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The problem here is that Amazon is infringing on copyright, using the "Elasticsearch" trademark and lying about a partnership in a tweet. > A license is a choi
by j3th9n 6y ago
The problem here is that Amazon is infringing on copyright, using the "Elasticsearch" trademark and lying about a partnership in a tweet.
> A license is a choice. It means you choose to not gain revenue by directly licensing the IP. Instead, you choose to put the code out there without any further legal obligations on your part as well as those who use that code.
Open source doesn't mean you can infringe on its copyright and use trademarks everywhere you like.
> It also means that you have to find alternate ways of making revenue e.g. by providing consultancy, building services or licensing the trademark (which is an entirely different ball game from open sourcing the code!).
You didn't read the whole article?: "I took a personal loan to register the Elasticsearch trademark in 2011 believing in this norm in the open source ecosystem."
- spzb 6y agoYou don't fix trademarks disputes by changing software licenses. Elastic appear to have a sound argument on the trademark front but to conflate that with changing the license of their product is disingenuous.
- ethbr0 6y agoI read their argument as 'suing Amazon in the courts for trademark infringement is an insufficiently expedient remedy.' It does OSS no good if Elastic prevails on merits the day after they go out of business from lost revenue.
- spzb 6y agoAnd what remedy do they have to a copyright license infringement? The same glacial pace legal system.
- chippiewill 6y agoThe damages and ramifications for violating software copyright are much clearer than the nuanced world of trademark infringement. The change in ElasticSearch license here is well publicised. If AWS were to continue to incorporate new changes to ElasticSearch it would be obvious they had deliberately violated the terms of the license and it's much easier to pursue a legal case.
- rjmunro 6y agoPlease don't confuse trademarks and Copyrights - they are entirely separate things. Using a trademark is not infringing Copyright. It may or may not be infringing the trademark, but that's a whole different thing. In general, anyone can use your trademark as long as they are using it about you or your product. I can say "I like Coca Cola, it tastes great" or even "Coca Cola is disgusting" but if I put Coca Cola on the menu but give you Pepsi, that's infringing. This is why some projects have generic names and brand names for the commercial version. PhoneGap and Cordova, RedHat and Centos, etc. Amazon can offer a machine and say "This is Centos, it's mostly the same as RedHat", but they can't say "This is RedHat" unless they pay for actual RedHat.
- sammax 6y agoDon't you need permission to advertise your product with Coca Cola™? Or in this case, would Amazon not need Elastic's permission to say "we use Elastic" to advertise AWS?