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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

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.
  - yencabulator 2y ago
    Because that worked so well for Elastic here.
    - echelon 2y ago
      Elastic waited until it was too late.
- jddj 2y ago
  I've always been a little sceptical as well of the grassroots (maybe, maybe not) resistance on here against any efforts to stop the big 3 from using their network effects to syphon off the revenue from these projects. The messaging against elastic style licences and even copyleft licenses is too convenient for me to trust as being 100% genuine.
  - lamp_book 2y ago
    These handful of companies have employed legions of people at this point and I think plenty pump their own brand, not unlike colleges with their alumni networks.
- outop 2y ago
  This is literally what open source is. If you don't support this, you don't support open source. There isn't a 'purer' form of open source which does exactly what you want with respect to big companies using the code. You can be in favour of licensing that restricts Amazon or Microsoft's right to use your work. But that position is detrimental to, not supportive of, open source, since such a license would not be open source.
- liveoneggs 2y ago
  Like elastic did to Apache Lucene, the core of their product? Or when they infected their previously open source components like logstash?
- valyala 2y ago
  The main incentive for maintainers of open source software is to see many happy users of this software. Most open source maintainers do not care about monetizing their products (or the monetization has very low priority). That's why most open source maintainers use truly open-source licenses for their software - BSD, MIT, Apache2, and they will be happy if Amazon, Google or Microsoft builds successful product on top of their open-source software, since this gives them the desired recognition.
echelon 2y ago
Yes, let's praise and reward the hyperscaler and not the small company that is 1% of the size of AWS. AWS got Elastic's goodies for free. They just came in and gobbled up all of that value for themselves like vultures. Meanwhile the people putting in the work effectively got robbed. Small companies should stop doing open source and switch to source available + MAU/ARR restriction clauses.
- zokier 2y ago
  The small company with over billion dollar revenue and thousands of employees?
- lsh0 2y ago
  > the small company that is 1% of the size of AWS What on earth? Elastic is a multi-billion dollar company. They are no indie startup, scrappy underdog nor are they victims here. AWS took the high road during this fiasco despite Elastic's mudslinging and flailing about.
  - okbro 2y ago
    > What on earth? Elastic is a multi-billion dollar company. They are no indie startup, scrappy underdog nor are they victims here. > AWS took the high road during this fiasco despite Elastic's mudslinging and flailing about. They didn't start as a multi-billion dollar company. In fact, AWS started shipping their Elasticsearch Service in 2015. Public records show that Elastic's annual revenue in 12 months after their IPO in 2018 was ~200m with <1000 employees. I'd argue that Elastic is a multi-billion dollar company _in spite_ of AWS.
- globular-toast 2y ago
  They shouldn't stop doing open source, they should just make sure they use the correct licence, like AGPL. Businesses will always take as much as they can and give back as little as they can. The "permissive" licences specifically allow them to give back nothing. Cue shocked Pikachu when they do exactly that.
coding123 2y ago
They did? I can't stand all the missing parts around documentation and the lesser known pieces like Spark integration - horrible.
the_duke 2y ago
That's hugely overblown. Maybe 20% of the companies I work with have switched.
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  It's the new users where the pain is. A lot of companies that were using Elasticsearch indeed haven't switched because doing so is a bit of work without a lot of advantages. But all my new clients are defaulting to Opensearch. It's not even close.
- latchkey 2y ago
  > Maybe 20% of the companies I work with have switched. Smells like opportunity!
lolinder 2y ago
What is "the community" here? Every metric I'm able to find (commit frequency, gh stars, gh stars gained since the launch of opensearch, stack overflow tags, google search result counts...) suggests that OpenSearch didn't really take much of Elastic's mind share in the end. Each metric I've looked at shows OpenSearch at somewhere between 20%-50% of Elastic's numbers, which isn't nothing but is a far cry from "the community". I've heard a few anecdotes suggesting some people took it seriously, but while we're sharing those: my company actually adopted ElasticSearch since the license change and never seriously considered OpenSearch.
- js4ever 2y ago
  Last time I deployed elastic was years ago. In the meantime I deployed hundreds of opensearch instead for customers.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Are you the one who makes the call, or are you getting hundreds of customers requesting OpenSearch over Elastic? If you're making the call then that's really one anecdote, not hundreds.
    - js4ever 2y ago
      I let the customers choose by themselves. And guess what they choose every single time after checking license cost from Elastic.
      - lolinder 2y ago
        Do you tell them that it's deploy OpenSearch or buy an Elastic license, not mentioning that they could also legally deploy their own Elastic?
        js4ever 2y ago
        If only they had the skills to deploy and maintain it sure. But they don't so they ask services companies/DevOps to do it for them. No need to be AWS to be affected by SSPL

