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AWS are the good guys here. Elastic built a popular product off the work of countless open source contributors. That's how they became a market leader in this p

AWS are the good guys here. Elastic built a popular product off the work of countless open source contributors. That's how they became a market leader in this product space. It's how open source works. The people who contributed to the product did so with no expectation of reward except that their efforts would remain open source. Elasticsearch got popular, and now Elastic wants to reap all the rewards and make money off the product. They're free to do that, and create restricted-license or closed-source versions for future enhancements. But the community doesn't have to buy into that and continue to contribute to what is no longer truly an open source product. AWS is forking it and continuing with the original, truly open source license. This is pretty much exactly what happened to MySQL, and now we have MariaDB, which is a better and truly open source product. AWS does plenty of things worth criticizing, and one can even criticize them in this particular instance for not working with Elastic to provide more support to whatever it was they were asking for. And Elastic may very well have a legitimate gripe about trademarks. But yanking the Apache license out and moving to a more-restrictive license is not the right solution, and is not what everyone who contributed to building the product signed up for. You can't create an open source project, wait for it to gain market dominance, decide to be less open source, and expect the community to continue contributing. Elastic shot themselves in the foot and now they can either revert their decision or get left behind as the community moves on to what will ultimately end up being the better product.

riku_iki 6y ago
> This is pretty much exactly what happened to MySQL, and now we have MariaDB, which is a better and truly open source product. This is controversial example, in my understanding MySql creator requested to agree with his terms for all OSS commits, which gave him copyright rights on codebase, then sold his rights to Sun, and only then created MariaDb - OSS fork.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Where is the controversy there? Did he sign a non-compete? NextCloud and OwnCloud Jenkins and Hudson More software is good. I'd say the MariaDB-is-better conclusion is controversial since the improves to Oracle's MySQL are substantial. At least around Innodb, and disregarding their embarrassingly bad bugs.
  - riku_iki 6y ago
    > Where is the controversy there? Did he sign a non-compete? Controversy is that he accepted patches from OSS contributors, but assumed his own copyright on them, then sold his rights to big corp (Sun), which (Oracle) closed some sources, it is probably not very clean behavior.
paxys 6y ago
It's possible for there to be no good guys in a fight. They are both multi-billion dollar corporations looking out for their shareholders' interests. "Open source" is being thrown around by both sides as a marketing/goodwill tool, nothing more.
- Roybot 6y ago
  It really is. “Open source” good, “closed source” bad. This is embarrassing.
- mylons 6y ago
  this is the correct take. AWS and Elastic are both acting out of self interest with varying levels of gains for the customer in each.
  - 2bitencryption 6y ago
    I'm about to make a really petty and possibly off topic comment, so sorry for this -- "this is the correct take" is like my least-favorite Twitter-ism of them all. it's so ridiculously authoritative and final. Like, "Whoa, okay, everyone stop the discussion. @SandwichGuy87 has identified the correct take. Thanks for bringing us to reality, @SandwichGuy87."
    - r-w 6y ago
      I think it comes from a desperation for clarity in a messy conversation.
      - sicariusnoctis 6y ago
        This is the correct take.
    - kemitchell 6y ago
      I guess "I believe this is correct." would be more polite. But on a social media site where everything is about prompting the next comment, and no one can unilaterally end any conversation, it's obviously toothless. In that context, the "polite" alternative could come off as tentative. I hadn't heard "twitterism" before. Is there a list of these? I unplugged from Twitter more than a year ago, and have benefited immensely. But I'm sure I'm missing references because of it.
Roybot 6y ago
Contributor efforts are remaining open source. The change in license goes into effect in the 7.11 release. Code contributed under Apache stays that way. Typically open source projects have only a handful of core developers - with a large majority being pass-by contributors interested in fixing their problems/use case. Characterizing it to sound like all these developers are being slighted is strange. Not being able to reap what you sow is a problem with open source. I don’t doubt we are seeing less great software being shared in the open because of it. If we want more useful software shared as open source we should fix this. The Amazon problem doesn’t help. I’m with Elastic.
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  > Not being able to reap what you sow is a problem with open source. I don’t doubt we are seeing less great software being shared in the open because of it. If we want more useful software shared as open source we should fix this. The Amazon problem doesn’t help. I’m with Elastic. Simply put, this is a naive and entitled attitude. And here's my proof of that: Elastic is a success story. They gave away software for free and turned it into a $15B business. And yet there's still people like you being apologists for their outright lies and intentionally misleading statements. I find it so incredibly absurd. Elastic is tricking you into thinking that they are not an absurdly successful business. That's not true. Oh, and one last time: This license change doesn't even protect their business, so it's totally pointless. It's just a business blunder. The SSPL will not make a difference to Amazon because they're not going to use the SSPL version of the code. It's so simple.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    On the contrary, this is win-win for everyone: Amazon now has to make their fork competitive with Elastic's, so they'll have to invest more resources in open source development. Elastic is also still free to grab their Apache-licensed improvements. Meanwhile, if Elastic's future improvements are better than AWS', it'll drive use of their services over Amazon's.
