25 ms·

Elasticsearch is open source, again

759 points by dakrone 2y ago

therealdrag0 2y ago
A bit aside but anyone have experience using elastic managed on Azure with a many terabyte+ cluster for prod? Just curious if having less control etc has ever been problem.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
simonw 2y ago
> The good news is that while it was painful, it worked. 3 years later, Amazon is fully invested in their fork, the market confusion has been (mostly) resolved, and our partnership with AWS is stronger than ever. We were even named AWS partner of the year. I don't entirely understand this bit.
- encoderer 2y ago
  I think they are saying when somebody looks to buy elastic search on AWS they find the Elastic offering on the market place and are not confused by the AWS offering that’s now called open search.
- foxyv 2y ago
  It was so that AWS would create their own name for their fork: > we changed the license, knowing it would result in a fork of Elasticsearch with a different name and a different trajectory. It’s a long story. I think the name of the fork is now OpenSearch.
  - Raed667 2y ago
    what is preventing AWS from dropping OpenSearch and going back to just selling Elastic ?
    - antimemetics 2y ago
      sunk cost. at least that’s what elastic seems to be betting on.
    - mr90210 2y ago
      Perhaps the fact that AWS has got years of time investment already made into OpenSearch and staying with their own version allows them to reduce risks should Elastic attempt to change ElasticSearch’s license again.
    - foxyv 2y ago
      To be honest, the OpenSearch brand has more value now than Elastic.
      - jdboyd 2y ago
        Please explain. This isn't obvious to me.
      - lolinder 2y ago
        I see a couple people on here claiming this, but no data to back it up. Elastic beats out OpenSearch by a wide margin on every metric I've thought to check (gh stars, gh stars rate of increase, number of commits, number of pull requests opened, number of pull requests merged, number of issues, stack overflow questions...). Not a single one shows OpenSearch ahead. What metric are you using to come to the conclusion that OpenSearch is the more valuable brand?
        jdc0589 2y ago
        thats a super one sided set of metrics. it doesn't tell us anything about how many people are actually using one, just how much visible dev activity they have. I don't have those metrics or an opinion, im just saying that value is based on utilization by a product's target users, not support activities.
        lolinder 2y ago
  - anticorporate 2y ago
    What could be learned from this example that might enable companies in the future to leverage trademark instead of a license change to accomplish the same thing? So much damage could have been avoided if this had been resolved differently to begin with.
    - foxyv 2y ago
      Change your name, not your license.
      - flockonus 2y ago
        I think they are saying: trademark your product name (open source in this case), make sure it's used only as approved. Altho i believe it does go back to the license attached to the product.
        ignaloidas 2y ago
        Source code license doesn't matter, Mozilla did this with Debian, that's why Iceweasel was a thing.
  - orra 2y ago
    I don't understand why they didn't treat Amazon's previous offering as a trademark infringement.
    - vineyardmike 2y ago
      If I sell my Toyota car on the side of the road I can call it a Toyota. If I sell you ElasticSearch(tm) Service which is the actual ES code base, what’s the infringement?
      - orra 2y ago
        The service is more than the code base: it's who is offering it, who supports it. Besides, I'd be shocked if that analogy is how the law works. Perhaps if you'd bought an individual license then sure, you could resell it with the brand name, just like the car. But wholesale is a completely different situation.
        dboreham 2y ago
        It depends on the legal jurisdiction but in the US you're allowed to use a competitor's brand name/trademark specifically to inform your customers. E.g. "acetaminophen, the stuff that's in Tylenol". You can also use the competitor's brand colors.
        exe34 2y ago
        so if I create a website called other-Facebook.com that looks exactly like Facebook, I can even tell people I'm going to steal their time and information just like the real Facebook, and that's allowed?
        rescbr 2y ago
        I think “foobar.com, a Facebook with blackjack and hookers” would be OK, while “other-facebook.com” wouldn’t. I’d say one is marketing, the other is misrepresentation.
  - ezekg 2y ago
    Am I the only one not buying this reasoning? Seems like there's more than is being said, otherwise they would have said this by now. I'd reckon that ELv2 had friction that couldn't be easily overcome without OSS or at the very least DOSP [0]. I personally experienced said friction with ELv2, so makes me curious. [0]: https://opensource.org/dosp https://opensource.org/dosp
    - exe34 2y ago
      we sunk our own boat, it forced them to get on rafts and leave, and now we're declaring our own boat sea-worthy again.
      - ezekg 2y ago
        So, yes, the ELv2 did introduce significant friction?
        outop 2y ago
        Yes, except that since Amazon have infinite resources, the friction didn't stop them doing anything, and the fork was always going to be perfectly viable.
        coredog64 2y ago
        It’s very clear in the post ZIRP era that none of the hyperscalers have infinite resources. AWS just discontinued, er, de-emphasized Cloud9 and CodeCommit. Neither of these were free, and both were substitutes for paid products that AWS customers can get elsewhere.
    - jrochkind1 2y ago
      You are not the only one, that's a ridiculous story.
    - Salgat 2y ago
      Sounds to me like they're trying to cover up a bad case of regret. At our company we've fully shifted to OpenSearch, so there's no going back to ElasticSearch even if we wanted (not that we would want to). Also there is a lot of engineering contribution from Amazon that's seemingly gone now from Elasticsearch, right?
- thih9 2y ago
  Their post[1] from three years ago explains in more detail the reasons behind the license change and what they consider not ok behavior by AWS. The "it worked" likely means that they consider these problems resolved or otherwise no longer relevant. [1]: https://www.elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-aws https://www.elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-aws
- adonese 2y ago
  I think they were trying to say something along the lines of we wanted amazon to take full responsibility over a fork and to dedicate actual resources for it, such that it will be distinguishable from our product.
- giamma 2y ago
  My guess: as I wrote in another comment, Elasticsearch had significant evolution in the area of "search engine", while OpenSearch trajectory (to use the wording of the press release) has been in the direction of APM/monitoring. When Elastic changed the license, all vendors of APM products based on Elasticsearch jumped to OpenSearch. Maybe, they want to pass the message that the fork, OpenSearch, is enough different to not represent real competition, and in any case, now that it exists, after the investment done, AWS will offer that as an alternative to Elasticsearch and not Elasticsearch itself but managed by AWS as it used to be before the license change. Now, who wants a managed Elasticsearch service will only buy it from Elastic.
- skywhopper 2y ago
  The "market confusion" bit has always struck me as disingenuous. The market was never confused about who was offering the old AWS "ElasticSearch Service" or what it was. Elastic's licensing shenanigans and the fork they forced AWS to create have introduced far more long-term confusion. It's certainly not the case that any confusion has been resolved by licensing the ElasticSearch code under three different licenses, all of which are unusual, confusing, and untested in various ways.
unethical_ban 2y ago
Okay, cool. No notes, that's neat. Are there any SMEs that have worked with both OpenSearch (the fork) and ElasticSearch? Are there significant differences? I know the AWS fork had the big difference back then of having RBAC built into their Kibana portion.
- DominoTree 2y ago
  I've found OpenSearch to be a bit flaky but I haven't worked with it very seriously compared to ElasticSearch (and before OpenSearch, the AWS-managed ElasticSearch absolutely hurt the ElasticSearch brand because of all of the issues Amazon created - it couldn't even rebalance shards, let alone add new nodes or switch to larger nodes without a blue-green deployment)
  - everfrustrated 2y ago
    This would be the same period when Elastic didn't even have a cloud offering....
    - jillesvangurp 2y ago
      Elastic bought found.no, which became Elastic Cloud in 2015. That was years before Amazon forked Opensearch. The AWS hosted Elasticsearch emerged around the same time.
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  OpenSearch has terrible docs.
  - mentalgear 2y ago
    That's so quintessential AWS :P. Even only for this Elastic should be compared to not waste 10s of hours on poorly written documentations.
  - therealdrag0 2y ago
    Can’t be worse than Solr heh.
richbell 2y ago
> [D.N.A.] > [LOVE.] I don't understand what these are supposed to mean. Is this a new writing style, song references, or just a quirk of the author?
- newzisforsukas 2y ago
  Seems to be references to Kendrick Lamar songs... for some reason?
- samplenoise 2y ago
  They are Kendrick Lamar song titles. Not clear to me why, though
- aabhay 2y ago
  These are songs by Kendrick Lamar. I guess that these were used to try and add a youthful, lighthearted touch to the article? Didn't work on me though.
  - 29athrowaway 2y ago
    [Count me out] No reason to use Elasticsearch in 2024.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - changexd 2y ago
      [i] am still not going to use Elasticsearch [For Free?] again?
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    I'm a fan of that album and I didn't even realize the reference. Is there any other point to it?
    - flockonus 2y ago
reducesuffering 2y ago
If Amazon's OpenSearch plateaus, and everyone wants to host ElasticSearch, but on their existing AWS infra/sales business inertia, this issue will fundamentally reoccur. Nothing actually changed except Elastic thinks Amazon will commit to their own fork. If Amazon doesn't, we're back to square one: Amazon hosts open source ElasticSearch, Elastic changes their license, another fork. "Amazon is fully invested in their fork." Amazon is a cutthroat business that will change strategy if their investment isn't paying off. That this scenario isn't addressed at the very top of your "addressing the trolls" doesn't bode well at all.
- JoshuaRogers 2y ago
  I felt like that was implied by the usage of AGPL: if Amazon wanted to start using this and apply patches on top of it, the AGPL would require that they share those patches with their customers, which would allow Elastic to integrate them into main again.
  - quyse 2y ago
    I don't think that's their intention. Elastic wouldn't be able to integrate Amazon's patches back into their codebase without losing the ability to change the license in the future. Even more, since it's AGPL, they'd have to get rid of their other licenses immediately.
    - pooper 2y ago