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.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  Because that worked so well for Elastic here.
  - echelon 2y ago
    Elastic waited until it was too late.
jddj 2y ago
I've always been a little sceptical as well of the grassroots (maybe, maybe not) resistance on here against any efforts to stop the big 3 from using their network effects to syphon off the revenue from these projects. The messaging against elastic style licences and even copyleft licenses is too convenient for me to trust as being 100% genuine.
- lamp_book 2y ago
  These handful of companies have employed legions of people at this point and I think plenty pump their own brand, not unlike colleges with their alumni networks.
outop 2y ago
This is literally what open source is. If you don't support this, you don't support open source. There isn't a 'purer' form of open source which does exactly what you want with respect to big companies using the code. You can be in favour of licensing that restricts Amazon or Microsoft's right to use your work. But that position is detrimental to, not supportive of, open source, since such a license would not be open source.
liveoneggs 2y ago
Like elastic did to Apache Lucene, the core of their product? Or when they infected their previously open source components like logstash?
valyala 2y ago
The main incentive for maintainers of open source software is to see many happy users of this software. Most open source maintainers do not care about monetizing their products (or the monetization has very low priority). That's why most open source maintainers use truly open-source licenses for their software - BSD, MIT, Apache2, and they will be happy if Amazon, Google or Microsoft builds successful product on top of their open-source software, since this gives them the desired recognition.

echelon 2y ago

Yes, let's praise and reward the hyperscaler and not the small company that is 1% of the size of AWS. AWS got Elastic's goodies for free. They just came in and gobbled up all of that value for themselves like vultures. Meanwhile the people putting in the work effectively got robbed. Small companies should stop doing open source and switch to source available + MAU/ARR restriction clauses.

zokier 2y ago
The small company with over billion dollar revenue and thousands of employees?
lsh0 2y ago
> the small company that is 1% of the size of AWS What on earth? Elastic is a multi-billion dollar company. They are no indie startup, scrappy underdog nor are they victims here. AWS took the high road during this fiasco despite Elastic's mudslinging and flailing about.
- okbro 2y ago
  > What on earth? Elastic is a multi-billion dollar company. They are no indie startup, scrappy underdog nor are they victims here. > AWS took the high road during this fiasco despite Elastic's mudslinging and flailing about. They didn't start as a multi-billion dollar company. In fact, AWS started shipping their Elasticsearch Service in 2015. Public records show that Elastic's annual revenue in 12 months after their IPO in 2018 was ~200m with <1000 employees. I'd argue that Elastic is a multi-billion dollar company _in spite_ of AWS.
globular-toast 2y ago
They shouldn't stop doing open source, they should just make sure they use the correct licence, like AGPL. Businesses will always take as much as they can and give back as little as they can. The "permissive" licences specifically allow them to give back nothing. Cue shocked Pikachu when they do exactly that.

coding123 2y ago

They did? I can't stand all the missing parts around documentation and the lesser known pieces like Spark integration - horrible.

the_duke 2y ago

That's hugely overblown. Maybe 20% of the companies I work with have switched.

jillesvangurp 2y ago
It's the new users where the pain is. A lot of companies that were using Elasticsearch indeed haven't switched because doing so is a bit of work without a lot of advantages. But all my new clients are defaulting to Opensearch. It's not even close.
latchkey 2y ago
> Maybe 20% of the companies I work with have switched. Smells like opportunity!

lolinder 2y ago

What is "the community" here? Every metric I'm able to find (commit frequency, gh stars, gh stars gained since the launch of opensearch, stack overflow tags, google search result counts...) suggests that OpenSearch didn't really take much of Elastic's mind share in the end. Each metric I've looked at shows OpenSearch at somewhere between 20%-50% of Elastic's numbers, which isn't nothing but is a far cry from "the community". I've heard a few anecdotes suggesting some people took it seriously, but while we're sharing those: my company actually adopted ElasticSearch since the license change and never seriously considered OpenSearch.

js4ever 2y ago
Last time I deployed elastic was years ago. In the meantime I deployed hundreds of opensearch instead for customers.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Are you the one who makes the call, or are you getting hundreds of customers requesting OpenSearch over Elastic? If you're making the call then that's really one anecdote, not hundreds.
  - js4ever 2y ago
    I let the customers choose by themselves. And guess what they choose every single time after checking license cost from Elastic.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      Do you tell them that it's deploy OpenSearch or buy an Elastic license, not mentioning that they could also legally deploy their own Elastic?
      - js4ever 2y ago
        If only they had the skills to deploy and maintain it sure. But they don't so they ask services companies/DevOps to do it for them. No need to be AWS to be affected by SSPL