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One thing which surprised me: Elastic has a market capitalization of ~$11B. I think that changes some of the more floaty ethical concerns. This is not a David

by 015a 6y ago

One thing which surprised me: Elastic has a market capitalization of ~$11B. I think that changes some of the more floaty ethical concerns. This is not a David vs Goliath situation. This is Goliath vs Super-Goliath. At this point, I'm much less interested in the drama of which mega-corp is screwing over the other. I'm more interested in: how does it affect me? When the titans are done trampling over the rest of us, which side benefits me the most? Its too early to tell, but it seems like it'll be Amazon. The product is more open. They have a demonstrated history of great support. Yeah, they gouge us on networking and everything else, but at least they're the devil we know, and buying into the OpenSearch ecosystem has a greater probability of being the more open solution into the next decade.

aardvarkr 6y ago
Uhmmm I’m pretty sure David vs Goliath is talking about scale between competition. Saying that $11B is Goliath just because you’re sitting at $1M doesn’t mean they’re not in a crazy mismatched fight against a $2T company. In the same way you could be in a David vs Goliath situation yourself if you with $1M in wealth tried to sue someone with $25K of wealth. Everything is relative. Doesn’t mean it’s not a crazy unfair mismatch that doesn’t deserve sympathy and regret.
- bombcar 6y ago
  When there are two large entities (and I take this to mean way larger than you or your company) then you’re better off rooting for the one that at least releases code you can use. If OpenSearch is truely open then in theory you can find another provider. But for ElasticSearch you’re stuck with them.
  - kfir 6y ago
    > But for ElasticSearch you’re stuck with them. I am a bit at a loss about that statement, you can run Elasticsearch on your on infrastructure
    - virgilp 6y ago
      That is not entirely true, of course. Not if you don’t want to pay. As proof - just look at Amazon, they can’t (that’s why they forked it).
      - mikepurvis 6y ago
        I don't think it's the freedom to run it anywhere. It's the freedom to run it anywhere and make changes to it that you don't contribute back: 1. Amazon wants to make private changes to the management layer for their cloud offering and not share those. 2. ES doesn't want that, so the 7.11+ license restricts it. 3. Amazon doesn't want to have to explain to their customers why their ES offering is stuck on v7.10, so they're changing the name of it. 4. Elastic was really hoping this wouldn't happen, but they overestimated the value of their brand and Amazon called their bluff. So yeah, nominally OpenSearch is unrestricted, but realistically few other entities are in a position to make or benefit from the private modifications Amazon will be making. For us normal people, ES and OS are equivalent today, so it's more about how they're going to diverge over time in terms of fixes, features, whatever.
        judge2020 6y ago
        The SSPL directly prohibits offering the software as a service without releasing the source code of your entire operation regardless of if you change it or not: > If you make the functionality of the Program or a modified version available to third parties as a service, you must make the Service Source Code available via network download to everyone at no charge... > “Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software, all such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available. AKA someone must be able to create aws.example.com if aws uses SSPL code. Not exactly the 'freedom to run it anywhere'. https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license#13-offering-the-program-as-a-service:~:text=13.%20Offering%20the%20Program%20as%20a%20Service https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license....
- kodah 6y ago
  Put another way, the $11B Goliath is .55% of Super Goliaths size.
- adamdusty 6y ago
  It may be relative but it isn't proportionate. A 11B market cap company can field a similarly competent legal department as a 2T market cap company can. I, with 25k, absolutely could not afford the same lawyer someone with 1M.
  - ozim 6y ago
    Have you considered that guy with $1M won't be willing to drop like $50k (2x your net worth) on a lawyer just to squash you? He must have possibility to earn $100k in process to do that. Well unless you really pissed him off. If you earn $25k a year and he spends $50k in one year to take your cake. Well unless he really is your competitor that can make use of your defeat he still needs 2 years to get even. Then it probably is not easy money because there is always a risk he will not win. Maybe he can find better ways to earn more money than squashing some $25k guys.
    - gerdesj 6y ago
      Quite. I run a company with roughly £1.25M turnover per annum, so seem to fit the $1M guy example. There is no way on earth that I would look at my "value" and compare it with a £50K "value" to decide on my legal "battle-worthiness." It is quite likely that we both have similar (to the same power of 10) insurance for whatever it is we are duking it out over. Anyway this is all a bit circumspect. Against a company with billions to play with? I'll just keep my head down and crack on and hope not to be noticed 8)
      - 1_over_n 6y ago
        It seems like the theme here is asymmetry in legal firepower & resources between entities. I do personally feel like that the asymmetry is smaller between elastic and AWS than the say an indie dev and a company with $1M revenue for various reasons. This doesn't mean that there still isn't a meaningful asymmetry between elastic and AWS.
- 015a 6y ago
  I don't root for David because he's smaller. I root for him because he's small.
  - kordlessagain 6y ago
    Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!
- ozim 6y ago
  To be realistic and fair I don't believe part of Amazon that is doing fork of Elasticsearch is $2T, they have other stuff to do. Just like the guy that is $1M worth is not going to blow all of his money just to squash some guy. He probably has more powerful friends and maybe some connections but I don't see dumping $0.5m on lawyers just because he can take piece of cake from the other guy that will make him $10k a year. Imagine head of the department storming into Jeff Bezos office telling that he needs 20% of all Amazon worth to squash Elastic, that would be funny. Quick calc with 20% I assume would be $20B which would be only x2 of Elastic, so I don't see something like that happening.
  - 20kleagues 6y ago
    just a math correction: 20% of $2T is $400b - or about 40x of Elastic
jimmy2020 6y ago
This argument is part of Amazon's PR campaign to tell devs to not feel sorry for Elastic because it's now a big company and they make money in the market. So, if you built a successful OSS and start to make money then it's ethical to clone any OSS and pushes projects out of the market because now it is "Goliath vs Super-Goliath".
- manigandham 6y ago
  Quite a few companies have proprietary products but have learned to make money selling services. One of them even has a 200B market cap and is called Oracle. Nobody needs to feel sorry for anyone.
  - jimmy2020 6y ago
    Right. But the question here is not about companies value in the market. Why changing the subject? This should be about the ethics behind Amazon's aggressive actions against OSS and its effect on the OSS industry.
    - manigandham 6y ago
      The value in the market is the subject of the parent thread. Anyways, like I said, Elastic could've made money with a proprietary product but they chose OSS instead (and used Apache Lucene to build on). AWS is just offering customers what they want and there are many other companies doing the same thing (IBM's Compose, Aiven, Instaclustr, etc). How is this against OSS? This is the OSS industry operating as intended.
      - jimmy2020 6y ago
        > The value in the market is the subject of the parent thread. As I said, it's a tactic to change the subject. Instead of focusing on actions with bad faith, change the subject by saying they have a lot of money so Amazon is allowed to be competitive and fork the code. > AWS is just offering customers what they want. No. it's not AWS improving some services. It's about a multi-billion dollar company launching a campaign against OSS. They did it with MongoDB and it continues. Some see these actions as justifiable. Because OSS should be MIT and maintainers should live with donations. Others, however, disagree. It can be OSS and profitable (without Amazon actions).
jfb 6y ago
I mean, Elastic was successful because of license arbitrage; to complain about said arbitrage when Amazon does it is ... well, it's hard to feel a lot of sympathy.
- ummonk 6y ago
  Exactly this. Elastic search took open source code and turned it into a service to profit from it while making improvements to the code. Amazon is doing the same thing, except they’re keeping their contributions truly open source.
bitonp 6y ago
Quick point,.., as yours is valid... these days $11Bn market cap doe not represent cash in bank for development and R&D. It just reflects what the market think its worth. R&D , of which there has been a lot, and it continues, is hugely expensive.
llcoolv 6y ago
After a decade and a third of QE, 11 bil is not really serious money. These days the unit of power on the capital markets is a trillion.

by 015a 6y ago

aardvarkr 6y ago

Uhmmm I’m pretty sure David vs Goliath is talking about scale between competition. Saying that $11B is Goliath just because you’re sitting at $1M doesn’t mean they’re not in a crazy mismatched fight against a $2T company. In the same way you could be in a David vs Goliath situation yourself if you with $1M in wealth tried to sue someone with $25K of wealth. Everything is relative. Doesn’t mean it’s not a crazy unfair mismatch that doesn’t deserve sympathy and regret.

bombcar 6y ago
When there are two large entities (and I take this to mean way larger than you or your company) then you’re better off rooting for the one that at least releases code you can use. If OpenSearch is truely open then in theory you can find another provider. But for ElasticSearch you’re stuck with them.
- kfir 6y ago
  > But for ElasticSearch you’re stuck with them. I am a bit at a loss about that statement, you can run Elasticsearch on your on infrastructure
  - virgilp 6y ago
    That is not entirely true, of course. Not if you don’t want to pay. As proof - just look at Amazon, they can’t (that’s why they forked it).
    - mikepurvis 6y ago
      I don't think it's the freedom to run it anywhere. It's the freedom to run it anywhere and make changes to it that you don't contribute back: 1. Amazon wants to make private changes to the management layer for their cloud offering and not share those. 2. ES doesn't want that, so the 7.11+ license restricts it. 3. Amazon doesn't want to have to explain to their customers why their ES offering is stuck on v7.10, so they're changing the name of it. 4. Elastic was really hoping this wouldn't happen, but they overestimated the value of their brand and Amazon called their bluff. So yeah, nominally OpenSearch is unrestricted, but realistically few other entities are in a position to make or benefit from the private modifications Amazon will be making. For us normal people, ES and OS are equivalent today, so it's more about how they're going to diverge over time in terms of fixes, features, whatever.
      - judge2020 6y ago
        The SSPL directly prohibits offering the software as a service without releasing the source code of your entire operation regardless of if you change it or not: > If you make the functionality of the Program or a modified version available to third parties as a service, you must make the Service Source Code available via network download to everyone at no charge... > “Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software, all such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available. AKA someone must be able to create aws.example.com if aws uses SSPL code. Not exactly the 'freedom to run it anywhere'. https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license#13-offering-the-program-as-a-service:~:text=13.%20Offering%20the%20Program%20as%20a%20Service https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license....
kodah 6y ago
Put another way, the $11B Goliath is .55% of Super Goliaths size.
adamdusty 6y ago
It may be relative but it isn't proportionate. A 11B market cap company can field a similarly competent legal department as a 2T market cap company can. I, with 25k, absolutely could not afford the same lawyer someone with 1M.
- ozim 6y ago
  Have you considered that guy with $1M won't be willing to drop like $50k (2x your net worth) on a lawyer just to squash you? He must have possibility to earn $100k in process to do that. Well unless you really pissed him off. If you earn $25k a year and he spends $50k in one year to take your cake. Well unless he really is your competitor that can make use of your defeat he still needs 2 years to get even. Then it probably is not easy money because there is always a risk he will not win. Maybe he can find better ways to earn more money than squashing some $25k guys.
  - gerdesj 6y ago
    Quite. I run a company with roughly £1.25M turnover per annum, so seem to fit the $1M guy example. There is no way on earth that I would look at my "value" and compare it with a £50K "value" to decide on my legal "battle-worthiness." It is quite likely that we both have similar (to the same power of 10) insurance for whatever it is we are duking it out over. Anyway this is all a bit circumspect. Against a company with billions to play with? I'll just keep my head down and crack on and hope not to be noticed 8)
    - 1_over_n 6y ago
      It seems like the theme here is asymmetry in legal firepower & resources between entities. I do personally feel like that the asymmetry is smaller between elastic and AWS than the say an indie dev and a company with $1M revenue for various reasons. This doesn't mean that there still isn't a meaningful asymmetry between elastic and AWS.
015a 6y ago
I don't root for David because he's smaller. I root for him because he's small.
- kordlessagain 6y ago
  Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!
ozim 6y ago
To be realistic and fair I don't believe part of Amazon that is doing fork of Elasticsearch is $2T, they have other stuff to do. Just like the guy that is $1M worth is not going to blow all of his money just to squash some guy. He probably has more powerful friends and maybe some connections but I don't see dumping $0.5m on lawyers just because he can take piece of cake from the other guy that will make him $10k a year. Imagine head of the department storming into Jeff Bezos office telling that he needs 20% of all Amazon worth to squash Elastic, that would be funny. Quick calc with 20% I assume would be $20B which would be only x2 of Elastic, so I don't see something like that happening.
- 20kleagues 6y ago
  just a math correction: 20% of $2T is $400b - or about 40x of Elastic

jimmy2020 6y ago

This argument is part of Amazon's PR campaign to tell devs to not feel sorry for Elastic because it's now a big company and they make money in the market. So, if you built a successful OSS and start to make money then it's ethical to clone any OSS and pushes projects out of the market because now it is "Goliath vs Super-Goliath".

manigandham 6y ago
Quite a few companies have proprietary products but have learned to make money selling services. One of them even has a 200B market cap and is called Oracle. Nobody needs to feel sorry for anyone.
- jimmy2020 6y ago
  Right. But the question here is not about companies value in the market. Why changing the subject? This should be about the ethics behind Amazon's aggressive actions against OSS and its effect on the OSS industry.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    The value in the market is the subject of the parent thread. Anyways, like I said, Elastic could've made money with a proprietary product but they chose OSS instead (and used Apache Lucene to build on). AWS is just offering customers what they want and there are many other companies doing the same thing (IBM's Compose, Aiven, Instaclustr, etc). How is this against OSS? This is the OSS industry operating as intended.
    - jimmy2020 6y ago
      > The value in the market is the subject of the parent thread. As I said, it's a tactic to change the subject. Instead of focusing on actions with bad faith, change the subject by saying they have a lot of money so Amazon is allowed to be competitive and fork the code. > AWS is just offering customers what they want. No. it's not AWS improving some services. It's about a multi-billion dollar company launching a campaign against OSS. They did it with MongoDB and it continues. Some see these actions as justifiable. Because OSS should be MIT and maintainers should live with donations. Others, however, disagree. It can be OSS and profitable (without Amazon actions).

jfb 6y ago

I mean, Elastic was successful because of license arbitrage; to complain about said arbitrage when Amazon does it is ... well, it's hard to feel a lot of sympathy.

ummonk 6y ago
Exactly this. Elastic search took open source code and turned it into a service to profit from it while making improvements to the code. Amazon is doing the same thing, except they’re keeping their contributions truly open source.

bitonp 6y ago

Quick point,.., as yours is valid... these days $11Bn market cap doe not represent cash in bank for development and R&D. It just reflects what the market think its worth. R&D , of which there has been a lot, and it continues, is hugely expensive.

llcoolv 6y ago

After a decade and a third of QE, 11 bil is not really serious money. These days the unit of power on the capital markets is a trillion.