      > Elastic wouldn't be able to integrate Amazon's patches back into their codebase without losing the ability to change the license in the future. (I anal, even if I were a lawyer, I am definitely not YOUR lawyer, yada yada) If I were Elastic, I would require Amazon dot com or anyone else who wants to contribute code to Elastic to sign a CLA. Depending on how the CLA is structured, this could allow Elastic to continue multi licensing?
      - FeepingCreature 2y ago
        In this scenario, Amazon doesn't want to contribute to Elastic, Elastic wants Amazon's changes from Amazon's fork (Opensearch). So they can't demand Amazon sign a CLA, because they can't offer Amazon anything for it. Amazon is fine just ... not signing and continuing on their open fork. Elastic have lost the Schelling monopoly on what constitutes the "mainline".
newzisforsukas 2y ago
Great, how long until they change the license again?
- troyvit 2y ago
  Depends on what new tricks ~FAANG~ MAMAA companies come up with to get as much as they can from open source without giving anything back I suppose.
  - outop 2y ago
    Whatever you think of those companies in a wider sense, it's totally inaccurate to suggest that Microsoft, Google or Amazon haven't given anything back to open source.
    - KingMob 2y ago
      Hyperbole aside, they certainly haven't given as much as they've gotten, though. E.g., remember when Heartbleed hit, and the world learned that OpenSSL was maintained by one person getting only $2000/year for it? Fixing Heartbleed was estimated to cost half a billion dollars world-wide.
      - outop 2y ago
        > Hyperbole aside, they certainly haven't given as much as they've gotten, though. Agreed, but the point of sharing software is that it's not a zero sum game. The thing you create once is not diminished by me using it many times.
        KingMob 2y ago
        We still have to pay our bills under capitalism, though. Software copies might be infinite, but money isn't.
        outop 2y ago
everfrustrated 2y ago
Too late, the community all moved over to OpenSearch. I'll never forgive Elastic for locking basic security features behind their paid licence. Over the years probably millions of people had their data compromised due to that (due to people inadvertently leaving instances on the public internet - having auth enabled by default would have helped a lot)
- jgb1984 2y ago
  Source? Unless you're locked into the Amazon flavor of cloud hell I'm pretty sure most people are using the "real" elasticsearch. I know I am.
  - tapoxi 2y ago
    We have a vendor that refuses to support ES 8.x due to license fears, so we're just migrating everything over to OpenSearch.
  - paulddraper 2y ago
    Yeah, it hasn't been nearly long enough for "everyone" or even most people to migrate.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- sergiotapia 2y ago
  I think it's pretty sad that Conglomo X can take an open source product, add some tweaks and sell/capture the entire market. Basically taking all the work that open source maintainers have done. What's the solution here?
  - echelon 2y ago
    Source available + MAU/ARR restriction clauses that prevent hyperscalers from robbing the bank.
    - 2y ago
mirashii 2y ago
> For example, MongoDB used to be AGPL and Grafana is AGPL. It shows that AGPL doesn’t affect usage or popularity. I take some issue with this characterization. Let's look at Grafana in particular. Grafana was not always AGPL, and much of its popularity came before the license change. I've been in multiple organizations who only purchased a license for Grafana to avoid the AGPL terms because it had gained traction already in the organization and switching away would have been more costly, and AGPL software is still outright banned. That Grafana is still popular does not show that the AGPL doesn't impact usage or popularity, only that Grafana is still popular.
- skrtskrt 2y ago
  > AGPL software is still outright banned This is just an unforced error to enforce this for a product that is literally an internal analytics tool. You can even host it and sell it as a service under AGPL! you just have to open source your changes/contributions. The Grafana AGPL-licensed stuff has massive adoption, the few places where corporate lawyers can't get their heads out of their butts can just keep suffering.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
CtrlAltDelete51 2y ago
Open source, again … for now.
system2 2y ago
Nice, maybe they can hire some humans to write more explanatory website text, documentation, pricing information—better yet, anything on their website. Elastic.co is the #1 example we use with our clients when we want to show how 'vague websites make you lose clients.' We show them the website and ask, 'What do you think of this company?' and 'What do you think they are providing as a service?' Not a single client, including tech-savvy ones, has been able to answer. Elastic.co is probably one of the worst websites that somehow gained popularity despite its crappy pricing model and support. Their documentation assumes you already know everything about their weirdly vague services and have in-depth knowledge of server infrastructures. To anyone who works for them: If you're reading this, know that your website is so terrible that it became our first example of a crappy company.
- dboreham 2y ago
  I assumed that "website that tells you nothing" was a deliberate thing, presumably because somehow they make more money as a result. It seems to be the rule more than exception.
  - system2 2y ago
    I can't think of any company does that and makes money. Imagine Apple doing the same, they'd go bankrupt.
    - NewsaHackO 2y ago
      Well at least now you know one, elasticsearch.
candiddevmike 2y ago
Stock is down almost 25% afterhours (not sure if due to this or their earnings call)
- mrcwinn 2y ago
  "'We had a slower start to the year with the volume of customer commitments impacted by segmentation changes that we made at the beginning of the year, which are taking longer than expected to settle. We have been taking steps to address this, but it will impact our revenue this year,' said Ash Kulkarni, Chief Executive Officer, Elastic." So, whatever that means, is the answer to your question.
  - trog 2y ago
    I guess it's better to have nerds fighting about licensing filling up the Internet instead of people talking about why there's a 25% decline in the share price :)
    - stogot 2y ago
      A sales org change caused 25% share price drop. Someone made a big mistake
  - nprateem 2y ago
    Segmentation changes probably means more companies are in the "not interested" segment now than we'd like. We're going to throw a load of stuff at the wall this year to see what sticks.
29athrowaway 2y ago
There's already an open source Elasticsearch, it's called OpenSearch and it is pretty much all you need right now. Users that had to pay the price to migrate to OpenSearch do not have a reason to migrate back to Elasticsearch.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  Also, OpenSearch is Apache-2 licensed so much more usable.
  - asjkaehauisa 2y ago
    Also, opensearch is free, enterprise-ready tool. It's 2024 and you have to pay for things like ldap auth in elasticsearch. https://sso.tax/ https://sso.tax/
rdsubhas 2y ago
Lots of negativity in this thread. Can we take just a bit of time to appreciate this. Thank you Elastic folks!
- bytearray 2y ago
  What are we appreciating exactly?
  - politelemon 2y ago
    Elastic being flexible
    - linotype 2y ago
      More like Elastic panicking when they realized the traction OpenSearch is getting at a number of companies.
    - danillonunes 2y ago
      Being flexible is kinda the point of an elastic.
  - zymhan 2y ago
    Maybe a ridiculous writing style for a blog post about software licensing?
    - hashtag-til 2y ago
      Came here looking whether anyone else found the weird teenager writing style getting on the way of the real message.
    - IceDane 2y ago
      I was wondering what the fuck was going on and whether this was internal community meme or style that I just wasn't aware of. Turns out it's just cringey corporate goons being cringey corporate goons.
- 2y ago
xbar 2y ago
Nice! Time to switch back real quick.
chadash 2y ago
I'm pretty happy with this, since they are keeping the option to use the Elastic License. Now everyone can be happy. To me, it's weird that the AGPL is any more "open source" than the Elastic License. The AGPL requires you to publish all of your source code if you make any changes to the product; the Elastic License just says, "don't use our code to make a direct competitor to Elasticsearch". I find the former to be much more restrictive in most practical ways since the majority of companies don't want to open source their code, but very few of them plan to sell hosted search. Personally, I do wish that there was more broad acceptance of the Elastic License. Who wants to put in years building a business and then have a competitor with better distribution take your code and compete directly with you? For me, the reasons to want open-source code are: * If a vendor goes under, I can self-host * If a vendor raises prices too much, I can self-host * If there's a bug in the code that affects me too much, I can fix it * If there's a feature I really need, I can add it The Elastic License allows for all of the above. Seems fair to me.
- sofixa 2y ago
  Same applies to BSL and similar. Not being able to compete with the project owners is much less restrictive, for me, than AGPL/GPL.
  - outop 2y ago
    But it restricts your ability to use a commodity product based on Elastic, provided by a third party who will compete on price or bundle it with other cloud services.
    - sofixa 2y ago
      Yes, but what I'm more interested in is self-hosting. I couldn't care less that someone else is unable to profit off of others' work. And of course the third party can compete on price, they don't have to develop the actual software they're selling!
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
philippemnoel 2y ago
This is huge. We wrote "Why we picked AGPL" only a few weeks ago, discussing why ParadeDB (an Elastic competitor!) chose the AGPL. Glad to see Elastic is joining forces on the AGPL front.
blendergeek 2y ago
Thank you, ElasticSearch! I know the AGPL may be a terrible license and all, but it is allowed by Free Software purists. I hope more companies follow suit.
winddude 2y ago
They've probably been losing market share to all the opensource vector search solutions. But anyways, this is still good.
andrewmutz 2y ago
For use by businesses, the AGPL is a nightmare from my perspective. What does it actually require on behalf of a company using AGPL components? If I write my own library and link statically I need to release that? What about if I link it dynamically? What if the library is running on a separate machine and is separated by the network? I'm sure there will be people commenting in this thread that they understand exactly what the AGPL requires, and it's not that bad, but their opinion matters much less than the opinion of lawyers. I've never been able to get lawyers in a business setting comfortable with us using AGPL components, for fear that it will be interpreted at some point to require us to release our application source code. As a result, we've never been able to use anything licensed AGPL in a corporate setting.
- Nathanba 2y ago
