the technicalities that the trademark law was written for. Amazon knows this, and they have the money to set legal precedent in court to have it their way. And so stomping on Elastic's trademark is the route they chose to further benefit from that company's reputation.

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

#610

Post by Dylan16807 »

vinay_ys wrote: post #324
ardy42 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A relevant question is "would they have been that successful if Elastic were 'just another closed source enterprise product'." > Elastic was successful because a lot of companies tried it out for free and then purchased licenses, or because hobbiysts used it on their personal project and then pushed for it at work. That model is not actually incompatible with closed source. You can always distribute binaries with a…

You would be surprised how many third party companies support closed source software product of another company. This is very common in enterprise world. It is also a common way for a vendor to get their foot into an enterprise entrenched with a competitor's product.

That works out much better because they don't end up getting 100% of the money.
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