7 ms·

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 e

by 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?

phoronixrly 2y ago
Sounds like you've fully shifted to exploiting (without contributing anything) to OpenSearch. I think Elastic will be just fine without your company or Amazon.
- master_crab 2y ago
  They are paying Amazon for Opensearch resources. To Amazon, that’s enough contribution to continue supporting the source code.
  - cortesoft 2y ago
    Not necessarily. You can run opensearch on your own hardware and pay nothing to Amazon.
- Spivak 2y ago
  How truly far we've fallen that people refer to using open source software— literally software given away for other people to use, exploitation. Gonna go tell those freeloading kids who take my candy on Halloween that they're exploiting me unless they contribute to next year's candy bowl.
  - prepend 2y ago
    I think the logic goes something like: 1) Amazon is powerful, thus bad 2) we’re discussing Amazon 3) find something potentially bad 4) use confusing and negative language to throw shade to discredit my target because #1 It’s really frustrating to experience these types of conversation. People explicitly choose to donate their work to the world under an open source license. Complaining they someone uses without contributing is so stupid it defies belief. It’s like complaining because Amazon only pays $5 for a Big Mac when that is the posted price.
    - arp242 2y ago
      This is not the argument at all. Software (open source or otherwise) is not created for free; devs gotta eat, pay rent, etc. The business model of Elastic and similar is to offer a SaaS. They feel that Amazon offering a SaaS is directly competing with their business model, and because half the world runs on AWS it's not too different from Windows shipping IE back in the day killing Netscape. Elastic feels Amazon is eating their pie. Lots can be sad about a lot of this. You can disagree with a lot of this. There have been a million discussion on HN and I don't really feel like repeating it all. But you've spectacularly misunderstood the argument.
      - prepend 2y ago
        Developers willingly choose to donate their work under an OSS license. So yes there are costs and thankfully people release without the expectation. It’s perfectly fine to sell your software. There’s trillions of dollars worth of companies that do that. But I make sure I eat through other methods so I’m able to donate my time. If Elastic doesn’t want Amazon to use their software, then they shouldn’t release it as OSS. It’s quite simple. But it’s ridiculous, I think, to claim Amazon is doing anything wrong by abiding by the license. Elastic shouldn’t feel that Amazon is eating their pie because they chose to put their pie out with a “free pie for everyone” under ASL. If they feel bad, that may be so, but their feelings aren’t as important as what their intellect should set up.
        arp242 2y ago
        I'm not really interested in discussing the merits of the argument (or lack thereof); I've done this a dozen times over the last few years and I have no interest in repeating it. I am just saying your post hugely misrepresented the argument. That you think the argument is a load of bollocks changes nothing about that.
        prepend 2y ago
        It’s unfortunate you don’t want to discuss the merits of my argument. Not to give out advice, but if your aim isn’t to learn and debate and change minds and be changed, what’s your point? Do you just want to make noise or something? I would like to properly characterize the argument to understand all sides. Because I want more great software to exist in the world. My belief is that the way to do this is to have people create and share, of their own free will. And I want to learn if there’s a better way.
  - samspenc 2y ago
    I'm not the GP, and I don't have a dog in this fight, but I think what they are complaining about is this sequence of events: - ElasticSearch was open-source - Amazon offered ElasticSearch open-source as a paid service - ElasticSearch was not happy about this and changed their license - Amazon forked ElasticSearch (the open-source version) and created OpenSearch based on that, continuing to serve OpenSearch - (Few years pass) - Amazon and ElasticSearch are now buddies I think GP is talking about the events that transpired a while back before Amazon and ElasticSearch made up.
    - ok_dad 2y ago
      What, when Amazon forked an open source project, as was allowed by the license, and continued to support that open source license even when the original company abandoned theirs? I’m not an Amazon fan, but they did the same thing (forking) that many others do, and they did it perfectly legally according to the license.
      - mx_03 2y ago
        Yes, doesnt Elasticsearch do the same thing with Lucene? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27793721/what-is-the-difference-between-lucene-and-elasticsearch https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27793721/what-is-the-dif... AWS just offered a convenience layer over ElasticSearch
      - CuriousCosmic 2y ago
