3 ms·
I understand Elastic's motives here, but the tactics they are using would only work if they were the bigger dog in this fight. Forcing someone to choose a side
by webmaven 5y ago
I understand Elastic's motives here, but the tactics they are using would only work if they were the bigger dog in this fight.
Forcing someone to choose a side typically alienates those being forced to choose.
The right tactic here for Elastic would have been to add new functionality to ES, and slowly roll out changes to the clients that required the new functionality. The clients would work correctly as long as you didn't do anything that implicitly used the new features, but lot of existing and new code would (it helps if the error messages implicate the server rather than the client).
This is Microsoft's famous "Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish" approach which they used over and over to great effect. Elastic here is skipping over the "Extend" step, and ends up looking both petty and ineffectual.
- jaytaylor 5y agoIt is really sad to stand by and watch Elastic cause it's own, totally preventable death-by-irrelevance. They keep going down this path, apparently blind to even the next bend. I have a lot of respect for Shay Banon, the original creator of Elasticsearch. Very smart fellow, and extremely helpful in the support forum back in the early days. Nowadays, I've already moved on to OpenSearch.
- webmaven 5y agoI'm not sure I understand the forces that are pressing Elastic into action at this particular juncture (by most accounts, the company is definitely sustainable), but it does seem as though they've reached a point where thinking has been worn down to a knee-jerk "We Must Do Something. This is Something, Therefore We Must Do It." It isn't as though they are completely boxed in. There are strategies and tactics they could employ that they haven't tried yet to pick and choose among.