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I think you misunderstood the article. Only businesses like AWS that exploit FOSS to repackage it for profit should be concerned by this license. If you use it

I think you misunderstood the article. Only businesses like AWS that exploit FOSS to repackage it for profit should be concerned by this license. If you use it internally to store and analyze metrics/logs/whatever, than you're fine as you where before. Edit: The problem is the article itself that does a very bad job in explaining the problem. I think it's better to read directly from elastic: https://www.elastic.co/blog/licensing-change https://www.elastic.co/blog/licensing-change The "Why change" section explains it pretty well.

prohobo 6y ago
I for sure didn't misunderstand the article itself, it says multiple times that everyone using it should be concerned. It seems like the article isn't very good though.
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  You're right, I clarified in my edit that the article is misleading.
k__ 6y ago
And Elasticsearch isn't even exploites very good by AWS. It always feels clunky to add it to a serverless architecture. Would be cool if they would create their own solution with on-demand pricing.
ProblemFactory 6y ago
> businesses like AWS that exploit FOSS to repackage it for profit Exploit is questionable. A true open-source project like PostgreSQL only benefits from Amazon and Google offering it as a paid, hosted solution. It makes it easier to adopt, sell to decision-makers, and gain more user and developer mindshare over alternatives. If you are concerned with "competitors" offering your open-source project to more users, then perhaps being open source was just a poorly chosen marketing tactic that backfired.
- logifail 6y ago
  > A true open-source project like PostgreSQL only benefits from Amazon and Google offering it as a paid, hosted solution I've been using PostgreSQL for a long time and I'm not clear how the open-source project benefits from being resold by planet-scale cloud providers. Can we have references for claims like this?
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  > A true open-source project like PostgreSQL only benefits from Amazon and Google offering it as a paid, hosted solution And like, how? For a project to be exploited by tech corps usually the project itself needs to be already relevant and widely used across the industry. That's why it doesn't really need any publicity from AWS and that's why AWS "steals" it, their customers won't have to learn a new tool but can re-use their knowledge. Lower entry barrier = more customers. > If you are concerned with "competitors" offering your open-source project to more users, then perhaps being open source was just a poorly chosen marketing tactic that backfired. How free-markety of you. Now imagine that Elastic took your suggestion. They never made the elastic suite FOSS in the first place but only sold it as a closed source product. 1) It would have never got widely used in the industry 2) We would have never got a free open source tool that helped kick-start many other companies. You could say the same about Mongo. Imagine what impact it would have had on the startup world if Mongo wasn't a FOSS project. That's why it is fundamental to protect FOSS projects from corporate exploitation, in order to protect the whole tech eco-system.
  - luord 6y ago
    "1) It would have never got widely used in the industry" Agreed. "2) We would have never got a free open source tool that helped kick-start many other companies." Disagreed. A different open source tool would have gotten the attention and that would have helped kickstart many other companies. Pretty much every open source tool or library has equally open source alternatives, sometimes even just as popular alternatives. Elasticsearch is no exception, and its alternatives are about to get a surge in popularity. "You could say the same about Mongo. Imagine what impact it would have had on the startup world if Mongo wasn't a FOSS project." More startups would have used Postgres instead... Which probably they should have done anyway. Mongo only started to become usable for anything but raw streams of data, IMO, not long before it became source available. And even nowadays, I would still recommend Postgres (or any relational database) over Mongo for 95% of startups, even if it still were open source. That said, I know that that is not the case with Elasticsearch, which probably is the best among its alternatives.

prohobo 6y ago

I for sure didn't misunderstand the article itself, it says multiple times that everyone using it should be concerned. It seems like the article isn't very good though.

pietrovismara 6y ago
You're right, I clarified in my edit that the article is misleading.

k__ 6y ago

And Elasticsearch isn't even exploites very good by AWS. It always feels clunky to add it to a serverless architecture. Would be cool if they would create their own solution with on-demand pricing.

ProblemFactory 6y ago

> businesses like AWS that exploit FOSS to repackage it for profit Exploit is questionable. A true open-source project like PostgreSQL only benefits from Amazon and Google offering it as a paid, hosted solution. It makes it easier to adopt, sell to decision-makers, and gain more user and developer mindshare over alternatives. If you are concerned with "competitors" offering your open-source project to more users, then perhaps being open source was just a poorly chosen marketing tactic that backfired.

logifail 6y ago
> A true open-source project like PostgreSQL only benefits from Amazon and Google offering it as a paid, hosted solution I've been using PostgreSQL for a long time and I'm not clear how the open-source project benefits from being resold by planet-scale cloud providers. Can we have references for claims like this?
pietrovismara 6y ago
> A true open-source project like PostgreSQL only benefits from Amazon and Google offering it as a paid, hosted solution And like, how? For a project to be exploited by tech corps usually the project itself needs to be already relevant and widely used across the industry. That's why it doesn't really need any publicity from AWS and that's why AWS "steals" it, their customers won't have to learn a new tool but can re-use their knowledge. Lower entry barrier = more customers. > If you are concerned with "competitors" offering your open-source project to more users, then perhaps being open source was just a poorly chosen marketing tactic that backfired. How free-markety of you. Now imagine that Elastic took your suggestion. They never made the elastic suite FOSS in the first place but only sold it as a closed source product. 1) It would have never got widely used in the industry 2) We would have never got a free open source tool that helped kick-start many other companies. You could say the same about Mongo. Imagine what impact it would have had on the startup world if Mongo wasn't a FOSS project. That's why it is fundamental to protect FOSS projects from corporate exploitation, in order to protect the whole tech eco-system.
- luord 6y ago
  "1) It would have never got widely used in the industry" Agreed. "2) We would have never got a free open source tool that helped kick-start many other companies." Disagreed. A different open source tool would have gotten the attention and that would have helped kickstart many other companies. Pretty much every open source tool or library has equally open source alternatives, sometimes even just as popular alternatives. Elasticsearch is no exception, and its alternatives are about to get a surge in popularity. "You could say the same about Mongo. Imagine what impact it would have had on the startup world if Mongo wasn't a FOSS project." More startups would have used Postgres instead... Which probably they should have done anyway. Mongo only started to become usable for anything but raw streams of data, IMO, not long before it became source available. And even nowadays, I would still recommend Postgres (or any relational database) over Mongo for 95% of startups, even if it still were open source. That said, I know that that is not the case with Elasticsearch, which probably is the best among its alternatives.