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They're literally keeping the source open. Call Amazon out for other stuff, not this. Enough with this good vs. evil attitude. People and companies are more com

They're literally keeping the source open. Call Amazon out for other stuff, not this. Enough with this good vs. evil attitude. People and companies are more complex than that and have varied interests. They do not fall neatly into one camp or the other.

deeblering4 5y ago
I’m not so sure, they are also continuing to build a walled garden elk hosting alternative and already invested a lot of development into open distro for elasticsearch. People often run this software on their compute, so obviously eliminating proprietary license complications makes that an easier option for their customers to deploy, and redirects some of that licensing money into the customer’s aws spend. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy there is a FOSS fork, but at the same time it feels like Amazon again has eaten another company’s lunch while feigning innocence.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  You are not so sure that the world is not black and white? I assure you it's in color. Perhaps we do live in The Giver and only a few people realize this after all.
  - deeblering4 5y ago
    I agree, it's in color. In this case green.
    - unityByFreedom 5y ago
      That's just as myopic. We all do many things daily with no expectation of monetary reward.
      - deeblering4 5y ago
        This was never about what we all do. The topic was Amazon OpenSearch. If you are arguing that Amazon has no expectation of monetary reward, then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you!
        unityByFreedom 5y ago
        It's still myopic to say everything Amazon does is for the greenback. Engineers at Amazon likely pushed for OpenSearch because it provides personal growth to work on open products. Working on closed source may mean you can't bring as much knowledge to another job. It's likely less people will use your work and that may be less satisfying. You may like to switch jobs for reasons other than money. And to retain employees, Amazon may agree to allow employees work on open source.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
When we say company we tend to subconsciously level them to any other business, But there's absolutely no way a company at the scale of Amazon could have got there without hiding some skeletons in the closet so it's good for the society in general to view ~~companies~~ Mega Corp. which has more money(read power) than several countries combined together always with suspicion.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  Why not just call them out for the bad things and support the good things? Assuming everything will inevitably go bad at some point is (a) false and (b) misses the point: While Amazon carries the Open Search torch right now, at any point in the future everyone else can contribute. They do deserve credit for stepping in to help even if it does support their own profit margins. Profit in itself isn't evil.
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    > Why not just call them out for the bad things and support the good things? Not just calling them out, Even punishing them(fines) for their mistakes is not even a slap on their wrist at their scale we've seen this happening time and again with all Mega Corps. There's just no incentive to not do something evil. So extraordinary scrutiny for every single action seems to be the optimal approach until the governments decide to break Mega Corps. into smaller companies which can actually get hurt from punishments.
    - unityByFreedom 5y ago
      They're a huge company. If you want to attack you need to be able to identify where they are acting badly and strike at that weakness. Calling the whole thing an evil empire isn't going to make any progress: your attacks are easily fended off.
      - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
        > If you want to attack you need to be able to identify where they are acting badly and strike at that weakness. Can you give an example? >> Even punishing them(fines) for their mistakes is not even a slap on their wrist at their scale we've seen this happening time and again If this wasn't true then there wouldn't be sub-list for every wrongdoing spanning decades[1] i.e. If the punishments achieved it's purpose we wouldn't see continued offenses under same category. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon
jka 5y ago
Without a solid and forward-looking understanding of the internal cultures of both Elastic (the company) and also the specific team(s) at Amazon that will be managing the future of Elasticsearch and OpenSearch, respectively, I think it's too early to tell who will end up being the better steward of the search commons here. Also worth noting that other open-source search engines exist out there; it's entirely possible that other alternative technologies will become more attractive, depending on how all this plays out.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  > Without a solid and forward-looking understanding of the internal cultures of both Elastic (the company) and also the specific team(s) at Amazon that will be managing the future of Elasticsearch and OpenSearch, respectively, I think it's too early to tell who will end up being the better steward of the search commons here. Amazon is the better steward of open sourced Elastic Search, hands down, because nobody else is doing it. I'm not even sure that stewardship of the technology's proliferation is TBD. Didn't Elastic close the source because they feared Amazon was taking too much of their potential revenue? Elastic gambled that only they could carry the technology forward, and they lost that bet. I'll grant it's possible Elastic could become more competitive with Amazon+OpenSearch somehow down the road, however it appears that right now Elastic is on its heals while Amazon is driving forward. It's also possible that another closed-source search engine becomes popular. That said, Elastic is built atop Lucene, and as long as an open sourced version of Elastic exists I'm not sure why you would start from scratch or with something else. > Also worth noting that other open-source search engines exist out there; it's entirely possible that other alternative technologies will become more attractive, depending on how all this plays out. Which open-source search engines do you think are competitive?
  - jka 5y ago
    > it appears that right now Elastic is on its heals while Amazon is driving forward Perhaps - what are the commit/accepted contribution rates for the two projects like at the moment? (I'm not saying that's a perfect metric, but it could provide some information) > Which open-source search engines do you think are competitive? MeiliSearch[1] is an impressive-looking candidate. Perhaps two of the stronger innovations of Elasticsearch were horizontal scalability and the ability to pass documents to it over-the-network (basically, the ability to curl a JSON document and instantly have it be searchable -- and I'll admit/credit that Solr may have gotten there first with XML documents). Those two features make it easy to get started, and easy to scale up if needed (a common architect's concern). [1] - https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch

deeblering4 5y ago

I’m not so sure, they are also continuing to build a walled garden elk hosting alternative and already invested a lot of development into open distro for elasticsearch. People often run this software on their compute, so obviously eliminating proprietary license complications makes that an easier option for their customers to deploy, and redirects some of that licensing money into the customer’s aws spend. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy there is a FOSS fork, but at the same time it feels like Amazon again has eaten another company’s lunch while feigning innocence.