    - paulryanrogers 6y ago
tschellenbach 6y ago
Pretty sure that >95% of Elastic's code is created by the company and not external contributors.
- z77dj3kl 6y ago
  Yes, but open-source software adoption and growth is about more than just those who build it, it's about those who use it. Elastic wouldn't exist without the users either.
  - m-p-3 6y ago
    And Amazon wouldn't have ElasticSearch without Elastic.
    - imhoguy 6y ago
      Both wouldn't exist without countless hours of paid/unpaid FOSS contributors (Lucene, Netty, Docker, Linux, OpenJdk).
tus88 6y ago
It's a good point. Imagine if one of those open source projects that Elastic uses licensed there own little bit of code under the SSL. Elastic would flip out.
dccoolgai 6y ago
Classic "externalize costs" (have community build and evangelize for you) then "privatize gains" (now that we're here, we're changing the deal).
mathnode 6y ago
MariaDB came out with the BSL license for projects like maxcale to help protect against AWS nonsense (and the like). The mysql -> mariadb response is completely different, but no less terrible. This is history repeating itself as Amazon, once again, attempt to gut open source efforts. For a short while Amazon did contribute to some MariaDB projects. MongoDB now have similar license and AWS offers compatible API's.
- Rudisimo 6y ago
  Yet, MongoDB seems to maintain a healthy, symbiotic relationship with AWS [1][2][3]. [1]: https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas/lp/try2 https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas/lp/try2 [2]: https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas/aws-mongodb https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas/aws-mongodb [3]: https://www.mongodb.com/mongodb-on-aws https://www.mongodb.com/mongodb-on-aws
  - ayush--s 6y ago
    it does feel like the whole issue blew up so much because AWS & Elastic.co are unable to work together. We many never know the details, so can't say who's in the wrong here.
- popcorncowboy 6y ago
  > help protect against AWS nonsense Not gaslighting, legit questions follow: It's not clear to me how taking open source software and providing commercial managed services is "nonsense"? Or is it specifically when AWS does it that it's not okay? Either way, is there something specific at play that makes it fundamentally different from say WPEngine running hosted Wordpress? Is it purely a function of scale? If a startup decides that Kubernetes is worth providing a managed service for at what point does providing that managed service become "AWS nonsense"? Is there a revenue watermark beyond which what they're doing becomes unfair? Or is k8s ok because it's backed by a mega-corp already?
  - virtue3 6y ago
    AWS repeatedly said they were "together with elastic" in service offerings. They apparently were not, so they were just running on elastics coat tails, offering nothing to elastic, and saying they were totally together. It's hilarious that you picked K8. K8 destroyed dockers ability to make money. They were planning on rolling out their own system, but didn't get it out fast enough and got eaten. Was k8 nonsense? no, they made a product from the ground up.
ROARosen 6y ago
FROM ORIGINAL POST: >When AWS decides to offer a service based on an open source project, we ensure that we are equipped and prepared to maintain it ourselves if necessary. You might disagree but to me this sounds like hyperbole; a veiled threat should any other OSS dev decide to change their licensing just to disadvantage AWS. I think it's juvenile to think that even AWS has the resources necessary to for every OSS product they offer. Think Linux (the kernel) etc. drivers, frameworks, as well as every dependency these projects contain.
- brown9-2 6y ago
  That’s not what they’re saying, they offer virtualization services, not Linux as a service.
ramoz 6y ago
A question worth asking, has AWS paid retribution to the elastic oss ecosystem with new oss? If so, Elastic are the bad guys.
auggierose 6y ago
Just as Elastic chose their license, and then Amazon took advantage of that, so did contributors decide to contribute under that license. So those contributors do not deserve any more sympathy than Elastic. Both got stuff yanked out from under them. Those contributors shot themselves in the foot.
petejohnson 6y ago
> Elastic built a popular product off the work of countless open source contributors. That's how they became a market leader in this product space. That's simply not true. Elasticsearch and Kibana are primarily built by developers on the Elastic payroll. You can verify this by looking at the "Contributors" tab on Github for both projects. I honestly couldn't find a single person there who wasn't employed by Elastic at the time of their contributions. > The people who contributed to the product did so with no expectation of reward except that their efforts would remain open source Again, did you do a survey of any of these people? Seeing they are Elastic employees I guess they asked for more than just OSS glory... Probably lunch and and a pay check. > But yanking the Apache license out and moving to a more-restrictive license is not the right solution, and is not what everyone who contributed to building the product signed up for. What would you suggest, at this point in time, that Elastic did instead? They released the projects as OSS 10 years ago - there's no changing that. Now they need to stop Amazon or they might not survive as a company. I'm honestly interested to hear your suggestion.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  Personally I'd theoretically be ok with having contributed long ago, and the company now going SSPL. Not that easy to have known, that far back, how things would turn out. > need to stop Amazon or they might not survive as a company They make lots of money, but also have high salary costs, right. I wonder if you looked at the numbers and growth / profitablity, and concluded that they're at risk, or if you're assuming

riku_iki 6y ago

> This is pretty much exactly what happened to MySQL, and now we have MariaDB, which is a better and truly open source product. This is controversial example, in my understanding MySql creator requested to agree with his terms for all OSS commits, which gave him copyright rights on codebase, then sold his rights to Sun, and only then created MariaDb - OSS fork.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
Where is the controversy there? Did he sign a non-compete? NextCloud and OwnCloud Jenkins and Hudson More software is good. I'd say the MariaDB-is-better conclusion is controversial since the improves to Oracle's MySQL are substantial. At least around Innodb, and disregarding their embarrassingly bad bugs.
- riku_iki 6y ago
  > Where is the controversy there? Did he sign a non-compete? Controversy is that he accepted patches from OSS contributors, but assumed his own copyright on them, then sold his rights to big corp (Sun), which (Oracle) closed some sources, it is probably not very clean behavior.

paxys 6y ago

It's possible for there to be no good guys in a fight. They are both multi-billion dollar corporations looking out for their shareholders' interests. "Open source" is being thrown around by both sides as a marketing/goodwill tool, nothing more.

Roybot 6y ago
It really is. “Open source” good, “closed source” bad. This is embarrassing.
mylons 6y ago
this is the correct take. AWS and Elastic are both acting out of self interest with varying levels of gains for the customer in each.
- 2bitencryption 6y ago
  I'm about to make a really petty and possibly off topic comment, so sorry for this -- "this is the correct take" is like my least-favorite Twitter-ism of them all. it's so ridiculously authoritative and final. Like, "Whoa, okay, everyone stop the discussion. @SandwichGuy87 has identified the correct take. Thanks for bringing us to reality, @SandwichGuy87."
  - r-w 6y ago
    I think it comes from a desperation for clarity in a messy conversation.
    - sicariusnoctis 6y ago
      This is the correct take.
  - kemitchell 6y ago
    I guess "I believe this is correct." would be more polite. But on a social media site where everything is about prompting the next comment, and no one can unilaterally end any conversation, it's obviously toothless. In that context, the "polite" alternative could come off as tentative. I hadn't heard "twitterism" before. Is there a list of these? I unplugged from Twitter more than a year ago, and have benefited immensely. But I'm sure I'm missing references because of it.

Roybot 6y ago

Contributor efforts are remaining open source. The change in license goes into effect in the 7.11 release. Code contributed under Apache stays that way. Typically open source projects have only a handful of core developers - with a large majority being pass-by contributors interested in fixing their problems/use case. Characterizing it to sound like all these developers are being slighted is strange. Not being able to reap what you sow is a problem with open source. I don’t doubt we are seeing less great software being shared in the open because of it. If we want more useful software shared as open source we should fix this. The Amazon problem doesn’t help. I’m with Elastic.

__blockcipher__ 6y ago
> Not being able to reap what you sow is a problem with open source. I don’t doubt we are seeing less great software being shared in the open because of it. If we want more useful software shared as open source we should fix this. The Amazon problem doesn’t help. I’m with Elastic. Simply put, this is a naive and entitled attitude. And here's my proof of that: Elastic is a success story. They gave away software for free and turned it into a $15B business. And yet there's still people like you being apologists for their outright lies and intentionally misleading statements. I find it so incredibly absurd. Elastic is tricking you into thinking that they are not an absurdly successful business. That's not true. Oh, and one last time: This license change doesn't even protect their business, so it's totally pointless. It's just a business blunder. The SSPL will not make a difference to Amazon because they're not going to use the SSPL version of the code. It's so simple.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  On the contrary, this is win-win for everyone: Amazon now has to make their fork competitive with Elastic's, so they'll have to invest more resources in open source development. Elastic is also still free to grab their Apache-licensed improvements. Meanwhile, if Elastic's future improvements are better than AWS', it'll drive use of their services over Amazon's.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago

tschellenbach 6y ago

Pretty sure that >95% of Elastic's code is created by the company and not external contributors.

