And to flip it around, the question isn't whether Elastic envisioned use case X. The whole meaning behind FOSS is that you're explicitly saying "I don't care wh

And to flip it around, the question isn't whether Elastic envisioned use case X. The whole meaning behind FOSS is that you're explicitly saying "I don't care what your use case is, you're free to use it". So to later turn around and say "hey we never envisioned Amazon et all turning around and selling Elasticsearch as a service" is looking at it backwards. When you release something under Apache 2 (or a similar non-restrictive license) you're intentionally telling people to do what they want with it. Anyway, my thoughts on these kinds of situations is that it usually implies there's some disconnect between how Elastic Co wants to make money versus how they actually are making money. --- There's a related issue of open source maintainers/devs feeling "exploited". Now while having users submitting issues with unfortunate tone/wording that implies that you're obligated as the maintainer to spend your time fixing their issues is frustrating, it's also part of the game. I'm getting really frustrated with the whole "it's not fair that company X is using my free software without contributing back". That's literally what you agreed to have happen when you released under a non-restrictive license! If you want a restrictive license, that's fine, but don't release under Apache 2 or BSD and then turn around and act shocked when people use your free software for free. It is unreasonable to put something out there for free and then suddenly expect money for it. That doesn't mean that companies shouldn't be contributing back to software they rely on - that's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned - but it does mean that nobody should be surprised when someone does choose to "consume" software without contributing back.