  Those are the same reasons for why I avoid AGPL (and GPL frankly, because I dont want to make my frontend code fully open source either). I always thought that when a project is AGPL then I might as well consider it off limits for myself because if any of my code is touching it and then that code indirectly eventually reaches users via the network then wouldn't that also mean that I have to open source everything? I mean otherwise you could just put any AGPL software behind a proxy and you'd be instantly fine which I don't think that's how it works. In an ideal world we would have a license where you're required to open source only the changes you make to the 3rd party code, not everything that surrounds it and without restrictions on linking or network. But I guess that is too hard to enforce.
  - jen20 2y ago
    > In an ideal world we would have a license where you're required to open source only the changes you make to the 3rd party code, not everything that surrounds it Good news! That license mostly exists: it’s called AGPL. The one where you have to open source “everything” (not really everything, but close to it) is SSPL [1], but that requirement only applies in certain circumstances. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License
- remram 2y ago
pluto_modadic 2y ago
what.... are those random words... in brackets??
- hs86 2y ago
  Reminds me of HK-47 from KOTOR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPeI4mX8Nus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPeI4mX8Nus
- gradascent 2y ago
  They're all names of popular Kendrick Lamar songs. Don't ask me why though
  - hashtag-til 2y ago
    Perhaps AI generated?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
greatgib 2y ago
Despite what they are claiming, they are clearly changing back the license because they felt the pain of not being Open Source anymore. The proof that companies like that publicly under value the success that they owe to being Open Source. But being able to use the term Open Source, by using AGPL, an OSI approved license, removes any questions, or fud, people might have. Also it makes me laugh so much the guy is trying to victimize himself pretending that they are unjustly targeted by FUD when it is not FUD but a real existing problem.
haolez 2y ago
Is it still open core? Which parts are only available on the enterprise version? Couldn't easily find in their website (after this announcement).
hintymad 2y ago
Could be a defensive move of Elasticsearch to win the mindshare of the community. OpenSearch has been gaining some momentum, albeit far from being comparable to Elasticsearch. See OSS Insight: https://ossinsight.io/analyze/elastic/elasticsearch?vs=opensearch-project%2FOpenSearch#overview https://ossinsight.io/analyze/elastic/elasticsearch?vs=opens.... I'm not sure Amazon is willing to go all in to win the war of search services, for that means they need to to handsomely reward the best coders that contribute the most to the OpenSearch project to produce insane amount of high-quality code for better and new features. See the great article Code Hard Or Go Home: https://hypercritical.co/2013/04/12/code-hard-or-go-home https://hypercritical.co/2013/04/12/code-hard-or-go-home. Nonetheless, there's a chance that Amazon may be determined to make OpenSearch catch up with ES, just like Apple has made Apple Maps comparable, even not better than, Google Maps. Therefore, open sourcing ES with AGPL is not a bad choice to retain the talent in the ES community. And AGPL is kinda restrictive to many large customers too, as the customers do not want to risk being forced to open source their business-critical code. In fact, many companies simply ban the use of licensed software. Therefore, AGPL reflects quite the spirit of OSS while in the meantime will not undermine Elastic's business model.
- dblock 2y ago
  Note on the ossinsights data point, there are 115 public repos in https://github.com/opensearch-project https://github.com/opensearch-project, including, as an example https://github.com/opensearch-project/k-nn https://github.com/opensearch-project/k-nn where all vector search is written, or https://github.com/opensearch-project/neural-search https://github.com/opensearch-project/neural-search.
nerdjon 2y ago
Honestly at this point I just see little reason to invest in Elastic Search. I have to wonder how much what is happening with terraform and tofu is related to this. While I can understand why they went down this path, it burned a bridge and I just don’t know why I would even bother instead of using opensearch.
9cb14c1ec0 2y ago
Too late. We just deployed a new project with OpenSearch after learning from an Elastic salesperson that their licensing fees would eat up significant portions of the projects profits. Also, since it's not spelled out clearly, I'm supposing huge parts of vital functionality are still subject to a paid license, even if the core functionality is technically open source now.
- remram 2y ago
  Plus they lost all trust now. Who's to say they won't pull the same thing again if developers were to come back? It's not like they stopped requiring a CLA...
  - KingMob 2y ago
    To be fair, though, every project of a certain size requires you to sign away your rights via CLA, so I don't think that can be held against them. (Though I admit, dispensing with a CLA would be an amazing gesture of good will.)
    - purpleidea 2y ago
      This is not at all true. Only projects that have the intention of wanting to be able to screw over their users have a CLA. The obvious counter example is Linux which has no CLA.
      - remram 2y ago
        On the other hand, the Apache foundation asks for a CLA.
    - dblock 2y ago
      OpenSearch only requires DCO. https://github.com/opensearch-project/.github/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#developer-certificate-of-origin https://github.com/opensearch-project/.github/blob/main/CONT...
- wg0 2y ago
throwaway984393 2y ago
[dead]
fsndz 2y ago
Elastic trying to reclaim the lost ground in their original territory by re-embracing open source is a bold move. They might be hoping to attract developers and businesses back by offering more transparency and community involvement. Could this have anything to do with vector databases starting to eat into some of their market share, pushing Elastic to innovate and re-establish their relevance?
ppaanngggg 2y ago
But es has fallen behind in vector search
ac130kz 2y ago
Too late, there are so many competitors that are both faster and provide more features. Same will happen with Redis in 3-4 years.
metadat 2y ago
Hasn't everyone already moved on to Open search? At this point it's more stable, which is preferable. Too little too late. Cannot trust.
- sschueller 2y ago
  I am in the middle of the migration from Elastic Search to Open Search... Not sure what to do right now.
  - wg0 2y ago
    Go for OpenSearch. Elastic might flip the license once more depending upon how and what stock market wants.
changexd 2y ago
Petition to make all the official blog post written like this, I love the rap songs reference
PeterZaitsev 2y ago
Looks like Elastic is bowing to OpenSearch threat. This is great news to have more Open Source choices, yet I think for those who care about Open Source the trust have been broken and there is little assurance there will not be a license change one again, serving needs of the moment
mcfedr 2y ago
I guess it's true. Except you cannot contribute code under AGPL, so it's only open source in name, there is no room for a community to form around the software, Elastic co remains in sole control
valyala 2y ago
IMHO, this is just the beginning of the trend for reverting source-available licenses back to open-source licenses. The reason is that source-available licenses don't help increasing revenue growth rate. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41266819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41266819
leqduyvp 2y ago
[flagged]
nullify88 2y ago
Since Elasticsearch changed their license, Loki has also appeared as a competitor and the Grafana machine have released a suite of tools that cover the observability categories. It may also be that the license change encouraged users to look for alternatives and there are more now than just being graylog and Elasticsearch. Clickhouse has proven to also be a very capable database for logs and there are stacks that use it for log storage.
- nklmilojevic 2y ago
  Loki and Clickhouse are not really excelling in what ES is. For example, full text search. VictoriaLogs is very promising in this regard!
  - OuchLinux 2y ago
    It's fair to say that most elasticsearch use cases aren't search based, they are analytical - which they don't 'excel' at. There are much more compelling products on the market these days.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
jraph 2y ago
Congrats on releasing under a free software license again. We are there to complain when something becomes proprietary, there's no reason we'd not be there when the opposite happens.
ksajadi 2y ago
The change of Elastic license resulted (or perhaps coincided) with the massive growth of other tools like Meilisearch, Quickwit, Loki, typesense, and more. In a way, their original open source license was suppressing innovation. I know this is not a popular opinion in some circles of pure OSS aficionados but it seems the evidence is to the contrary
- raxxorraxor 2y ago
  I am biting here because I don't understand the train of thought. How would such a license suppress innovation? What evidence?
  - ksajadi 2y ago
    For all those new search projects named in my OC to be viable, ES had to stop being “open source”. Before that it was not worth trying because there was one single dominant player in the market giving search away for “free”. The same is happening with Redis after their license change.
    - raxxorraxor 2y ago
      I wouldn't really see it as an innovation blocker in that case just because someone is dominant. Or, if we really indulge in this wider sense, a lot of companies would block innovation too. Amazon as a whole for example, so I cannot really make the connection to the license. You could of course argue that because air is free, it stops innovation in the air trade. But in the end that doesn't end in a sensible argument.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
It's an interesting move for sure but I don't think it's enough. A move back to the Apache license would open up the landscape for a reunification with the now dominant fork, which is Opensearch. But that's not going to happen with AGPL + copyright transfers. AGPL + copyright transfers vs. SSPL is a choice between getting stabbed or shot from a legal point of view. It's a hard no either way for a lot of corporate legal departments. I also don't think this will inspire a lot of companies or developers to start contributing changes to the Elasticsearch code base again; which is something that ground to a halt earlier. I saw my modest contributions under the Apache license being locked up behind this bullshit license and I learned my lesson: I'm never signing another contributor license again. My trust was violated. Not lifting a finger to help them. Elastic suffered a self inflicted fork of their developer community three years ago and Opensearch has become the default search solution for a lot of developers and companies. Opensearch replaced Elasticsearch as a neutral ground for open source researchers to rally around. I don't see that changing in any material way because of this license change. It's interesting that they are doing this though because clearly they are feeling the pressure and basically people using the opensource argument was cutting off their stream of new users. I consult in this space and Opensearch has become the default choice for new users. It isn't even close. Why would you pick Elastic as a first time user? They don't even consider Elasticsearch because it's all closed source and proprietary and Opensearch does the job. I don't think this change is enough to change that. IMHO their next logical step is embracing/acknowledging Opensearch and moving their efforts to join Opensearch and supporting that. That's a huge community of users, developers and companies that's just sitting there without delivering any revenue to Elastic. It's stupid; they are competing with their own product and leaving a lot of money on the table. Elastic has all the core skills to support that community but they are just sitting on their hands now pretending it doesn't exist. They must be starting to feel the pressure to just toss in the towel and grab a chunk of that market. This our way or the highway position sure has resulted in a lot of people choosing the highway.
