9 ms·

I was sort of curious, so I went to see what impact this had on the customer experience at AWS. Searching for 'elasticsearch' in the AWS console services dropdo

I was sort of curious, so I went to see what impact this had on the customer experience at AWS. Searching for 'elasticsearch' in the AWS console services dropdown now yields: ''' Amazon OpenSearch Service (successor to Amazon Elasticsearch Service) Run and Scale OpenSearch and Elasticsearch Clusters (successor to Amazon Elasticsea... ''' This seems like a petty, small win from the Elasticsearch people. I understand AWS has a history of gobbling up OSS and productizing it, and that that's detrimental, but it's hard to see Elastic, Inc as anything but sore that they got their lunch eaten here. Maybe that's justified. But it comes off as incredibly petty. (disclaimer: i used to work at aws, but not anywhere near the referenced offerings).

dhd415 5y ago
Wow, it's pretty surprising to me that the agreement allowed AWS to refer to Elasticsearch at all when promoting their own managed search offering.
- judge2020 5y ago
  There's a constant struggle between allowing free speech versus restricting it via trademark laws. In general, they want to make sure companies can talk about and mention their competitors by name and not be silenced by trademark lawsuits, while still ensuring the trademark isn't being infringed to the point of confusion. "Amazon Elasticsearch Service" sounds an awful lot like they have permission to use the Elasticsearch brand, while simply referring to it in parentheses indicates it's a competing service to the actual elasticsearch.
sokoloff 5y ago
It’s “detrimental” to companies who perhaps shouldn’t have chosen a license that allows AWS to do exactly what they did. Those companies can’t simultaneously claim to be competent and to have made that choice without knowing what they were doing. IMO, they chased the benefits of being open source and then changed course when the costs to them exceeded the benefits (which is fine for code going forward), but trademark concerns aside, I can’t see AWS as the bad actor here.
- ignoramous 5y ago
  If anything AWS has increased its co-operation with F/OSS businesses of late and this clear shift in strategy was apparent in product / partnership announcements leading up to 2021 re:Invent. AWS, I believe, realise the F/OSS ecosystem mustn't be taken undue advantage of. I mean, AWS stands a good chance of getting caught in a vehement backlash (let alone sporadic bad PR) from the developer community, who ironically form the basis of an entire industry AWS sells into and operates in. With Microsoft + GitHub intensifying their investments in F/OSS, AWS had to play ball. It is smart, not petty on anyone's part. Judging from the tone of the article, I am glad Elastic is content in their current business relationship with AWS. Hopefully, the companies also find an agreement to have AWS' OpenSearch fork merged back in, as well. disclaimer: ex-AWS, but zero insider information.
  - pabs3 5y ago
    If the rumours here on HN are true they need to start working on giving back some of their internal patches too. I think they also need to start providing funding to FLOSS projects too, and doing something like Google Project Zero.
- skrtskrt 5y ago
  This comment is in every thread about this, but there has to be a solution that satisfies FOSS purists as well as casual users without allowing a massive, evil megacorp to just stomp on every company built around open-source solutions.
  - Salgat 5y ago
    How is AWS stomping all over it? Being able to fork for your own needs is a good thing. You don't make something open source and accept the world's free contributions without acknowledging that.
    - skrtskrt 5y ago
      Again, you’re leading with the definition-of-FOSS argument. Step back from FOSS for a second. I think most people would agree that there’s somewhat of a moral issue with just taking someone else’s open source software and just hosting it and making billions, with nothing for the creators, because you are a megacorp who is good at hosting. Now, is there a way to solve that and have the benefits of FOSS? Both Mongo and MariaDB have tried to address this with licensing - MariaDB seems to have done this much less clumsily than Mongo, but both still had FOSS advocates shrieking --- EDIT to include response to below comments so everyone doesn't keep repeating the same things: > Either your product is fully free and you accept that people can fork it, even Amazon, or you choose a restrictive license. You can't make "free" (as in libre) compatible