unityByFreedom 5y ago
You are not so sure that the world is not black and white? I assure you it's in color. Perhaps we do live in The Giver and only a few people realize this after all.
- deeblering4 5y ago
  I agree, it's in color. In this case green.
  - unityByFreedom 5y ago
    That's just as myopic. We all do many things daily with no expectation of monetary reward.
    - deeblering4 5y ago
      This was never about what we all do. The topic was Amazon OpenSearch. If you are arguing that Amazon has no expectation of monetary reward, then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you!
      - unityByFreedom 5y ago
        It's still myopic to say everything Amazon does is for the greenback. Engineers at Amazon likely pushed for OpenSearch because it provides personal growth to work on open products. Working on closed source may mean you can't bring as much knowledge to another job. It's likely less people will use your work and that may be less satisfying. You may like to switch jobs for reasons other than money. And to retain employees, Amazon may agree to allow employees work on open source.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

When we say company we tend to subconsciously level them to any other business, But there's absolutely no way a company at the scale of Amazon could have got there without hiding some skeletons in the closet so it's good for the society in general to view ~~companies~~ Mega Corp. which has more money(read power) than several countries combined together always with suspicion.

unityByFreedom 5y ago
Why not just call them out for the bad things and support the good things? Assuming everything will inevitably go bad at some point is (a) false and (b) misses the point: While Amazon carries the Open Search torch right now, at any point in the future everyone else can contribute. They do deserve credit for stepping in to help even if it does support their own profit margins. Profit in itself isn't evil.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  > Why not just call them out for the bad things and support the good things? Not just calling them out, Even punishing them(fines) for their mistakes is not even a slap on their wrist at their scale we've seen this happening time and again with all Mega Corps. There's just no incentive to not do something evil. So extraordinary scrutiny for every single action seems to be the optimal approach until the governments decide to break Mega Corps. into smaller companies which can actually get hurt from punishments.
  - unityByFreedom 5y ago
    They're a huge company. If you want to attack you need to be able to identify where they are acting badly and strike at that weakness. Calling the whole thing an evil empire isn't going to make any progress: your attacks are easily fended off.
    - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
      > If you want to attack you need to be able to identify where they are acting badly and strike at that weakness. Can you give an example? >> Even punishing them(fines) for their mistakes is not even a slap on their wrist at their scale we've seen this happening time and again If this wasn't true then there wouldn't be sub-list for every wrongdoing spanning decades[1] i.e. If the punishments achieved it's purpose we wouldn't see continued offenses under same category. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon

jka 5y ago

Without a solid and forward-looking understanding of the internal cultures of both Elastic (the company) and also the specific team(s) at Amazon that will be managing the future of Elasticsearch and OpenSearch, respectively, I think it's too early to tell who will end up being the better steward of the search commons here. Also worth noting that other open-source search engines exist out there; it's entirely possible that other alternative technologies will become more attractive, depending on how all this plays out.

unityByFreedom 5y ago
> Without a solid and forward-looking understanding of the internal cultures of both Elastic (the company) and also the specific team(s) at Amazon that will be managing the future of Elasticsearch and OpenSearch, respectively, I think it's too early to tell who will end up being the better steward of the search commons here. Amazon is the better steward of open sourced Elastic Search, hands down, because nobody else is doing it. I'm not even sure that stewardship of the technology's proliferation is TBD. Didn't Elastic close the source because they feared Amazon was taking too much of their potential revenue? Elastic gambled that only they could carry the technology forward, and they lost that bet. I'll grant it's possible Elastic could become more competitive with Amazon+OpenSearch somehow down the road, however it appears that right now Elastic is on its heals while Amazon is driving forward. It's also possible that another closed-source search engine becomes popular. That said, Elastic is built atop Lucene, and as long as an open sourced version of Elastic exists I'm not sure why you would start from scratch or with something else. > Also worth noting that other open-source search engines exist out there; it's entirely possible that other alternative technologies will become more attractive, depending on how all this plays out. Which open-source search engines do you think are competitive?
- jka 5y ago
  > it appears that right now Elastic is on its heals while Amazon is driving forward Perhaps - what are the commit/accepted contribution rates for the two projects like at the moment? (I'm not saying that's a perfect metric, but it could provide some information) > Which open-source search engines do you think are competitive? MeiliSearch[1] is an impressive-looking candidate. Perhaps two of the stronger innovations of Elasticsearch were horizontal scalability and the ability to pass documents to it over-the-network (basically, the ability to curl a JSON document and instantly have it be searchable -- and I'll admit/credit that Solr may have gotten there first with XML documents). Those two features make it easy to get started, and easy to scale up if needed (a common architect's concern). [1] - https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch