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

Post by patcon » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 3:26 AM UTC

thefreeman wrote: post #425

BossingAround wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What’s the difference between what Amazon does with Elasticsearch vs what someone like Redhat does with the Linux kernel? Red Hat is a top 2-4 contributor to the Linux kernel though, depending on what source (and year) you take a look (e.g. [1]). The big difference is that Amazon doesn't contribute back. The comparison seems misguided at best. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Gi...

The real problem that Elastic doesn't like is that amazon reimplements features as part of their core offering that ES tries to charge for. I'm sure they would have no problem contributing back but Elastic doesn't want these features to become part of the core offering.

Post by dralley » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 3:50 AM UTC

anticristi wrote: post #447

thefreeman wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem that Elastic doesn't like is that amazon reimplements features as part of their core offering that ES tries to charge for. I'm sure they would have no problem contributing back but Elastic doesn't want these features to become part of the core offering.

This sounds like the Docker Inc and Red Hat dance again. Red Hat wanted tighter integration with systemd, Docker Inc not. The debate ended with Red Hat doing: alias docker=podman

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 3:53 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #614

mbreese wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trademark law is very different than copyright law. You are allowed to use trademarks in certain circumstances. You can’t imply a relationship that doesn’t exist, but AWS saying - this is a hosted version of Elasticsearch would probably be okay (but IANAL). Where they’d get into trouble is if they said they offered a hosted Elasticsearch, but under the hood it was something else. But, even then they could probably sa…

> The real question is: was AWS misleading customers? Hell yes. I thought it was Amazon's trademark!

Post by moonraker » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

FemmeAndroid wrote: post #506

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…

The trademark has to do with licensing insofar as if a major reseller of your OSS licensed product will infringe on your trademark, the easiest solution might be to modify the license. Especially when the alternative is lengthy trademark disputes with a huge company with a lot of lawyers. At the end of the day offering an OSS license becomes less viable when it seems like major players aren’t playing fairly.

Post by RSZC » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 4:14 AM UTC

Seb-C wrote: post #207

sireat wrote: post #100

Elastic has the same problem that MongoDB has with Amazon: Amazon is commoditizing their product on a massive scale. "Smart companies try to commoditize their products’ complements." https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ Not sure what other alternatives are there besides changing licensing.

Given that aws just built DocumentDB, I am not sure if the licensing changing anything. I would even say that this choice actually hurts MongoDB because I am less likely to choose it since they have less practical hosting solutions.