with "but". > I can totally see that you think this is unfair, but they did allow it and they were perfectly happy when being FOSS brought them market share. You have to take the good with the bad > If you have a moral qualm with bigcorps using your work for free, you don’t license in such a way that they can. Make your own license, or slap AGPL3 on it - either way, no bigcorp touches it. > But you cannot be mad when you say “I release this code under these terms” and AWS takes you up on your offer. If everyone stomps their feet and says "there's no solution, otherwise it's not OSS!" then the end result is only going to be a lot less open-source software. I'm not asking if someone who wrote code and chose an existing OSS license that allows any possible usage has any real recourse once they want to make money off of it - obviously not. I am asking, can we find a way to ensure software creators are compensated while still having the generally-recognized benefits of FOSS? > Don't you think there's a moral issue expecting free contributions to something which only you are allowed to monetize? Nowhere in OSS licenses does it include the expectations of free contributions > And how can you satisfy users to the greatest extent while also preventing them from using the provider that is best able to meet their needs? Again, can we just find a way for the creators to be compensated? I'd love for the OSS to be available as a hosted solution to be available on every cloud provider, including if the original creators choose to provide a cloud hosting. I'd also love for the original creators to be able to get some sliver of the money AWS/Google/Azure are making off of it. --- To me it seems like if you were to start a business around your open-source code right now, you would be smart to do one of these two things: 1. a MariaDB/CockroachDB BSL approach, where the newest versions are BSL, with a restriction that you can't provide a product where you just host our software without paying us, then all code automatically is fully open-source (GPL or whatever) after x amount of time, or x major version releases. - this comes with the danger of all the bad PR and gnashing of teeth that comes with non-pure-OSS licenses, or people just not adopting it because they dislike or don't understand the license 2. Open-Core with non-OSS-licensed Enterprise versions, and lean really hard into developing hosting and enterprise integrations to make sure you can make some money off the nonfree portions - this seems even more dangerous, that you have to be distracted on such things that are not the core product in order to defend against ending up like Docker, with everyone using it and no one paying you a dime.
chrsig 5y ago
From what I understand about trademark law, unlike copyright, trademarks must be defended at risk of losing them. So it may seem petty, but might actually have some necessity behind it. IANAL, and certainly not an expert on trademark law. Hopefully someone with more legal knowledge can provide some resources. Even if it is just petty, it's petty against amazon, and I for one don't really feel the need to have sympathy for them.
- wumpus 5y ago
  Most people don't really get what trademark defense is -- having Amazon label the trademark in some places as "Elasticsearch is a trademark of <whoever>" is enough to count. Even linking the elasticsearch software repo or elastic.co in conjunction with the trademark name is enough. Source: I have a best-selling book author friend who has been defending her trademark on a somewhat popular pop-culture term this way for a few decades.
- WaxProlix 5y ago
  That makes sense. I do sort of wish there were something to take away from this though that might lead to better outcomes for future endeavours, so that people could learn from Elastic's blunder, but if there's anything I don't see it.
shitlord 5y ago
This is kind of unrelated but "Amazon OpenSearch Service (successor to Amazon Elasticsearch Service)" is such a verbose product name. If you mark it as one of your favorite services in the AWS Console, it will take up a large chunk of the navigation bar (diminishing its purpose).
- alwaysanon 5y ago
  You have to imagine at some point they are going to drop the (successor to Elasticsearch) part of it and this is temporary...
ummonk 5y ago
I don’t think it’s petty as such. Amazon’s naming was likely to cause confusion. This is a good win for Elastic to protect their trademark. Of course, Amazon has every legal and ethical right to continue providing their fork under a new name as they’re now doing. That’s the whole point of open source.