- jprante 2y ago
  I was scared away as a plugin developer when Elastic changed to closed source, because the plugin that I assembled was based on third-party code and can only licensed under AGPL. Fun fact is, I could now resume my plugin development, and provide the code in the open with future Elasticsearch versions. But will I do it? I am also frustrated and my trust was violated. The point is, having Opensearch as an alternative is finding answers to my question to resume Elasticsearch development not easier than before. All the positive aspects are still counting for Opensearch. It is true that AGPL is not enough. While I do not think there will ever be an effort by the Elastic company to join Opensearch or embrace the Opensearch community, it seems to me the license switch to AGPL was driven by the analysis that Elastic's product offering can not be copied any more by hyperscalers. It was a mere question of the exclusiveness of the cloud service offering. That collided with the Apache license once. But now, it is clear that Amazon will never switch back to the Elastic stack as their primary cloud service search product.
openplatypus 2y ago
Yes, awesome news. I made a career with Solr, but building my product, Wide Angle Analytics, on top of Elastic search, made me realize how much more robust and polished ES actually is. With restoration of Open Source alignment I am confident we will continue building with ES as we are very happy with it.
adrianco 2y ago
Here’s the initial AWS response to the license change that they made in 2018, which I helped write. At the time we didn’t think a new license made sense, as AGPL is sufficient to block AWS from using the code, but the core of the issue was that AWS wanted to contribute security features to the open source project and Elastic wanted to keep security as an enterprise feature, so rejected all the approaches AWS made at the time. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/keeping-open-source-open-open-distro-for-elasticsearch/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/keeping-open-source-...
- _pdp_ 2y ago
  Unfortunately many companies charge extra for security where security should be the default. Truth to be told there some some situations where extra security costs could be justified but there are not many if charge is necessary it should be considered as a temporary measure. My $0.02.
  - thelittleone 2y ago
    Including the recent trend of access to SOC2 reports requiring an "Enterprise" tier subscription.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - YetAnotherNick 2y ago
      In fact I like the change. This allows them to make almost everything free of charge to individual/small companies, but could fund it from revenue of larger organization, who generally don't have problem paying.
      - ensignavenger 2y ago
        I don't mind them requiring a paid tier to get the detailed compliance level reports, but requiring the most uber expensive "call us" plan is probably too much for many smaller companies that might still benefit from easier SOC2 complaince.
ExoticPearTree 2y ago
To super-simplify things: using the AGPL software, can I offer a competing service to Elastic’s? If yes, then it is opensource, otherwise it is not.
frankjr 2y ago
"Changing the license was a mistake, and Elastic now backtracks from it" This could have been the entire article and it would make more sense than whatever this is.
wg0 2y ago
That is great news but I have prepared my stack for OpenSearch which seems even if less feature rich but is more trustworthy. At least there are some security features built in (OIDC/OAuth/JWT/Proxy etc.) which are dead critical to operate any software stack be it internal or otherwise. As for centralised logging or building a search functionality, OpenSearch was already good enough back in the day at the start of the fork. I think both ES and OS would continue to flourish in their own ways.
OuchLinux 2y ago
The software engineers who care enough to have an opinion probably likely don't contribute to the ELK stack, and those who are impacted by this license change are no better off. Ever since Elastic went on the warpath with their serverless cloud and Gen AI the entire "open source" pitch is moot, regardless of the license. Regardless of the openness of their code - their observability product is grossly bloated and unimpressive, the security product is sideways, fleet is broken by design, the entire database sector is coming after their analytics use cases at much better perf + much lower costs (and winning), management look incompetent, RAG is a big bet - but unlikely to be the saving grace the stack + company needs. It's truly a product on fire. Elasticsearch was interesting 10 years ago - nowadays not so much. This just seems like a "hope for the best" distraction for scarier things to come for Elastic.
jesprenj 2y ago
I think they still have a contributor licence agreement, meaning every contributor transfers the copyright of his contribution to the owner of Elasticsearch.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
giancarlostoro 2y ago
What license are contributions to Elastic given as? I'm very confused how this works with all the licenses, are they just all compatible with AGPL magically? Or are all contributions under their primary private license, I think the last time I saw someone change a license similar to how Elastic did (maybe MongoDB?) I suggested AGPL, I don't really like the license, but it is designed for this type of thing. I'm guessing these license models are all because they want to just plainly sell their own instances without cloud providers competing with them directly (who typically have unlimited resources to do so!) or keeping any changes or fixes to themselves (I think that was the reasoning with Mongo?). Offtopic / Meta to the article itself: What is with the format of this article, like if they meant for the stuff in brackets to be headings, but chose this format instead of making them headings.
- rw-access 2y ago
  The CLA best answers the questions in your first paragraph. https://www.elastic.co/contributor-agreement https://www.elastic.co/contributor-agreement
  - pnt12 2y ago
    tl;dr: you keep the copyright but give inconditional rights for elastic to distribute your code, eg under different licenses.
hungie 2y ago
I'm increasingly of the opinion that the definition of "open source" that narrowly defines open source is going to be the thing that contributes to the reduction of open source software. Open source communities are essentially anarchist syndicates, collectively working towards common good. Groups like Amazon coming in and taking their work and selling it, profiting to the tune of millions, and contributing nothing back will fundamentally alter the dynamics of the system. IMO, we need a definition of open source that permits me to limit users to those who aren't actively exploiting me. GPL flavors get close, but not sufficient. I believe, genuinely, in wellbeing for all, and that we should be working towards the common good of all. Open source is one such effort, but I'm tired of seeing people say, "it's only open source if the code is also permitted to be used against the common good and for the enrichment of a very select few already wealthy people."
- KolmogorovComp 2y ago
  > GPL flavors get close, but not sufficient What do you think makes it insufficient?
  - hungie 2y ago
    Amazon has the market power, legal strength, and willingness to run at a loss indefinitely, as well as the regulatory capture and connections to ensure they cannot be fairly investigated. So if I want to ensure my software is used maximally, by the people who need or want it most, I need to ensure there isn't a "gravity distorting player" taking my project and white labeling it to push out all the other people. The AGPL gets closer, but still doesn't go far enough in defining "modifications to the software" or linking, IMO.
- wavemode 2y ago
  You can be as tired of it as you want, but tiredness doesn't change the meaning of words. What you probably want instead is "fair source": https://fair.io/ https://fair.io/ Like their names imply, open source is about source being open. Whereas fair source is about ensuring that code is used fairly. I would argue that people contributing to open source shouldn't be putting themselves in a position to be "actively exploited". If that's something you're worried about, then open source was probably the wrong choice. You should have sold the code for a profit instead, or established some revenue-limited source sharing (so that only indie devs can use it for free, like e.g. Unreal Engine). Or use a fair source license. Or a proprietary "source available" license.
aftergibson 2y ago
Does anyone else find the wording of this is really strange and mildly unprofessional?
drewda 2y ago
> our partnership with AWS is stronger than ever. We were even named AWS partner of the year. This detail in the post made me chuckle. Oftentimes big vendors give out these kinds of marketing awards strategically. One big firm I know makes it a point to have its CEO present on-stage awards at its annual user conference to customer that have indicated they might not review.
donor20 2y ago
This is their somewhat muddy response to the “trolls” who might say “Changing the license was a mistake, and Elastic now backtracks from it”. We removed a lot of market confusion when we changed our license 3 years ago. And because of our actions, a lot has changed. It’s an entirely different landscape now. We aren’t living in the past. We want to build a better future for our users. It’s because we took action then, that we are in a position to take action now.
- skywhopper 2y ago
  This statement is confusing to me. I never found the old situation confusing, until Elastic started adding invented licenses and trying to claim openness while monopolizing the right to host their software. That was confusing.
VeninVidiaVicii 2y ago
Does anyone involved with MediaWiki here know how this could affect CirrusSearch? Once ES became non-OS it kinda went to hell. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CirrusSearch https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CirrusSearch
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
tccole 2y ago
Why are they using Kendrick Lamar songs for each title?
- vips7L 2y ago
  It's honestly really weird and makes reading the post hard for me.
amai 2y ago
Confused? Alternatives to Elasticsearch are - https://www.meilisearch.com/ https://www.meilisearch.com/ - https://typesense.org/ https://typesense.org/ - https://manticoresearch.com/ https://manticoresearch.com/ and maybe - https://github.com/Sygil-Dev/whoosh-reloaded https://github.com/Sygil-Dev/whoosh-reloaded
mithrilskeleton 2y ago
I'm glad the AGPL is getting some attention; it is the ideal open source license in the age of big tech