        It's a bit more complicated than that because Elastic during all of this had some of the plugins in Amazon's OpenDistro (now OpenSearch) project recycling proprietary code from Elastic's commercial, source available codebase under OpenDistro's permissive Apache-2.0 license. https://www.elastic.co/blog/dear-search-guard-users-including-amazon-elasticsearch-service-open-distro-and-others https://www.elastic.co/blog/dear-search-guard-users-includin...
        ok_dad 2y ago
        Your link specifically says Amazon didn’t steal the code, some German company did. I get it, Amazon is bad, I agree they are too, but not because they’re malicious, Amazon is bad because they’re too large to compete on level ground with anyone other than Google or Microsoft in the cloud. My peeve is with the companies like elastic that claim they are for open source but they try to prevent the open source from being used as such. It’s a scam to attract developers who care about open source. If I made code I wanted to be open source, I’d understand that means everyone can use it, like a public road or a public park. That includes big corps. At least Amazon actually supports the Apache licensed OpenSearch product! They don’t even go around acting all superior like those “open source” corps do about it.
  - sanderjd 2y ago
    I think the word "using" here is doing a lot of work. When talking about an entire application, I think of "using" it as being, well, using the application. But what I think we're talking about here is "using" the application code by selling it as your own product. I recognize that "open source" is ok with that second way of "using" the code, but I do think it's meaningfully different.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
  [dead]
- bdcravens 2y ago
  According to a quick search, there are 33M "users" of Linux (I suspect that number is way too low). Only 15k have contributed to the kernel. That's an "exploitation" rate of well over 99.9%.
  - csdreamer7 2y ago
    > According to a quick search, there are 33M "users" of Linux (I suspect that number is way too low). Only 15k have contributed to the kernel. That's an "exploitation" rate of well over 99.9%. This is very misleading. There is a lot more code than just the kernel for the Linux operating system. If you ran the numbers for a default install of Ubuntu or RHEL that would be far more useful. The Linux kernel requires far deeper skills than a lot of user-and development so it is going to have fewer contributors per year on average. Source: I am a Linux kernel engineer.
    - bdcravens 2y ago
      You're right; that's just an example. Even if we included all components, and bumped that contributor number up to 1M, we're talking about 97% "exploitation". My point was that pretty much every open source project is almost entirely usage vs contribution and that claims of exploiting open source are a non sequitur.
- mardifoufs 2y ago
  Isn't elastic itself based on open source tech too? Is elastic exploiting java for example?
- rty32 2y ago
  Then why is Elastic opening sourcing their code again? No need to change any part of their business model if things are going perfectly well? Altruism?
dangus 2y ago
This is exactly it. They made the gigantic miscalculation that Amazon wouldn't win this battle. I can't believe they didn't predict that this exact outcome would happen: Amazon forks under a more permissive license and becomes the new standard instead of Elastic because the entire package (managed service from AWS + more permissive license) is a lower risk package to the average business.
- jrochkind1 2y ago
  I mean, if you actually can't believe they didn't predict this exact outcome, that means you believe that they DID predict it and this is what they intended/hoped to happen!
  - dangus 2y ago
    I am certain you are familiar with this colloquialism, so I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.
    - jrochkind1 2y ago
      This is literally what we're talking about though -- Elastic Search claims they did predict it, and this outcome now was their hoped for plan all along. So I wasn't sure what you were trying to say, if you don't believe they didn't predict it... I guess you're actually saying that despite their claims otherwise, you don't believe they did predict it?
      - dangus 2y ago
        What I’m saying is that if they are claiming this is the outcome they wanted, they are lying. The truth that I think they are trying to hide is that they are losing adoption to their Amazon-backed competitor and that they will bleed more customers if they don’t go open source again. I think that when they made the original decision to change the license they thought their product had more pull than it really did. They thought customers would leave Amazon’s managed product for their “superior” product rather than Amazon’s “inferior” fork. They thought people wouldn’t trust Amazon to have the expertise to continue development. In reality what customers wanted was a managed solution from their cloud provider, they didn’t really care if it was Elastic or not. I totally understand that the situation was a pickle for Elastic in terms of being able to be a sustainable company and perhaps they had to do something. But the thing they did didn’t work, or else they would have stuck with it. In my experience companies that modify the licensing of their products or get bought by bad stewards like IBM (Hashicorp) or Progress (Chef Software) scare away the engineering managers who make purchase decisions.

