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Popular OSS licenses were designed in an era to allow direct customers (businesses) to directly install and use the software, and redistribution means only dist

Popular OSS licenses were designed in an era to allow direct customers (businesses) to directly install and use the software, and redistribution means only distributing the package. Nobody at that time knew or predicted that SaaS (let alone cloud computing) would be a thing, that large, profitable middlemen will directly host the software, pass through just the API, with zero customer exposure to the running instance. AWS taking advantage of this — yeah sure it may be legal, like how business lobbying senators for obvious policy hacks is legal — but doesn't mean it's fair or acceptable. It's totally OK to call them out here and not reward them for it.

fastball 6y ago
Then Elastic should've come up with a non-Apache-2.0 license at inception. Licenses exist for a reason. The onus is on the person choosing the license to choose one which aligns with their intentions. You cannot and should not expect downstream consumers of the software to confine themselves to some subset of the actual license's allowed activities just because it's the "nice" thing to do (as of course this assumes morality is in any way objective).
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  And frankly, I don't even buy the morality argument. It is a moral good to provide value to customers such that they voluntarily choose to give you money in exchange for that value. These people have this bizarre fusion of capitalist and communist reasoning, I really can't reconcile it. On the one hand they seem to think profit is fundamentally evil, but on the other hand they seem to think the problem is that Elastic isn't being allowed to monopolize all the profit. Well, which is it? Did Elastic release non-restrictively-licensed free software out of the goodness of their hearts, giving it away with no expectation of a return? Or did they create this codebase purely for profit, and thus have no claim to moral highground? It's all so silly and childish. And the biggest irony is, Elastic is already a successful business. They're trying to pretend their business model is not viable as long as Amazon keeps operating, which is just gaslighting.
- hanniabu 6y ago
  What open source license would prevent someone from capitalizing on your project?
  - Phrodo_00 6y ago
    No open source license prevents people from capitalizing your project. Adding a non-commercial clause to an OSS license makes it not comply with OSS anymore. Preventing companies from hosting the software with propietary changes can be done with licenses like the AGPL, but again, the objective is not to disallow commercial use, but rather to force the source code to be available for the users of the software.
  - fastball 6y ago
    None. That's... kinda the point of OSS.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  They made a mistake with their original licensing, and now they have corrected it. The comments on this post seem strangely invested in Elastic not fixing their mistake.
  - fastball 6y ago
    Right but "who is wrong" is what the disagreement is about, and if Elastic made the mistake then arguably it is them who are wrong. In contrast, a number of people here are acting as if AWS is totally in the wrong. But the only wrong here is Elastic making the mistake and then acting as if the whole thing is AWS' fault. No, if you license your software improperly that's on you, not anyone else.
    - hrktb 6y ago
      Does it need to be a binary thing ? Elastic made a strategic mistake, and Amazon made the jerk move that was open to them.
      - eloisant 6y ago
        I don't see how AWS is being a jerk. They're a hosting company, they're hosting open source software and they're doing it well.
      - kevincox 6y ago
        What about Elastic making the "jerk move" by switching the license under Amazon? Amazon built the product with the hope that it would continue to be developed with that license. What are they supposed to do with the license change? Just accept whatever Elastic said? I don't think you can blame them for taking the last version where they agreed with the license and continue to use and develop it. Sure, maybe making it open is a bit of a jab back, but even in isolation it makes sense for them.
        Xylakant 6y ago
        > What about Elastic making the "jerk move" by switching the license under Amazon? They’re also switching out the license under everyone else. It’s maybe notable that elastics cloud offering was acquired at some point (it used to be found.io). I used to do elasticsearch consulting and I could name a few customers that will now have to reevaluate their product.
danShumway 6y ago
> Nobody at that time knew or predicted that SaaS (let alone cloud computing) would be a thing I'm not old enough or experienced enough with computer history to seriously argue about this, but this statement sets off some alarm bells for me. My understanding is that extremely early on in computing history, especially early in the Internet era, people were thinking about SaaS. We had shared terminals, Sun was even trying to turn remote VMs into a feasible business model. I am very skeptical of the idea that Open Source developers never considered that someone might want to sell computer hosting or provide API access to a virtual environment. I mean, doesn't the whole problem with modern Linux security stem from the fact that it's user-specific; that it was designed around this idea that it would be running on a server and accessed by a bunch of different user accounts & terminals? It was personal computers that were the surprise, not shared hosting and remote terminals/APIs. Am I off base here? This doesn't square with how I understand computing history.
- toyg 6y ago
  Let’s leave alone for a moment the fact that the most permissive licenses (BSD, MIT) were not really designed, as much as they appeared out of historical accidents as a “just don’t bother us” device... When it comes to licenses that were written “with a plan”, there is a charitable reading and an uncharitable one. The charitable reading is that, back then, it was assumed that every computer user, local or remote, would have access to a compiler; and that any user would eventually learn how to operate a compiler, hence making it obvious that they would want to mod and compile the software they ran. And then they saw the licenses worked well enough to develop an ecosystem, and more or less left it at that (unless explicitly threatened, as they did when reacting to freeloading trends in embedding with the GPL 3). The less charitable reading is that they left the door open precisely because they knew it ensured demand for service providers and system administrators (which many of the original “foss hackers” were, in their day job). In any case, I don’t think anyone would have predicted they would become so dominant; everyone just assumed the big commercial vendors would be around forever, and FOSS would always be the underdog ecosystem; hence, leaving certain activities commercially unburdened would have always been somewhat necessary.
- fulafel 6y ago
stefan_ 6y ago
> The first version of the Affero General Public License (AGPLv1), was published by Affero, Inc. in March 2002 Stallman strikes again!
- toyg 6y ago
  Stallman will break all sorts of records for being “the most annoyingly correct forecaster of computer trends with the less affable personality ever”.
- kevincox 6y ago
  The AGPL was a good attempt but it seems that it too vague. For example even Google, with its teams of lawyers doesn't feel comfortable using it for any purpose. https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/ https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/ It appears that they are concerned that it may be argued that if for example YouTube uses an AGPL DB that they would be required to release YouTube under AGPL. I'm not saying that the interpretation is correct, but if companies can't be sure they won't use your software. And to be honest IANAL but their interpretation seems reasonable to me. If you put Mastodon behind NGINX I think it is fairly easy to argue that the user is "interacting with it remotely through a computer network". So now if you have a theoretical AGPL Elasticsearch and your site sends the user search query to it and returns the user the results it doesn't seem clear that this is a legally meaningful difference. I certainly wouldn't want to argue that in court. I'd just use different software.
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
By your reasoning Linus Torvalds should be getting a cut of any money made on a linux host.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Ignoring that Linus himself isn't particularly software freedom-y (I think he, entirely and provably correctly in my view, firmly believes in open source as a way to achieve good software, but the freedom angle isn't as important as for someone like Stallman), Linux being GPL is arguably the reason why it dominates - any changes worth talking about to Linux get propagated publicly and openly, as opposed to if it were under a permissive licence.
- rdsubhas 6y ago
  Not exactly the same. As I mentioned in the comment, you have direct access to the Linux OS when you host. Open as in access to the underlying OS is open. You can configure it, install packages that you want, etc. When you run AWS Elasticsearch, you have no access to ES instance. You can't configure it, you can't add your own plugins. You are no longer a user, you are just a consumer of the UI/API, even when the primary product is still called Elasticsearch. Big difference.
  - optimuspaul 6y ago
    but that is a feature of their offering. You are comparing apples to oranges here.
  - literallycancer 6y ago
    When you run code on a lambda or a serverless VM you never see the OS either.