759 points by dakrone 2y ago

A bit aside but anyone have experience using elastic managed on Azure with a many terabyte+ cluster for prod? Just curious if having less control etc has ever been problem.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

simonw 2y ago

> The good news is that while it was painful, it worked. 3 years later, Amazon is fully invested in their fork, the market confusion has been (mostly) resolved, and our partnership with AWS is stronger than ever. We were even named AWS partner of the year. I don't entirely understand this bit.

encoderer 2y ago
I think they are saying when somebody looks to buy elastic search on AWS they find the Elastic offering on the market place and are not confused by the AWS offering that’s now called open search.
foxyv 2y ago
It was so that AWS would create their own name for their fork: > we changed the license, knowing it would result in a fork of Elasticsearch with a different name and a different trajectory. It’s a long story. I think the name of the fork is now OpenSearch.
- Raed667 2y ago
  what is preventing AWS from dropping OpenSearch and going back to just selling Elastic ?
  - antimemetics 2y ago
    sunk cost. at least that’s what elastic seems to be betting on.
  - mr90210 2y ago
    Perhaps the fact that AWS has got years of time investment already made into OpenSearch and staying with their own version allows them to reduce risks should Elastic attempt to change ElasticSearch’s license again.
  - foxyv 2y ago
    To be honest, the OpenSearch brand has more value now than Elastic.
    - jdboyd 2y ago
      Please explain. This isn't obvious to me.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      I see a couple people on here claiming this, but no data to back it up. Elastic beats out OpenSearch by a wide margin on every metric I've thought to check (gh stars, gh stars rate of increase, number of commits, number of pull requests opened, number of pull requests merged, number of issues, stack overflow questions...). Not a single one shows OpenSearch ahead. What metric are you using to come to the conclusion that OpenSearch is the more valuable brand?
      - jdc0589 2y ago
        thats a super one sided set of metrics. it doesn't tell us anything about how many people are actually using one, just how much visible dev activity they have. I don't have those metrics or an opinion, im just saying that value is based on utilization by a product's target users, not support activities.
        lolinder 2y ago
- anticorporate 2y ago
  What could be learned from this example that might enable companies in the future to leverage trademark instead of a license change to accomplish the same thing? So much damage could have been avoided if this had been resolved differently to begin with.
  - foxyv 2y ago
    Change your name, not your license.
    - flockonus 2y ago
      I think they are saying: trademark your product name (open source in this case), make sure it's used only as approved. Altho i believe it does go back to the license attached to the product.
      - ignaloidas 2y ago
        Source code license doesn't matter, Mozilla did this with Debian, that's why Iceweasel was a thing.
- orra 2y ago
  I don't understand why they didn't treat Amazon's previous offering as a trademark infringement.
  - vineyardmike 2y ago
    If I sell my Toyota car on the side of the road I can call it a Toyota. If I sell you ElasticSearch(tm) Service which is the actual ES code base, what’s the infringement?
    - orra 2y ago
      The service is more than the code base: it's who is offering it, who supports it. Besides, I'd be shocked if that analogy is how the law works. Perhaps if you'd bought an individual license then sure, you could resell it with the brand name, just like the car. But wholesale is a completely different situation.
      - dboreham 2y ago
        It depends on the legal jurisdiction but in the US you're allowed to use a competitor's brand name/trademark specifically to inform your customers. E.g. "acetaminophen, the stuff that's in Tylenol". You can also use the competitor's brand colors.
        exe34 2y ago
        so if I create a website called other-Facebook.com that looks exactly like Facebook, I can even tell people I'm going to steal their time and information just like the real Facebook, and that's allowed?
        rescbr 2y ago
        I think “foobar.com, a Facebook with blackjack and hookers” would be OK, while “other-facebook.com” wouldn’t. I’d say one is marketing, the other is misrepresentation.
- ezekg 2y ago
  Am I the only one not buying this reasoning? Seems like there's more than is being said, otherwise they would have said this by now. I'd reckon that ELv2 had friction that couldn't be easily overcome without OSS or at the very least DOSP [0]. I personally experienced said friction with ELv2, so makes me curious. [0]: https://opensource.org/dosp https://opensource.org/dosp
  - exe34 2y ago
    we sunk our own boat, it forced them to get on rafts and leave, and now we're declaring our own boat sea-worthy again.
    - ezekg 2y ago
      So, yes, the ELv2 did introduce significant friction?
      - outop 2y ago
        Yes, except that since Amazon have infinite resources, the friction didn't stop them doing anything, and the fork was always going to be perfectly viable.
        coredog64 2y ago
        It’s very clear in the post ZIRP era that none of the hyperscalers have infinite resources. AWS just discontinued, er, de-emphasized Cloud9 and CodeCommit. Neither of these were free, and both were substitutes for paid products that AWS customers can get elsewhere.
  - jrochkind1 2y ago
    You are not the only one, that's a ridiculous story.
  - Salgat 2y ago
    Sounds to me like they're trying to cover up a bad case of regret. At our company we've fully shifted to OpenSearch, so there's no going back to ElasticSearch even if we wanted (not that we would want to). Also there is a lot of engineering contribution from Amazon that's seemingly gone now from Elasticsearch, right?
thih9 2y ago
Their post[1] from three years ago explains in more detail the reasons behind the license change and what they consider not ok behavior by AWS. The "it worked" likely means that they consider these problems resolved or otherwise no longer relevant. [1]: https://www.elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-aws https://www.elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-aws
adonese 2y ago
I think they were trying to say something along the lines of we wanted amazon to take full responsibility over a fork and to dedicate actual resources for it, such that it will be distinguishable from our product.
giamma 2y ago
My guess: as I wrote in another comment, Elasticsearch had significant evolution in the area of "search engine", while OpenSearch trajectory (to use the wording of the press release) has been in the direction of APM/monitoring. When Elastic changed the license, all vendors of APM products based on Elasticsearch jumped to OpenSearch. Maybe, they want to pass the message that the fork, OpenSearch, is enough different to not represent real competition, and in any case, now that it exists, after the investment done, AWS will offer that as an alternative to Elasticsearch and not Elasticsearch itself but managed by AWS as it used to be before the license change. Now, who wants a managed Elasticsearch service will only buy it from Elastic.
skywhopper 2y ago
The "market confusion" bit has always struck me as disingenuous. The market was never confused about who was offering the old AWS "ElasticSearch Service" or what it was. Elastic's licensing shenanigans and the fork they forced AWS to create have introduced far more long-term confusion. It's certainly not the case that any confusion has been resolved by licensing the ElasticSearch code under three different licenses, all of which are unusual, confusing, and untested in various ways.

unethical_ban 2y ago

Okay, cool. No notes, that's neat. Are there any SMEs that have worked with both OpenSearch (the fork) and ElasticSearch? Are there significant differences? I know the AWS fork had the big difference back then of having RBAC built into their Kibana portion.

DominoTree 2y ago
I've found OpenSearch to be a bit flaky but I haven't worked with it very seriously compared to ElasticSearch (and before OpenSearch, the AWS-managed ElasticSearch absolutely hurt the ElasticSearch brand because of all of the issues Amazon created - it couldn't even rebalance shards, let alone add new nodes or switch to larger nodes without a blue-green deployment)
- everfrustrated 2y ago
  This would be the same period when Elastic didn't even have a cloud offering....
  - jillesvangurp 2y ago
    Elastic bought found.no, which became Elastic Cloud in 2015. That was years before Amazon forked Opensearch. The AWS hosted Elasticsearch emerged around the same time.
candiddevmike 2y ago
OpenSearch has terrible docs.
- mentalgear 2y ago
  That's so quintessential AWS :P. Even only for this Elastic should be compared to not waste 10s of hours on poorly written documentations.
- therealdrag0 2y ago
  Can’t be worse than Solr heh.

richbell 2y ago

> [D.N.A.] > [LOVE.] I don't understand what these are supposed to mean. Is this a new writing style, song references, or just a quirk of the author?

newzisforsukas 2y ago
Seems to be references to Kendrick Lamar songs... for some reason?
samplenoise 2y ago
They are Kendrick Lamar song titles. Not clear to me why, though
aabhay 2y ago
These are songs by Kendrick Lamar. I guess that these were used to try and add a youthful, lighthearted touch to the article? Didn't work on me though.
- 29athrowaway 2y ago
  [Count me out] No reason to use Elasticsearch in 2024.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - changexd 2y ago
    [i] am still not going to use Elasticsearch [For Free?] again?
- NewJazz 2y ago
  I'm a fan of that album and I didn't even realize the reference. Is there any other point to it?
  - flockonus 2y ago

reducesuffering 2y ago

If Amazon's OpenSearch plateaus, and everyone wants to host ElasticSearch, but on their existing AWS infra/sales business inertia, this issue will fundamentally reoccur. Nothing actually changed except Elastic thinks Amazon will commit to their own fork. If Amazon doesn't, we're back to square one: Amazon hosts open source ElasticSearch, Elastic changes their license, another fork. "Amazon is fully invested in their fork." Amazon is a cutthroat business that will change strategy if their investment isn't paying off. That this scenario isn't addressed at the very top of your "addressing the trolls" doesn't bode well at all.

