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> OpenSearch is a community-driven, open source search and analytics suite derived from Apache 2.0 licensed Elasticsearch 7.10.2 & Kibana 7.10.2. It consists of

> OpenSearch is a community-driven, open source search and analytics suite derived from Apache 2.0 licensed Elasticsearch 7.10.2 & Kibana 7.10.2. It consists of a search engine daemon, OpenSearch, and a visualization and user interface, OpenSearch Dashboards. from the main page. So it’s essentially ES before they switched to a new license.

jjeaff 5y ago
I believe it also includes some plugins that were not included in the open source version of ES. One being security, that allows you to create user accounts and grant access. Another being anomaly detection.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
Yes, not a lot of changes. I've been digging through the commit logs to see if this project is attracting new developers. There's a little bit but most of it is trivial stuff. So, not a lot yet. As a long term Elasticsearch user, I don't like their move away from OSS. I think its long term bad for them and it puts me on the spot when I have to consult my customers on what to use. And yes, I've already had a few conversations on this topic. People seem to prefer OSS and this whole thing makes them default to opensearch/aws. It's hard arguing with that. Whatever Elastic says, it's a closed source license now and it largely cuts them off from external contributions. At least, I don't tend to make closed source contributions for free. Which is a shame. Whether Amazon can turn this project in what it claims to be already: a thriving oss community, remains to be seen. As of yet it's basically a largely unmodified fork with not a whole lot of feature work happening (if any at all). Turning that around is going to require some skilled external contributors to join. At least, I don't see the current team achieving a whole lot as it appears to be rather small and most of their work so far has been tinkering with the build system and editing some licensing texts. The good news is that 7.10.2 was a fine version. The bad news is that this fork is not getting the fixes, improvements, and performance work that mainline Elasticsearch is getting. Also, Elasticsearch 8.x at some point will become a thing and is likely to have some improvements. It's actually been unusually long since the last major release. Before 7.0 they had major releases every year. Of course, moving to new versions of Lucene will be a some non trivial work in terms of implementing and testing the changes. At some point the forks will diverge or opensearch will simply fall behind. The latter seems to be happening. Elasticsearch. 7.11-7.13 have added a few new features that opensearch won't have. They forked the code but not the developer community. Not yet at least. That could just be a matter of time. IMHO Elastic should kill this fork by rolling back their license changes. There's nothing to backport from this that is worth keeping as far as I can see. So, not a big change technically. Not too late to admit they are simply wrong. They seem to have dug in on this so probably not going to happen. But one can hope.
- deleted 5y ago
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matkoniecz 5y ago
"community-driven" Somehow I have doubts about this part.
- easton 5y ago
  With OpenSearch, you can start your own community and drive it, whereas with Elastic you can't unless you're willing to promise your fork won't get resold as a hosted service. In all seriousness, is Amazon good about accepting PRs and stuff from volunteers for their oss projects (i.e. Firecracker)?
  - lornajane 5y ago
    So far, Amazon have been good about accepting PRs from volunteers (I can only vouch for the OpenSearch project) and have committed to moving to a more open source model with active maintainers from other organisations. It's early days but it looks healthy so far.

jjeaff 5y ago

I believe it also includes some plugins that were not included in the open source version of ES. One being security, that allows you to create user accounts and grant access. Another being anomaly detection.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Yes, not a lot of changes. I've been digging through the commit logs to see if this project is attracting new developers. There's a little bit but most of it is trivial stuff. So, not a lot yet. As a long term Elasticsearch user, I don't like their move away from OSS. I think its long term bad for them and it puts me on the spot when I have to consult my customers on what to use. And yes, I've already had a few conversations on this topic. People seem to prefer OSS and this whole thing makes them default to opensearch/aws. It's hard arguing with that. Whatever Elastic says, it's a closed source license now and it largely cuts them off from external contributions. At least, I don't tend to make closed source contributions for free. Which is a shame. Whether Amazon can turn this project in what it claims to be already: a thriving oss community, remains to be seen. As of yet it's basically a largely unmodified fork with not a whole lot of feature work happening (if any at all). Turning that around is going to require some skilled external contributors to join. At least, I don't see the current team achieving a whole lot as it appears to be rather small and most of their work so far has been tinkering with the build system and editing some licensing texts. The good news is that 7.10.2 was a fine version. The bad news is that this fork is not getting the fixes, improvements, and performance work that mainline Elasticsearch is getting. Also, Elasticsearch 8.x at some point will become a thing and is likely to have some improvements. It's actually been unusually long since the last major release. Before 7.0 they had major releases every year. Of course, moving to new versions of Lucene will be a some non trivial work in terms of implementing and testing the changes. At some point the forks will diverge or opensearch will simply fall behind. The latter seems to be happening. Elasticsearch. 7.11-7.13 have added a few new features that opensearch won't have. They forked the code but not the developer community. Not yet at least. That could just be a matter of time. IMHO Elastic should kill this fork by rolling back their license changes. There's nothing to backport from this that is worth keeping as far as I can see. So, not a big change technically. Not too late to admit they are simply wrong. They seem to have dug in on this so probably not going to happen. But one can hope.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

matkoniecz 5y ago

"community-driven" Somehow I have doubts about this part.

easton 5y ago
With OpenSearch, you can start your own community and drive it, whereas with Elastic you can't unless you're willing to promise your fork won't get resold as a hosted service. In all seriousness, is Amazon good about accepting PRs and stuff from volunteers for their oss projects (i.e. Firecracker)?
- lornajane 5y ago
  So far, Amazon have been good about accepting PRs from volunteers (I can only vouch for the OpenSearch project) and have committed to moving to a more open source model with active maintainers from other organisations. It's early days but it looks healthy so far.