fastball 6y ago

Then Elastic should've come up with a non-Apache-2.0 license at inception. Licenses exist for a reason. The onus is on the person choosing the license to choose one which aligns with their intentions. You cannot and should not expect downstream consumers of the software to confine themselves to some subset of the actual license's allowed activities just because it's the "nice" thing to do (as of course this assumes morality is in any way objective).

__blockcipher__ 6y ago
And frankly, I don't even buy the morality argument. It is a moral good to provide value to customers such that they voluntarily choose to give you money in exchange for that value. These people have this bizarre fusion of capitalist and communist reasoning, I really can't reconcile it. On the one hand they seem to think profit is fundamentally evil, but on the other hand they seem to think the problem is that Elastic isn't being allowed to monopolize all the profit. Well, which is it? Did Elastic release non-restrictively-licensed free software out of the goodness of their hearts, giving it away with no expectation of a return? Or did they create this codebase purely for profit, and thus have no claim to moral highground? It's all so silly and childish. And the biggest irony is, Elastic is already a successful business. They're trying to pretend their business model is not viable as long as Amazon keeps operating, which is just gaslighting.
hanniabu 6y ago
What open source license would prevent someone from capitalizing on your project?
- Phrodo_00 6y ago
  No open source license prevents people from capitalizing your project. Adding a non-commercial clause to an OSS license makes it not comply with OSS anymore. Preventing companies from hosting the software with propietary changes can be done with licenses like the AGPL, but again, the objective is not to disallow commercial use, but rather to force the source code to be available for the users of the software.
- fastball 6y ago
  None. That's... kinda the point of OSS.
dodobirdlord 6y ago
They made a mistake with their original licensing, and now they have corrected it. The comments on this post seem strangely invested in Elastic not fixing their mistake.
- fastball 6y ago
  Right but "who is wrong" is what the disagreement is about, and if Elastic made the mistake then arguably it is them who are wrong. In contrast, a number of people here are acting as if AWS is totally in the wrong. But the only wrong here is Elastic making the mistake and then acting as if the whole thing is AWS' fault. No, if you license your software improperly that's on you, not anyone else.
  - hrktb 6y ago
    Does it need to be a binary thing ? Elastic made a strategic mistake, and Amazon made the jerk move that was open to them.
    - eloisant 6y ago
      I don't see how AWS is being a jerk. They're a hosting company, they're hosting open source software and they're doing it well.
    - kevincox 6y ago
      What about Elastic making the "jerk move" by switching the license under Amazon? Amazon built the product with the hope that it would continue to be developed with that license. What are they supposed to do with the license change? Just accept whatever Elastic said? I don't think you can blame them for taking the last version where they agreed with the license and continue to use and develop it. Sure, maybe making it open is a bit of a jab back, but even in isolation it makes sense for them.
      - Xylakant 6y ago
        > What about Elastic making the "jerk move" by switching the license under Amazon? They’re also switching out the license under everyone else. It’s maybe notable that elastics cloud offering was acquired at some point (it used to be found.io). I used to do elasticsearch consulting and I could name a few customers that will now have to reevaluate their product.