z77dj3kl 6y ago
Yes, but open-source software adoption and growth is about more than just those who build it, it's about those who use it. Elastic wouldn't exist without the users either.
- m-p-3 6y ago
  And Amazon wouldn't have ElasticSearch without Elastic.
  - imhoguy 6y ago
    Both wouldn't exist without countless hours of paid/unpaid FOSS contributors (Lucene, Netty, Docker, Linux, OpenJdk).

tus88 6y ago

It's a good point. Imagine if one of those open source projects that Elastic uses licensed there own little bit of code under the SSL. Elastic would flip out.

dccoolgai 6y ago

Classic "externalize costs" (have community build and evangelize for you) then "privatize gains" (now that we're here, we're changing the deal).

mathnode 6y ago

MariaDB came out with the BSL license for projects like maxcale to help protect against AWS nonsense (and the like). The mysql -> mariadb response is completely different, but no less terrible. This is history repeating itself as Amazon, once again, attempt to gut open source efforts. For a short while Amazon did contribute to some MariaDB projects. MongoDB now have similar license and AWS offers compatible API's.

Rudisimo 6y ago
Yet, MongoDB seems to maintain a healthy, symbiotic relationship with AWS [1][2][3]. [1]: https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas/lp/try2 https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas/lp/try2 [2]: https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas/aws-mongodb https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas/aws-mongodb [3]: https://www.mongodb.com/mongodb-on-aws https://www.mongodb.com/mongodb-on-aws
- ayush--s 6y ago
  it does feel like the whole issue blew up so much because AWS & Elastic.co are unable to work together. We many never know the details, so can't say who's in the wrong here.
popcorncowboy 6y ago
> help protect against AWS nonsense Not gaslighting, legit questions follow: It's not clear to me how taking open source software and providing commercial managed services is "nonsense"? Or is it specifically when AWS does it that it's not okay? Either way, is there something specific at play that makes it fundamentally different from say WPEngine running hosted Wordpress? Is it purely a function of scale? If a startup decides that Kubernetes is worth providing a managed service for at what point does providing that managed service become "AWS nonsense"? Is there a revenue watermark beyond which what they're doing becomes unfair? Or is k8s ok because it's backed by a mega-corp already?
- virtue3 6y ago
  AWS repeatedly said they were "together with elastic" in service offerings. They apparently were not, so they were just running on elastics coat tails, offering nothing to elastic, and saying they were totally together. It's hilarious that you picked K8. K8 destroyed dockers ability to make money. They were planning on rolling out their own system, but didn't get it out fast enough and got eaten. Was k8 nonsense? no, they made a product from the ground up.

ROARosen 6y ago

FROM ORIGINAL POST: >When AWS decides to offer a service based on an open source project, we ensure that we are equipped and prepared to maintain it ourselves if necessary. You might disagree but to me this sounds like hyperbole; a veiled threat should any other OSS dev decide to change their licensing just to disadvantage AWS. I think it's juvenile to think that even AWS has the resources necessary to for every OSS product they offer. Think Linux (the kernel) etc. drivers, frameworks, as well as every dependency these projects contain.

brown9-2 6y ago
That’s not what they’re saying, they offer virtualization services, not Linux as a service.

ramoz 6y ago

A question worth asking, has AWS paid retribution to the elastic oss ecosystem with new oss? If so, Elastic are the bad guys.

auggierose 6y ago

Just as Elastic chose their license, and then Amazon took advantage of that, so did contributors decide to contribute under that license. So those contributors do not deserve any more sympathy than Elastic. Both got stuff yanked out from under them. Those contributors shot themselves in the foot.

petejohnson 6y ago

> Elastic built a popular product off the work of countless open source contributors. That's how they became a market leader in this product space. That's simply not true. Elasticsearch and Kibana are primarily built by developers on the Elastic payroll. You can verify this by looking at the "Contributors" tab on Github for both projects. I honestly couldn't find a single person there who wasn't employed by Elastic at the time of their contributions. > The people who contributed to the product did so with no expectation of reward except that their efforts would remain open source Again, did you do a survey of any of these people? Seeing they are Elastic employees I guess they asked for more than just OSS glory... Probably lunch and and a pay check. > But yanking the Apache license out and moving to a more-restrictive license is not the right solution, and is not what everyone who contributed to building the product signed up for. What would you suggest, at this point in time, that Elastic did instead? They released the projects as OSS 10 years ago - there's no changing that. Now they need to stop Amazon or they might not survive as a company. I'm honestly interested to hear your suggestion.

cutemonster 6y ago
Personally I'd theoretically be ok with having contributed long ago, and the company now going SSPL. Not that easy to have known, that far back, how things would turn out. > need to stop Amazon or they might not survive as a company They make lots of money, but also have high salary costs, right. I wonder if you looked at the numbers and growth / profitablity, and concluded that they're at risk, or if you're assuming