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> businesses like AWS that exploit FOSS to repackage it for profit Exploit is questionable. A true open-source project like PostgreSQL only benefits from Amaz

> 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.

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.