danShumway 6y ago

> Nobody at that time knew or predicted that SaaS (let alone cloud computing) would be a thing I'm not old enough or experienced enough with computer history to seriously argue about this, but this statement sets off some alarm bells for me. My understanding is that extremely early on in computing history, especially early in the Internet era, people were thinking about SaaS. We had shared terminals, Sun was even trying to turn remote VMs into a feasible business model. I am very skeptical of the idea that Open Source developers never considered that someone might want to sell computer hosting or provide API access to a virtual environment. I mean, doesn't the whole problem with modern Linux security stem from the fact that it's user-specific; that it was designed around this idea that it would be running on a server and accessed by a bunch of different user accounts & terminals? It was personal computers that were the surprise, not shared hosting and remote terminals/APIs. Am I off base here? This doesn't square with how I understand computing history.

toyg 6y ago
Let’s leave alone for a moment the fact that the most permissive licenses (BSD, MIT) were not really designed, as much as they appeared out of historical accidents as a “just don’t bother us” device... When it comes to licenses that were written “with a plan”, there is a charitable reading and an uncharitable one. The charitable reading is that, back then, it was assumed that every computer user, local or remote, would have access to a compiler; and that any user would eventually learn how to operate a compiler, hence making it obvious that they would want to mod and compile the software they ran. And then they saw the licenses worked well enough to develop an ecosystem, and more or less left it at that (unless explicitly threatened, as they did when reacting to freeloading trends in embedding with the GPL 3). The less charitable reading is that they left the door open precisely because they knew it ensured demand for service providers and system administrators (which many of the original “foss hackers” were, in their day job). In any case, I don’t think anyone would have predicted they would become so dominant; everyone just assumed the big commercial vendors would be around forever, and FOSS would always be the underdog ecosystem; hence, leaving certain activities commercially unburdened would have always been somewhat necessary.
fulafel 6y ago

stefan_ 6y ago

> The first version of the Affero General Public License (AGPLv1), was published by Affero, Inc. in March 2002 Stallman strikes again!

toyg 6y ago
Stallman will break all sorts of records for being “the most annoyingly correct forecaster of computer trends with the less affable personality ever”.
kevincox 6y ago
The AGPL was a good attempt but it seems that it too vague. For example even Google, with its teams of lawyers doesn't feel comfortable using it for any purpose. https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/ https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/ It appears that they are concerned that it may be argued that if for example YouTube uses an AGPL DB that they would be required to release YouTube under AGPL. I'm not saying that the interpretation is correct, but if companies can't be sure they won't use your software. And to be honest IANAL but their interpretation seems reasonable to me. If you put Mastodon behind NGINX I think it is fairly easy to argue that the user is "interacting with it remotely through a computer network". So now if you have a theoretical AGPL Elasticsearch and your site sends the user search query to it and returns the user the results it doesn't seem clear that this is a legally meaningful difference. I certainly wouldn't want to argue that in court. I'd just use different software.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

By your reasoning Linus Torvalds should be getting a cut of any money made on a linux host.

mhh__ 6y ago
Ignoring that Linus himself isn't particularly software freedom-y (I think he, entirely and provably correctly in my view, firmly believes in open source as a way to achieve good software, but the freedom angle isn't as important as for someone like Stallman), Linux being GPL is arguably the reason why it dominates - any changes worth talking about to Linux get propagated publicly and openly, as opposed to if it were under a permissive licence.
rdsubhas 6y ago
Not exactly the same. As I mentioned in the comment, you have direct access to the Linux OS when you host. Open as in access to the underlying OS is open. You can configure it, install packages that you want, etc. When you run AWS Elasticsearch, you have no access to ES instance. You can't configure it, you can't add your own plugins. You are no longer a user, you are just a consumer of the UI/API, even when the primary product is still called Elasticsearch. Big difference.
- optimuspaul 6y ago
  but that is a feature of their offering. You are comparing apples to oranges here.
- literallycancer 6y ago
  When you run code on a lambda or a serverless VM you never see the OS either.