by Salgat 2y ago

phoronixrly 2y ago

Sounds like you've fully shifted to exploiting (without contributing anything) to OpenSearch. I think Elastic will be just fine without your company or Amazon.

master_crab 2y ago
They are paying Amazon for Opensearch resources. To Amazon, that’s enough contribution to continue supporting the source code.
- cortesoft 2y ago
  Not necessarily. You can run opensearch on your own hardware and pay nothing to Amazon.
Spivak 2y ago
How truly far we've fallen that people refer to using open source software— literally software given away for other people to use, exploitation. Gonna go tell those freeloading kids who take my candy on Halloween that they're exploiting me unless they contribute to next year's candy bowl.
- prepend 2y ago
  I think the logic goes something like: 1) Amazon is powerful, thus bad 2) we’re discussing Amazon 3) find something potentially bad 4) use confusing and negative language to throw shade to discredit my target because #1 It’s really frustrating to experience these types of conversation. People explicitly choose to donate their work to the world under an open source license. Complaining they someone uses without contributing is so stupid it defies belief. It’s like complaining because Amazon only pays $5 for a Big Mac when that is the posted price.
  - arp242 2y ago
    This is not the argument at all. Software (open source or otherwise) is not created for free; devs gotta eat, pay rent, etc. The business model of Elastic and similar is to offer a SaaS. They feel that Amazon offering a SaaS is directly competing with their business model, and because half the world runs on AWS it's not too different from Windows shipping IE back in the day killing Netscape. Elastic feels Amazon is eating their pie. Lots can be sad about a lot of this. You can disagree with a lot of this. There have been a million discussion on HN and I don't really feel like repeating it all. But you've spectacularly misunderstood the argument.
    - prepend 2y ago
      Developers willingly choose to donate their work under an OSS license. So yes there are costs and thankfully people release without the expectation. It’s perfectly fine to sell your software. There’s trillions of dollars worth of companies that do that. But I make sure I eat through other methods so I’m able to donate my time. If Elastic doesn’t want Amazon to use their software, then they shouldn’t release it as OSS. It’s quite simple. But it’s ridiculous, I think, to claim Amazon is doing anything wrong by abiding by the license. Elastic shouldn’t feel that Amazon is eating their pie because they chose to put their pie out with a “free pie for everyone” under ASL. If they feel bad, that may be so, but their feelings aren’t as important as what their intellect should set up.
      - arp242 2y ago
        I'm not really interested in discussing the merits of the argument (or lack thereof); I've done this a dozen times over the last few years and I have no interest in repeating it. I am just saying your post hugely misrepresented the argument. That you think the argument is a load of bollocks changes nothing about that.
        prepend 2y ago
        It’s unfortunate you don’t want to discuss the merits of my argument. Not to give out advice, but if your aim isn’t to learn and debate and change minds and be changed, what’s your point? Do you just want to make noise or something? I would like to properly characterize the argument to understand all sides. Because I want more great software to exist in the world. My belief is that the way to do this is to have people create and share, of their own free will. And I want to learn if there’s a better way.
- samspenc 2y ago
  I'm not the GP, and I don't have a dog in this fight, but I think what they are complaining about is this sequence of events: - ElasticSearch was open-source - Amazon offered ElasticSearch open-source as a paid service - ElasticSearch was not happy about this and changed their license - Amazon forked ElasticSearch (the open-source version) and created OpenSearch based on that, continuing to serve OpenSearch - (Few years pass) - Amazon and ElasticSearch are now buddies I think GP is talking about the events that transpired a while back before Amazon and ElasticSearch made up.
  - ok_dad 2y ago
    What, when Amazon forked an open source project, as was allowed by the license, and continued to support that open source license even when the original company abandoned theirs? I’m not an Amazon fan, but they did the same thing (forking) that many others do, and they did it perfectly legally according to the license.
    - mx_03 2y ago
      Yes, doesnt Elasticsearch do the same thing with Lucene? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27793721/what-is-the-difference-between-lucene-and-elasticsearch https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27793721/what-is-the-dif... AWS just offered a convenience layer over ElasticSearch
    - CuriousCosmic 2y ago
      It's a bit more complicated than that because Elastic during all of this had some of the plugins in Amazon's OpenDistro (now OpenSearch) project recycling proprietary code from Elastic's commercial, source available codebase under OpenDistro's permissive Apache-2.0 license. https://www.elastic.co/blog/dear-search-guard-users-including-amazon-elasticsearch-service-open-distro-and-others https://www.elastic.co/blog/dear-search-guard-users-includin...
      - ok_dad 2y ago
        Your link specifically says Amazon didn’t steal the code, some German company did. I get it, Amazon is bad, I agree they are too, but not because they’re malicious, Amazon is bad because they’re too large to compete on level ground with anyone other than Google or Microsoft in the cloud. My peeve is with the companies like elastic that claim they are for open source but they try to prevent the open source from being used as such. It’s a scam to attract developers who care about open source. If I made code I wanted to be open source, I’d understand that means everyone can use it, like a public road or a public park. That includes big corps. At least Amazon actually supports the Apache licensed OpenSearch product! They don’t even go around acting all superior like those “open source” corps do about it.
- sanderjd 2y ago
  I think the word "using" here is doing a lot of work. When talking about an entire application, I think of "using" it as being, well, using the application. But what I think we're talking about here is "using" the application code by selling it as your own product. I recognize that "open source" is ok with that second way of "using" the code, but I do think it's meaningfully different.
cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
[dead]
bdcravens 2y ago
According to a quick search, there are 33M "users" of Linux (I suspect that number is way too low). Only 15k have contributed to the kernel. That's an "exploitation" rate of well over 99.9%.
- csdreamer7 2y ago
  > According to a quick search, there are 33M "users" of Linux (I suspect that number is way too low). Only 15k have contributed to the kernel. That's an "exploitation" rate of well over 99.9%. This is very misleading. There is a lot more code than just the kernel for the Linux operating system. If you ran the numbers for a default install of Ubuntu or RHEL that would be far more useful. The Linux kernel requires far deeper skills than a lot of user-and development so it is going to have fewer contributors per year on average. Source: I am a Linux kernel engineer.
  - bdcravens 2y ago
    You're right; that's just an example. Even if we included all components, and bumped that contributor number up to 1M, we're talking about 97% "exploitation". My point was that pretty much every open source project is almost entirely usage vs contribution and that claims of exploiting open source are a non sequitur.
mardifoufs 2y ago
Isn't elastic itself based on open source tech too? Is elastic exploiting java for example?
rty32 2y ago
Then why is Elastic opening sourcing their code again? No need to change any part of their business model if things are going perfectly well? Altruism?