JoshuaRogers 2y ago
I felt like that was implied by the usage of AGPL: if Amazon wanted to start using this and apply patches on top of it, the AGPL would require that they share those patches with their customers, which would allow Elastic to integrate them into main again.
- quyse 2y ago
  I don't think that's their intention. Elastic wouldn't be able to integrate Amazon's patches back into their codebase without losing the ability to change the license in the future. Even more, since it's AGPL, they'd have to get rid of their other licenses immediately.
  - pooper 2y ago
    > Elastic wouldn't be able to integrate Amazon's patches back into their codebase without losing the ability to change the license in the future. (I anal, even if I were a lawyer, I am definitely not YOUR lawyer, yada yada) If I were Elastic, I would require Amazon dot com or anyone else who wants to contribute code to Elastic to sign a CLA. Depending on how the CLA is structured, this could allow Elastic to continue multi licensing?
    - FeepingCreature 2y ago
      In this scenario, Amazon doesn't want to contribute to Elastic, Elastic wants Amazon's changes from Amazon's fork (Opensearch). So they can't demand Amazon sign a CLA, because they can't offer Amazon anything for it. Amazon is fine just ... not signing and continuing on their open fork. Elastic have lost the Schelling monopoly on what constitutes the "mainline".

newzisforsukas 2y ago

Great, how long until they change the license again?

troyvit 2y ago
Depends on what new tricks ~FAANG~ MAMAA companies come up with to get as much as they can from open source without giving anything back I suppose.
- outop 2y ago
  Whatever you think of those companies in a wider sense, it's totally inaccurate to suggest that Microsoft, Google or Amazon haven't given anything back to open source.
  - KingMob 2y ago
    Hyperbole aside, they certainly haven't given as much as they've gotten, though. E.g., remember when Heartbleed hit, and the world learned that OpenSSL was maintained by one person getting only $2000/year for it? Fixing Heartbleed was estimated to cost half a billion dollars world-wide.
    - outop 2y ago
      > Hyperbole aside, they certainly haven't given as much as they've gotten, though. Agreed, but the point of sharing software is that it's not a zero sum game. The thing you create once is not diminished by me using it many times.
      - KingMob 2y ago
        We still have to pay our bills under capitalism, though. Software copies might be infinite, but money isn't.
        outop 2y ago

everfrustrated 2y ago

Too late, the community all moved over to OpenSearch. I'll never forgive Elastic for locking basic security features behind their paid licence. Over the years probably millions of people had their data compromised due to that (due to people inadvertently leaving instances on the public internet - having auth enabled by default would have helped a lot)

jgb1984 2y ago
Source? Unless you're locked into the Amazon flavor of cloud hell I'm pretty sure most people are using the "real" elasticsearch. I know I am.
- tapoxi 2y ago
  We have a vendor that refuses to support ES 8.x due to license fears, so we're just migrating everything over to OpenSearch.
- paulddraper 2y ago
  Yeah, it hasn't been nearly long enough for "everyone" or even most people to migrate.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sergiotapia 2y ago
I think it's pretty sad that Conglomo X can take an open source product, add some tweaks and sell/capture the entire market. Basically taking all the work that open source maintainers have done. What's the solution here?
- echelon 2y ago
  Source available + MAU/ARR restriction clauses that prevent hyperscalers from robbing the bank.
  - 2y ago

mirashii 2y ago

> For example, MongoDB used to be AGPL and Grafana is AGPL. It shows that AGPL doesn’t affect usage or popularity. I take some issue with this characterization. Let's look at Grafana in particular. Grafana was not always AGPL, and much of its popularity came before the license change. I've been in multiple organizations who only purchased a license for Grafana to avoid the AGPL terms because it had gained traction already in the organization and switching away would have been more costly, and AGPL software is still outright banned. That Grafana is still popular does not show that the AGPL doesn't impact usage or popularity, only that Grafana is still popular.

skrtskrt 2y ago
> AGPL software is still outright banned This is just an unforced error to enforce this for a product that is literally an internal analytics tool. You can even host it and sell it as a service under AGPL! you just have to open source your changes/contributions. The Grafana AGPL-licensed stuff has massive adoption, the few places where corporate lawyers can't get their heads out of their butts can just keep suffering.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

CtrlAltDelete51 2y ago

Open source, again … for now.

system2 2y ago

Nice, maybe they can hire some humans to write more explanatory website text, documentation, pricing information—better yet, anything on their website. Elastic.co is the #1 example we use with our clients when we want to show how 'vague websites make you lose clients.' We show them the website and ask, 'What do you think of this company?' and 'What do you think they are providing as a service?' Not a single client, including tech-savvy ones, has been able to answer. Elastic.co is probably one of the worst websites that somehow gained popularity despite its crappy pricing model and support. Their documentation assumes you already know everything about their weirdly vague services and have in-depth knowledge of server infrastructures. To anyone who works for them: If you're reading this, know that your website is so terrible that it became our first example of a crappy company.

dboreham 2y ago
I assumed that "website that tells you nothing" was a deliberate thing, presumably because somehow they make more money as a result. It seems to be the rule more than exception.
- system2 2y ago
  I can't think of any company does that and makes money. Imagine Apple doing the same, they'd go bankrupt.
  - NewsaHackO 2y ago
    Well at least now you know one, elasticsearch.

candiddevmike 2y ago

Stock is down almost 25% afterhours (not sure if due to this or their earnings call)

mrcwinn 2y ago
"'We had a slower start to the year with the volume of customer commitments impacted by segmentation changes that we made at the beginning of the year, which are taking longer than expected to settle. We have been taking steps to address this, but it will impact our revenue this year,' said Ash Kulkarni, Chief Executive Officer, Elastic." So, whatever that means, is the answer to your question.
- trog 2y ago
  I guess it's better to have nerds fighting about licensing filling up the Internet instead of people talking about why there's a 25% decline in the share price :)
  - stogot 2y ago
    A sales org change caused 25% share price drop. Someone made a big mistake
- nprateem 2y ago
  Segmentation changes probably means more companies are in the "not interested" segment now than we'd like. We're going to throw a load of stuff at the wall this year to see what sticks.

29athrowaway 2y ago

There's already an open source Elasticsearch, it's called OpenSearch and it is pretty much all you need right now. Users that had to pay the price to migrate to OpenSearch do not have a reason to migrate back to Elasticsearch.

yencabulator 2y ago
Also, OpenSearch is Apache-2 licensed so much more usable.
- asjkaehauisa 2y ago
  Also, opensearch is free, enterprise-ready tool. It's 2024 and you have to pay for things like ldap auth in elasticsearch. https://sso.tax/ https://sso.tax/

rdsubhas 2y ago

Lots of negativity in this thread. Can we take just a bit of time to appreciate this. Thank you Elastic folks!

bytearray 2y ago
What are we appreciating exactly?
- politelemon 2y ago
  Elastic being flexible
  - linotype 2y ago
    More like Elastic panicking when they realized the traction OpenSearch is getting at a number of companies.
  - danillonunes 2y ago
    Being flexible is kinda the point of an elastic.
- zymhan 2y ago
  Maybe a ridiculous writing style for a blog post about software licensing?
  - hashtag-til 2y ago
    Came here looking whether anyone else found the weird teenager writing style getting on the way of the real message.
  - IceDane 2y ago
    I was wondering what the fuck was going on and whether this was internal community meme or style that I just wasn't aware of. Turns out it's just cringey corporate goons being cringey corporate goons.
2y ago

xbar 2y ago

Nice! Time to switch back real quick.

chadash 2y ago

I'm pretty happy with this, since they are keeping the option to use the Elastic License. Now everyone can be happy. To me, it's weird that the AGPL is any more "open source" than the Elastic License. The AGPL requires you to publish all of your source code if you make any changes to the product; the Elastic License just says, "don't use our code to make a direct competitor to Elasticsearch". I find the former to be much more restrictive in most practical ways since the majority of companies don't want to open source their code, but very few of them plan to sell hosted search. Personally, I do wish that there was more broad acceptance of the Elastic License. Who wants to put in years building a business and then have a competitor with better distribution take your code and compete directly with you? For me, the reasons to want open-source code are: * If a vendor goes under, I can self-host * If a vendor raises prices too much, I can self-host * If there's a bug in the code that affects me too much, I can fix it * If there's a feature I really need, I can add it The Elastic License allows for all of the above. Seems fair to me.

sofixa 2y ago
Same applies to BSL and similar. Not being able to compete with the project owners is much less restrictive, for me, than AGPL/GPL.
- outop 2y ago
  But it restricts your ability to use a commodity product based on Elastic, provided by a third party who will compete on price or bundle it with other cloud services.
  - sofixa 2y ago
    Yes, but what I'm more interested in is self-hosting. I couldn't care less that someone else is unable to profit off of others' work. And of course the third party can compete on price, they don't have to develop the actual software they're selling!
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

philippemnoel 2y ago

This is huge. We wrote "Why we picked AGPL" only a few weeks ago, discussing why ParadeDB (an Elastic competitor!) chose the AGPL. Glad to see Elastic is joining forces on the AGPL front.

blendergeek 2y ago

Thank you, ElasticSearch! I know the AGPL may be a terrible license and all, but it is allowed by Free Software purists. I hope more companies follow suit.

winddude 2y ago

They've probably been losing market share to all the opensource vector search solutions. But anyways, this is still good.

andrewmutz 2y ago

For use by businesses, the AGPL is a nightmare from my perspective. What does it actually require on behalf of a company using AGPL components? If I write my own library and link statically I need to release that? What about if I link it dynamically? What if the library is running on a separate machine and is separated by the network? I'm sure there will be people commenting in this thread that they understand exactly what the AGPL requires, and it's not that bad, but their opinion matters much less than the opinion of lawyers. I've never been able to get lawyers in a business setting comfortable with us using AGPL components, for fear that it will be interpreted at some point to require us to release our application source code. As a result, we've never been able to use anything licensed AGPL in a corporate setting.

Nathanba 2y ago
Those are the same reasons for why I avoid AGPL (and GPL frankly, because I dont want to make my frontend code fully open source either). I always thought that when a project is AGPL then I might as well consider it off limits for myself because if any of my code is touching it and then that code indirectly eventually reaches users via the network then wouldn't that also mean that I have to open source everything? I mean otherwise you could just put any AGPL software behind a proxy and you'd be instantly fine which I don't think that's how it works. In an ideal world we would have a license where you're required to open source only the changes you make to the 3rd party code, not everything that surrounds it and without restrictions on linking or network. But I guess that is too hard to enforce.
- jen20 2y ago
  > In an ideal world we would have a license where you're required to open source only the changes you make to the 3rd party code, not everything that surrounds it Good news! That license mostly exists: it’s called AGPL. The one where you have to open source “everything” (not really everything, but close to it) is SSPL [1], but that requirement only applies in certain circumstances. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License
remram 2y ago

pluto_modadic 2y ago

what.... are those random words... in brackets??

hs86 2y ago
Reminds me of HK-47 from KOTOR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPeI4mX8Nus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPeI4mX8Nus
gradascent 2y ago
They're all names of popular Kendrick Lamar songs. Don't ask me why though
- hashtag-til 2y ago
  Perhaps AI generated?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

greatgib 2y ago

Despite what they are claiming, they are clearly changing back the license because they felt the pain of not being Open Source anymore. The proof that companies like that publicly under value the success that they owe to being Open Source. But being able to use the term Open Source, by using AGPL, an OSI approved license, removes any questions, or fud, people might have. Also it makes me laugh so much the guy is trying to victimize himself pretending that they are unjustly targeted by FUD when it is not FUD but a real existing problem.

haolez 2y ago

Is it still open core? Which parts are only available on the enterprise version? Couldn't easily find in their website (after this announcement).

hintymad 2y ago

Could be a defensive move of Elasticsearch to win the mindshare of the community. OpenSearch has been gaining some momentum, albeit far from being comparable to Elasticsearch. See OSS Insight: https://ossinsight.io/analyze/elastic/elasticsearch?vs=opensearch-project%2FOpenSearch#overview https://ossinsight.io/analyze/elastic/elasticsearch?vs=opens.... I'm not sure Amazon is willing to go all in to win the war of search services, for that means they need to to handsomely reward the best coders that contribute the most to the OpenSearch project to produce insane amount of high-quality code for better and new features. See the great article Code Hard Or Go Home: https://hypercritical.co/2013/04/12/code-hard-or-go-home https://hypercritical.co/2013/04/12/code-hard-or-go-home. Nonetheless, there's a chance that Amazon may be determined to make OpenSearch catch up with ES, just like Apple has made Apple Maps comparable, even not better than, Google Maps. Therefore, open sourcing ES with AGPL is not a bad choice to retain the talent in the ES community. And AGPL is kinda restrictive to many large customers too, as the customers do not want to risk being forced to open source their business-critical code. In fact, many companies simply ban the use of licensed software. Therefore, AGPL reflects quite the spirit of OSS while in the meantime will not undermine Elastic's business model.

dblock 2y ago
Note on the ossinsights data point, there are 115 public repos in https://github.com/opensearch-project https://github.com/opensearch-project, including, as an example https://github.com/opensearch-project/k-nn https://github.com/opensearch-project/k-nn where all vector search is written, or https://github.com/opensearch-project/neural-search https://github.com/opensearch-project/neural-search.

nerdjon 2y ago

Honestly at this point I just see little reason to invest in Elastic Search. I have to wonder how much what is happening with terraform and tofu is related to this. While I can understand why they went down this path, it burned a bridge and I just don’t know why I would even bother instead of using opensearch.

9cb14c1ec0 2y ago

Too late. We just deployed a new project with OpenSearch after learning from an Elastic salesperson that their licensing fees would eat up significant portions of the projects profits. Also, since it's not spelled out clearly, I'm supposing huge parts of vital functionality are still subject to a paid license, even if the core functionality is technically open source now.

remram 2y ago
Plus they lost all trust now. Who's to say they won't pull the same thing again if developers were to come back? It's not like they stopped requiring a CLA...
- KingMob 2y ago
  To be fair, though, every project of a certain size requires you to sign away your rights via CLA, so I don't think that can be held against them. (Though I admit, dispensing with a CLA would be an amazing gesture of good will.)
  - purpleidea 2y ago
    This is not at all true. Only projects that have the intention of wanting to be able to screw over their users have a CLA. The obvious counter example is Linux which has no CLA.
    - remram 2y ago
      On the other hand, the Apache foundation asks for a CLA.
  - dblock 2y ago
    OpenSearch only requires DCO. https://github.com/opensearch-project/.github/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#developer-certificate-of-origin https://github.com/opensearch-project/.github/blob/main/CONT...
wg0 2y ago

throwaway984393 2y ago

[dead]

fsndz 2y ago

Elastic trying to reclaim the lost ground in their original territory by re-embracing open source is a bold move. They might be hoping to attract developers and businesses back by offering more transparency and community involvement. Could this have anything to do with vector databases starting to eat into some of their market share, pushing Elastic to innovate and re-establish their relevance?

ppaanngggg 2y ago

But es has fallen behind in vector search

ac130kz 2y ago

Too late, there are so many competitors that are both faster and provide more features. Same will happen with Redis in 3-4 years.

metadat 2y ago

Hasn't everyone already moved on to Open search? At this point it's more stable, which is preferable. Too little too late. Cannot trust.

sschueller 2y ago
I am in the middle of the migration from Elastic Search to Open Search... Not sure what to do right now.
- wg0 2y ago
  Go for OpenSearch. Elastic might flip the license once more depending upon how and what stock market wants.

changexd 2y ago

Petition to make all the official blog post written like this, I love the rap songs reference

PeterZaitsev 2y ago

Looks like Elastic is bowing to OpenSearch threat. This is great news to have more Open Source choices, yet I think for those who care about Open Source the trust have been broken and there is little assurance there will not be a license change one again, serving needs of the moment

mcfedr 2y ago

I guess it's true. Except you cannot contribute code under AGPL, so it's only open source in name, there is no room for a community to form around the software, Elastic co remains in sole control

valyala 2y ago

IMHO, this is just the beginning of the trend for reverting source-available licenses back to open-source licenses. The reason is that source-available licenses don't help increasing revenue growth rate. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41266819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41266819

leqduyvp 2y ago

[flagged]

nullify88 2y ago

Since Elasticsearch changed their license, Loki has also appeared as a competitor and the Grafana machine have released a suite of tools that cover the observability categories. It may also be that the license change encouraged users to look for alternatives and there are more now than just being graylog and Elasticsearch. Clickhouse has proven to also be a very capable database for logs and there are stacks that use it for log storage.

nklmilojevic 2y ago
Loki and Clickhouse are not really excelling in what ES is. For example, full text search. VictoriaLogs is very promising in this regard!
- OuchLinux 2y ago
  It's fair to say that most elasticsearch use cases aren't search based, they are analytical - which they don't 'excel' at. There are much more compelling products on the market these days.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

jraph 2y ago

Congrats on releasing under a free software license again. We are there to complain when something becomes proprietary, there's no reason we'd not be there when the opposite happens.

ksajadi 2y ago

The change of Elastic license resulted (or perhaps coincided) with the massive growth of other tools like Meilisearch, Quickwit, Loki, typesense, and more. In a way, their original open source license was suppressing innovation. I know this is not a popular opinion in some circles of pure OSS aficionados but it seems the evidence is to the contrary

raxxorraxor 2y ago
I am biting here because I don't understand the train of thought. How would such a license suppress innovation? What evidence?
- ksajadi 2y ago
  For all those new search projects named in my OC to be viable, ES had to stop being “open source”. Before that it was not worth trying because there was one single dominant player in the market giving search away for “free”. The same is happening with Redis after their license change.
  - raxxorraxor 2y ago
    I wouldn't really see it as an innovation blocker in that case just because someone is dominant. Or, if we really indulge in this wider sense, a lot of companies would block innovation too. Amazon as a whole for example, so I cannot really make the connection to the license. You could of course argue that because air is free, it stops innovation in the air trade. But in the end that doesn't end in a sensible argument.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