dhd415 5y ago

Wow, it's pretty surprising to me that the agreement allowed AWS to refer to Elasticsearch at all when promoting their own managed search offering.

judge2020 5y ago
There's a constant struggle between allowing free speech versus restricting it via trademark laws. In general, they want to make sure companies can talk about and mention their competitors by name and not be silenced by trademark lawsuits, while still ensuring the trademark isn't being infringed to the point of confusion. "Amazon Elasticsearch Service" sounds an awful lot like they have permission to use the Elasticsearch brand, while simply referring to it in parentheses indicates it's a competing service to the actual elasticsearch.

sokoloff 5y ago

It’s “detrimental” to companies who perhaps shouldn’t have chosen a license that allows AWS to do exactly what they did. Those companies can’t simultaneously claim to be competent and to have made that choice without knowing what they were doing. IMO, they chased the benefits of being open source and then changed course when the costs to them exceeded the benefits (which is fine for code going forward), but trademark concerns aside, I can’t see AWS as the bad actor here.

ignoramous 5y ago
If anything AWS has increased its co-operation with F/OSS businesses of late and this clear shift in strategy was apparent in product / partnership announcements leading up to 2021 re:Invent. AWS, I believe, realise the F/OSS ecosystem mustn't be taken undue advantage of. I mean, AWS stands a good chance of getting caught in a vehement backlash (let alone sporadic bad PR) from the developer community, who ironically form the basis of an entire industry AWS sells into and operates in. With Microsoft + GitHub intensifying their investments in F/OSS, AWS had to play ball. It is smart, not petty on anyone's part. Judging from the tone of the article, I am glad Elastic is content in their current business relationship with AWS. Hopefully, the companies also find an agreement to have AWS' OpenSearch fork merged back in, as well. disclaimer: ex-AWS, but zero insider information.
- pabs3 5y ago
  If the rumours here on HN are true they need to start working on giving back some of their internal patches too. I think they also need to start providing funding to FLOSS projects too, and doing something like Google Project Zero.
skrtskrt 5y ago
This comment is in every thread about this, but there has to be a solution that satisfies FOSS purists as well as casual users without allowing a massive, evil megacorp to just stomp on every company built around open-source solutions.
- Salgat 5y ago
  How is AWS stomping all over it? Being able to fork for your own needs is a good thing. You don't make something open source and accept the world's free contributions without acknowledging that.
  - skrtskrt 5y ago
    Again, you’re leading with the definition-of-FOSS argument. Step back from FOSS for a second. I think most people would agree that there’s somewhat of a moral issue with just taking someone else’s open source software and just hosting it and making billions, with nothing for the creators, because you are a megacorp who is good at hosting. Now, is there a way to solve that and have the benefits of FOSS? Both Mongo and MariaDB have tried to address this with licensing - MariaDB seems to have done this much less clumsily than Mongo, but both still had FOSS advocates shrieking --- EDIT to include response to below comments so everyone doesn't keep repeating the same things: > Either your product is fully free and you accept that people can fork it, even Amazon, or you choose a restrictive license. You can't make "free" (as in libre) compatible with "but". > I can totally see that you think this is unfair, but they did allow it and they were perfectly happy when being FOSS brought them market share. You have to take the good with the bad > If you have a moral qualm with bigcorps using your work for free, you don’t license in such a way that they can. Make your own license, or slap AGPL3 on it - either way, no bigcorp touches it. > But you cannot be mad when you say “I release this code under these terms” and AWS takes you up on your offer. If everyone stomps their feet and says "there's no solution, otherwise it's not OSS!" then the end result is only going to be a lot less open-source software. I'm not asking if someone who wrote code and chose an existing OSS license that allows any possible usage has any real recourse once they want to make money off of it - obviously not. I am asking, can we find a way to ensure software creators are compensated while still having the generally-recognized benefits of FOSS? > Don't you think there's a moral issue expecting free contributions to something which only you are allowed to monetize? Nowhere in OSS licenses does it include the expectations of free contributions > And how can you satisfy users to the greatest extent while also preventing them from using the provider that is best able to meet their needs? Again, can we just find a way for the creators to be compensated? I'd love for the OSS to be available as a hosted solution to be available on every cloud provider, including if the original creators choose to provide a cloud hosting. I'd also love for the original creators to be able to get some sliver of the money AWS/Google/Azure are making off of it. --- To me it seems like if you were to start a business around your open-source code right now, you would be smart to do one of these two things: 1. a MariaDB/CockroachDB BSL approach, where the newest versions are BSL, with a restriction that you can't provide a product where you just host our software without paying us, then all code automatically is fully open-source (GPL or whatever) after x amount of time, or x major version releases. - this comes with the danger of all the bad PR and gnashing of teeth that comes with non-pure-OSS licenses, or people just not adopting it because they dislike or don't understand the license 2. Open-Core with non-OSS-licensed Enterprise versions, and lean really hard into developing hosting and enterprise integrations to make sure you can make some money off the nonfree portions - this seems even more dangerous, that you have to be distracted on such things that are not the core product in order to defend against ending up like Docker, with everyone using it and no one paying you a dime.

chrsig 5y ago

From what I understand about trademark law, unlike copyright, trademarks must be defended at risk of losing them. So it may seem petty, but might actually have some necessity behind it. IANAL, and certainly not an expert on trademark law. Hopefully someone with more legal knowledge can provide some resources. Even if it is just petty, it's petty against amazon, and I for one don't really feel the need to have sympathy for them.

wumpus 5y ago
Most people don't really get what trademark defense is -- having Amazon label the trademark in some places as "Elasticsearch is a trademark of <whoever>" is enough to count. Even linking the elasticsearch software repo or elastic.co in conjunction with the trademark name is enough. Source: I have a best-selling book author friend who has been defending her trademark on a somewhat popular pop-culture term this way for a few decades.
WaxProlix 5y ago
That makes sense. I do sort of wish there were something to take away from this though that might lead to better outcomes for future endeavours, so that people could learn from Elastic's blunder, but if there's anything I don't see it.

shitlord 5y ago

This is kind of unrelated but "Amazon OpenSearch Service (successor to Amazon Elasticsearch Service)" is such a verbose product name. If you mark it as one of your favorite services in the AWS Console, it will take up a large chunk of the navigation bar (diminishing its purpose).

alwaysanon 5y ago
You have to imagine at some point they are going to drop the (successor to Elasticsearch) part of it and this is temporary...

ummonk 5y ago

I don’t think it’s petty as such. Amazon’s naming was likely to cause confusion. This is a good win for Elastic to protect their trademark. Of course, Amazon has every legal and ethical right to continue providing their fork under a new name as they’re now doing. That’s the whole point of open source.