dangus 2y ago

This is exactly it. They made the gigantic miscalculation that Amazon wouldn't win this battle. I can't believe they didn't predict that this exact outcome would happen: Amazon forks under a more permissive license and becomes the new standard instead of Elastic because the entire package (managed service from AWS + more permissive license) is a lower risk package to the average business.

jrochkind1 2y ago
I mean, if you actually can't believe they didn't predict this exact outcome, that means you believe that they DID predict it and this is what they intended/hoped to happen!
- dangus 2y ago
  I am certain you are familiar with this colloquialism, so I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.
  - jrochkind1 2y ago
    This is literally what we're talking about though -- Elastic Search claims they did predict it, and this outcome now was their hoped for plan all along. So I wasn't sure what you were trying to say, if you don't believe they didn't predict it... I guess you're actually saying that despite their claims otherwise, you don't believe they did predict it?
    - dangus 2y ago
      What I’m saying is that if they are claiming this is the outcome they wanted, they are lying. The truth that I think they are trying to hide is that they are losing adoption to their Amazon-backed competitor and that they will bleed more customers if they don’t go open source again. I think that when they made the original decision to change the license they thought their product had more pull than it really did. They thought customers would leave Amazon’s managed product for their “superior” product rather than Amazon’s “inferior” fork. They thought people wouldn’t trust Amazon to have the expertise to continue development. In reality what customers wanted was a managed solution from their cloud provider, they didn’t really care if it was Elastic or not. I totally understand that the situation was a pickle for Elastic in terms of being able to be a sustainable company and perhaps they had to do something. But the thing they did didn’t work, or else they would have stuck with it. In my experience companies that modify the licensing of their products or get bought by bad stewards like IBM (Hashicorp) or Progress (Chef Software) scare away the engineering managers who make purchase decisions.