10 ms·

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 t

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....
        mikepurvis 6y ago
        Doesn't a lot of that hinge on what the "service" is? Like, if I run some generic knowledgebase website and use my own ES installation to provide user-facing search, does Elastic want to see my Ansible scripts? Or just the ones related to the search function? If this interpretation holds, I feel like it could be a pretty big problem for companies like GitLab, who not only have deep integration with ElasticSearch, but offer it as a premium-tier feature: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/elasticsearch.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/elasticsearch.html Maybe this really is just a cash grab from the Elastic side, like, "it's too easy to self-host rather than paying for our SaaS offering, so now you need to pay us for many common self-hosting use cases also."
        DetroitThrow 6y ago
        There's several lawyers who believe the wording would imply the problematic interpretation - /dev/lawyer is one on the internet, one from my anecdotes is the lawyer who advised the company I used to work at. SSPL doesn't come up under free or open source licenses partly for this reason, actually.
  - mixedCase 6y ago
    Quoting the comment you're replying to: > If OpenSearch is truely open then in theory you can find another provider Those are the key words. With an open source solution someone else can offer a turn-key solution that benefits from economies of scale.
    - ForHackernews 6y ago
      Uh...can they? Who's going to benefit from more "economies of scale" than Amazon, Alibaba?
      - unreal37 6y ago
        Can Azure offer an OpenSearch service? Probably. So the idea is you can move from AWS to Azure if you wanted to with open source services underneath.
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

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....
      - mikepurvis 6y ago
        Doesn't a lot of that hinge on what the "service" is? Like, if I run some generic knowledgebase website and use my own ES installation to provide user-facing search, does Elastic want to see my Ansible scripts? Or just the ones related to the search function? If this interpretation holds, I feel like it could be a pretty big problem for companies like GitLab, who not only have deep integration with ElasticSearch, but offer it as a premium-tier feature: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/elasticsearch.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/elasticsearch.html Maybe this really is just a cash grab from the Elastic side, like, "it's too easy to self-host rather than paying for our SaaS offering, so now you need to pay us for many common self-hosting use cases also."
        DetroitThrow 6y ago
        There's several lawyers who believe the wording would imply the problematic interpretation - /dev/lawyer is one on the internet, one from my anecdotes is the lawyer who advised the company I used to work at. SSPL doesn't come up under free or open source licenses partly for this reason, actually.
- mixedCase 6y ago
  Quoting the comment you're replying to: > If OpenSearch is truely open then in theory you can find another provider Those are the key words. With an open source solution someone else can offer a turn-key solution that benefits from economies of scale.
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    Uh...can they? Who's going to benefit from more "economies of scale" than Amazon, Alibaba?
    - unreal37 6y ago
      Can Azure offer an OpenSearch service? Probably. So the idea is you can move from AWS to Azure if you wanted to with open source services underneath.

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