It's an interesting move for sure but I don't think it's enough. A move back to the Apache license would open up the landscape for a reunification with the now dominant fork, which is Opensearch. But that's not going to happen with AGPL + copyright transfers. AGPL + copyright transfers vs. SSPL is a choice between getting stabbed or shot from a legal point of view. It's a hard no either way for a lot of corporate legal departments. I also don't think this will inspire a lot of companies or developers to start contributing changes to the Elasticsearch code base again; which is something that ground to a halt earlier. I saw my modest contributions under the Apache license being locked up behind this bullshit license and I learned my lesson: I'm never signing another contributor license again. My trust was violated. Not lifting a finger to help them. Elastic suffered a self inflicted fork of their developer community three years ago and Opensearch has become the default search solution for a lot of developers and companies. Opensearch replaced Elasticsearch as a neutral ground for open source researchers to rally around. I don't see that changing in any material way because of this license change. It's interesting that they are doing this though because clearly they are feeling the pressure and basically people using the opensource argument was cutting off their stream of new users. I consult in this space and Opensearch has become the default choice for new users. It isn't even close. Why would you pick Elastic as a first time user? They don't even consider Elasticsearch because it's all closed source and proprietary and Opensearch does the job. I don't think this change is enough to change that. IMHO their next logical step is embracing/acknowledging Opensearch and moving their efforts to join Opensearch and supporting that. That's a huge community of users, developers and companies that's just sitting there without delivering any revenue to Elastic. It's stupid; they are competing with their own product and leaving a lot of money on the table. Elastic has all the core skills to support that community but they are just sitting on their hands now pretending it doesn't exist. They must be starting to feel the pressure to just toss in the towel and grab a chunk of that market. This our way or the highway position sure has resulted in a lot of people choosing the highway.

jprante 2y ago
I was scared away as a plugin developer when Elastic changed to closed source, because the plugin that I assembled was based on third-party code and can only licensed under AGPL. Fun fact is, I could now resume my plugin development, and provide the code in the open with future Elasticsearch versions. But will I do it? I am also frustrated and my trust was violated. The point is, having Opensearch as an alternative is finding answers to my question to resume Elasticsearch development not easier than before. All the positive aspects are still counting for Opensearch. It is true that AGPL is not enough. While I do not think there will ever be an effort by the Elastic company to join Opensearch or embrace the Opensearch community, it seems to me the license switch to AGPL was driven by the analysis that Elastic's product offering can not be copied any more by hyperscalers. It was a mere question of the exclusiveness of the cloud service offering. That collided with the Apache license once. But now, it is clear that Amazon will never switch back to the Elastic stack as their primary cloud service search product.

openplatypus 2y ago

Yes, awesome news. I made a career with Solr, but building my product, Wide Angle Analytics, on top of Elastic search, made me realize how much more robust and polished ES actually is. With restoration of Open Source alignment I am confident we will continue building with ES as we are very happy with it.

adrianco 2y ago

Here’s the initial AWS response to the license change that they made in 2018, which I helped write. At the time we didn’t think a new license made sense, as AGPL is sufficient to block AWS from using the code, but the core of the issue was that AWS wanted to contribute security features to the open source project and Elastic wanted to keep security as an enterprise feature, so rejected all the approaches AWS made at the time. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/keeping-open-source-open-open-distro-for-elasticsearch/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/keeping-open-source-...

_pdp_ 2y ago
Unfortunately many companies charge extra for security where security should be the default. Truth to be told there some some situations where extra security costs could be justified but there are not many if charge is necessary it should be considered as a temporary measure. My $0.02.
- thelittleone 2y ago
  Including the recent trend of access to SOC2 reports requiring an "Enterprise" tier subscription.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - YetAnotherNick 2y ago
    In fact I like the change. This allows them to make almost everything free of charge to individual/small companies, but could fund it from revenue of larger organization, who generally don't have problem paying.
    - ensignavenger 2y ago
      I don't mind them requiring a paid tier to get the detailed compliance level reports, but requiring the most uber expensive "call us" plan is probably too much for many smaller companies that might still benefit from easier SOC2 complaince.

ExoticPearTree 2y ago

To super-simplify things: using the AGPL software, can I offer a competing service to Elastic’s? If yes, then it is opensource, otherwise it is not.

frankjr 2y ago

"Changing the license was a mistake, and Elastic now backtracks from it" This could have been the entire article and it would make more sense than whatever this is.

wg0 2y ago

That is great news but I have prepared my stack for OpenSearch which seems even if less feature rich but is more trustworthy. At least there are some security features built in (OIDC/OAuth/JWT/Proxy etc.) which are dead critical to operate any software stack be it internal or otherwise. As for centralised logging or building a search functionality, OpenSearch was already good enough back in the day at the start of the fork. I think both ES and OS would continue to flourish in their own ways.

OuchLinux 2y ago

The software engineers who care enough to have an opinion probably likely don't contribute to the ELK stack, and those who are impacted by this license change are no better off. Ever since Elastic went on the warpath with their serverless cloud and Gen AI the entire "open source" pitch is moot, regardless of the license. Regardless of the openness of their code - their observability product is grossly bloated and unimpressive, the security product is sideways, fleet is broken by design, the entire database sector is coming after their analytics use cases at much better perf + much lower costs (and winning), management look incompetent, RAG is a big bet - but unlikely to be the saving grace the stack + company needs. It's truly a product on fire. Elasticsearch was interesting 10 years ago - nowadays not so much. This just seems like a "hope for the best" distraction for scarier things to come for Elastic.

jesprenj 2y ago

I think they still have a contributor licence agreement, meaning every contributor transfers the copyright of his contribution to the owner of Elasticsearch.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

giancarlostoro 2y ago

What license are contributions to Elastic given as? I'm very confused how this works with all the licenses, are they just all compatible with AGPL magically? Or are all contributions under their primary private license, I think the last time I saw someone change a license similar to how Elastic did (maybe MongoDB?) I suggested AGPL, I don't really like the license, but it is designed for this type of thing. I'm guessing these license models are all because they want to just plainly sell their own instances without cloud providers competing with them directly (who typically have unlimited resources to do so!) or keeping any changes or fixes to themselves (I think that was the reasoning with Mongo?). Offtopic / Meta to the article itself: What is with the format of this article, like if they meant for the stuff in brackets to be headings, but chose this format instead of making them headings.

rw-access 2y ago
The CLA best answers the questions in your first paragraph. https://www.elastic.co/contributor-agreement https://www.elastic.co/contributor-agreement
- pnt12 2y ago
  tl;dr: you keep the copyright but give inconditional rights for elastic to distribute your code, eg under different licenses.

hungie 2y ago

I'm increasingly of the opinion that the definition of "open source" that narrowly defines open source is going to be the thing that contributes to the reduction of open source software. Open source communities are essentially anarchist syndicates, collectively working towards common good. Groups like Amazon coming in and taking their work and selling it, profiting to the tune of millions, and contributing nothing back will fundamentally alter the dynamics of the system. IMO, we need a definition of open source that permits me to limit users to those who aren't actively exploiting me. GPL flavors get close, but not sufficient. I believe, genuinely, in wellbeing for all, and that we should be working towards the common good of all. Open source is one such effort, but I'm tired of seeing people say, "it's only open source if the code is also permitted to be used against the common good and for the enrichment of a very select few already wealthy people."

KolmogorovComp 2y ago
> GPL flavors get close, but not sufficient What do you think makes it insufficient?
- hungie 2y ago
  Amazon has the market power, legal strength, and willingness to run at a loss indefinitely, as well as the regulatory capture and connections to ensure they cannot be fairly investigated. So if I want to ensure my software is used maximally, by the people who need or want it most, I need to ensure there isn't a "gravity distorting player" taking my project and white labeling it to push out all the other people. The AGPL gets closer, but still doesn't go far enough in defining "modifications to the software" or linking, IMO.
wavemode 2y ago
You can be as tired of it as you want, but tiredness doesn't change the meaning of words. What you probably want instead is "fair source": https://fair.io/ https://fair.io/ Like their names imply, open source is about source being open. Whereas fair source is about ensuring that code is used fairly. I would argue that people contributing to open source shouldn't be putting themselves in a position to be "actively exploited". If that's something you're worried about, then open source was probably the wrong choice. You should have sold the code for a profit instead, or established some revenue-limited source sharing (so that only indie devs can use it for free, like e.g. Unreal Engine). Or use a fair source license. Or a proprietary "source available" license.

aftergibson 2y ago

Does anyone else find the wording of this is really strange and mildly unprofessional?

drewda 2y ago

> our partnership with AWS is stronger than ever. We were even named AWS partner of the year. This detail in the post made me chuckle. Oftentimes big vendors give out these kinds of marketing awards strategically. One big firm I know makes it a point to have its CEO present on-stage awards at its annual user conference to customer that have indicated they might not review.

donor20 2y ago

This is their somewhat muddy response to the “trolls” who might say “Changing the license was a mistake, and Elastic now backtracks from it”. We removed a lot of market confusion when we changed our license 3 years ago. And because of our actions, a lot has changed. It’s an entirely different landscape now. We aren’t living in the past. We want to build a better future for our users. It’s because we took action then, that we are in a position to take action now.

skywhopper 2y ago
This statement is confusing to me. I never found the old situation confusing, until Elastic started adding invented licenses and trying to claim openness while monopolizing the right to host their software. That was confusing.

VeninVidiaVicii 2y ago

Does anyone involved with MediaWiki here know how this could affect CirrusSearch? Once ES became non-OS it kinda went to hell. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CirrusSearch https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CirrusSearch

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

tccole 2y ago

Why are they using Kendrick Lamar songs for each title?

vips7L 2y ago
It's honestly really weird and makes reading the post hard for me.

amai 2y ago

Confused? Alternatives to Elasticsearch are - https://www.meilisearch.com/ https://www.meilisearch.com/ - https://typesense.org/ https://typesense.org/ - https://manticoresearch.com/ https://manticoresearch.com/ and maybe - https://github.com/Sygil-Dev/whoosh-reloaded https://github.com/Sygil-Dev/whoosh-reloaded

mithrilskeleton 2y ago

I'm glad the AGPL is getting some attention; it is the ideal open source license in the age of big tech