5 ms·

I'm not saying Elastic's model is the open-source ideal. But a product that can't find a financial model won't exist either. ES may not give their contributors

by erezsh 6y ago

I'm not saying Elastic's model is the open-source ideal. But a product that can't find a financial model won't exist either. ES may not give their contributors the same rights on paper, but in practice there is no discernable difference, other than that the contributors aren't allowed to directly compete with them (iirc).

Daho0n 6y ago
So open but not free.
- DetroitThrow 6y ago
  The epipen design might have been "open to public inspection", but I think most descriptions of it are accompanied by the term proprietary rather than open because of the nature of it being closed for them to use exclusively. In contrast to the patent on insulin being made open for all to inspect, use, and build upon - SSPL does not smell very "open source" if it's similarly opposed to forking or being the foundation for something someone takes in a different direction.
DetroitThrow 6y ago
>other than that the contributors aren't allowed to directly compete with them (iirc). No, the wording in their SSPL is much more broad than that, such that creating any logging facet would put you in legal ambiguity at best - the worst case, which unfortunately now two licensing lawyers I've watched be adamant about this being the realistic interpretation in court (/dev/lawyer and one who advised our and other software companies), is that you really can't be in compliance without releasing your entire software stack. I totally agree with the idea that a business becomes before project/idealism considerations though, if you're a company trying to finance an OSS project you need to think about your financials/survival before any licensing purity - which I don't think anyone is criticizing them about in this scenario anyways. That being said, you can make changes to your project for your business but do so on terms that the internal and external community don't find disingenuous, don't characterize those whom are upset with a withdrawal from previous promises(1) made to them as conspiring to spread misinfo, or even to have taken many in the community's suggestion for dual licensing under copyleft license and commercial license that provides a hedge against large cloud providers. Anyways, if Elastic's response to going back on a promise is to gaslight their own (reasonably) begrudged customers and contributors about how the company going public shortly is the real little guy/victim, then I think most already know whether to trust their lawyers or the company. 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20200120104750/https:/www.elastic.co/what-is/open-x-pack https://web.archive.org/web/20200120104750/https:/www.elasti...

by erezsh 6y ago

Daho0n 6y ago

So open but not free.

DetroitThrow 6y ago
The epipen design might have been "open to public inspection", but I think most descriptions of it are accompanied by the term proprietary rather than open because of the nature of it being closed for them to use exclusively. In contrast to the patent on insulin being made open for all to inspect, use, and build upon - SSPL does not smell very "open source" if it's similarly opposed to forking or being the foundation for something someone takes in a different direction.

DetroitThrow 6y ago

>other than that the contributors aren't allowed to directly compete with them (iirc). No, the wording in their SSPL is much more broad than that, such that creating any logging facet would put you in legal ambiguity at best - the worst case, which unfortunately now two licensing lawyers I've watched be adamant about this being the realistic interpretation in court (/dev/lawyer and one who advised our and other software companies), is that you really can't be in compliance without releasing your entire software stack. I totally agree with the idea that a business becomes before project/idealism considerations though, if you're a company trying to finance an OSS project you need to think about your financials/survival before any licensing purity - which I don't think anyone is criticizing them about in this scenario anyways. That being said, you can make changes to your project for your business but do so on terms that the internal and external community don't find disingenuous, don't characterize those whom are upset with a withdrawal from previous promises(1) made to them as conspiring to spread misinfo, or even to have taken many in the community's suggestion for dual licensing under copyleft license and commercial license that provides a hedge against large cloud providers. Anyways, if Elastic's response to going back on a promise is to gaslight their own (reasonably) begrudged customers and contributors about how the company going public shortly is the real little guy/victim, then I think most already know whether to trust their lawyers or the company. 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20200120104750/https:/www.elastic.co/what-is/open-x-pack https://web.archive.org/web/20200120104750/https:/www.elasti...