The author says in the end that the problem is not Amazon. Then links to a post where he suggests that companies maintaining the open source should have "invested the resources to build stronger communities around them. They would have reached out to Amazon, encouraged them to contribute back to the projects, and helped them to do so."
Of course, they should "encourage" Amazon not to steal their product and business model. Right.
I highly doubt elastic intended to offer it for free to the cloud providers from the start. They wanted to offer it for free to end users. This is why I expect new products will now start with these more restrictive licenses.
Everyone wants to open source their code until someone else makes a billion dollars of it. Everyone wants censorship resistant end to end encryption until terrorists use it. Everyone wants software patents to not exist until they get issued a really good one.
This is a classic case of trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
Edit: I want e2e encryption but not censorship resistant, not when it starts getting used for inciting to violence. Search for eg "WhatsApp lynch mobs" or "Facebook Myanmar genocide".
Here's a way to build true e2e encryption apps that can be, to some extent, censored:
NLP locally in the phone -- an AI that slightly understand what the user writes -- and if it's (I'm oversimplifying) like "kill all ...", then the AI bricks the phone.
I highly doubt anybody chooses an explicitly free and open source license without intending to offer their software to users under the terms of that license.
And to flip it around, the question isn't whether Elastic envisioned use case X. The whole meaning behind FOSS is that you're explicitly saying "I don't care what your use case is, you're free to use it".
So to later turn around and say "hey we never envisioned Amazon et all turning around and selling Elasticsearch as a service" is looking at it backwards. When you release something under Apache 2 (or a similar non-restrictive license) you're intentionally telling people to do what they want with it.
Anyway, my thoughts on these kinds of situations is that it usually implies there's some disconnect between how Elastic Co wants to make money versus how they actually are making money.
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There's a related issue of open source maintainers/devs feeling "exploited". Now while having users submitting issues with unfortunate tone/wording that implies that you're obligated as the maintainer to spend your time fixing their issues is frustrating, it's also part of the game. I'm getting really frustrated with the whole "it's not fair that company X is using my free software without contributing back". That's literally what you agreed to have happen when you released under a non-restrictive license!
If you want a restrictive license, that's fine, but don't release under Apache 2 or BSD and then turn around and act shocked when people use your free software for free. It is unreasonable to put something out there for free and then suddenly expect money for it. That doesn't mean that companies shouldn't be contributing back to software they rely on - that's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned - but it does mean that nobody should be surprised when someone does choose to "consume" software without contributing back.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. Thinking "is this software going to be resold by Amazon" is not high up on the priority list for someone who is just working on a hobby project/releasing that project under a permissive license. Sure, this is a non problem for 99.99+% of the population and it's a relatively new "problem", but it's fair to retroactively change the license because it's within their rights.
Important to note though that they are not retroactively changing anything. The license for old code was and remains Apache and can be used under those terms.
Elastic are of course entirely entitled to change the license to whatever they feel like, including closing the source entirely for future development. But they made the choice at an earlier stage to release the code under a permissive licence - that was a choice to allow others to do what they want with the software, not just “what you want so long as it doesn’t infringe on our business model”. They are free to change their mind on that, but it’s not like it’s an unexpected, unfair, or unpredictable outcome.
It's only a "problem" for the 0.001-% who choose to view it that way. There's decades worth of large/serious/complex open source projects that have totally been monetised by other companies without the founders/maintainers feeling ripped off and butthurt about it.
Linux, GNU, Apache, Perl, Python, PHP, Rails, WordPress, and many many more projects at least as important and complex as Elasticsearch. We don't hear Linus or Stallman, or Larry or Guido or Rasmus or DHH or Mullenweg complaining about hosting companies profiting off their work.
I get that newer projects are structured differently, and that companies like Redis Labs and Mongo and Elastic are paying salaries to engineers to develop their software - which is _way_ different to the examples I cited above. But just because they've chosen that, doesn't mean they're "right" or entitled to succeed working that way. The optimist in me hopes some of them will, and perhaps this will be a route to the world getting "open source" software written that the old Apache project's model perhaps could never have achieved. I certainly don't think that's a given though.
The pessimist in me feels bait-n-switched, and is wondering how to plan on staying on 7.10 safely and keeping an eye out to see who's gonna fork it and at least keep up security work on it under Apache 2.0 moving forward. We don't "sell Elasticsearch as a service", but we use it enough that I don't want to ask for legal budget to mitigate the risk of upgrading away from the Apache 2.0 licensed version. I don't trust SSPL enough to want use anything licensed that way, and I doubt I'll be very happy with Elastic License either if I spend enough time to read/understand it properly...
> staying on 7.10 safely and keeping an eye out to see who's gonna fork it and at least keep up security work on it under Apache 2.0 moving forward
I wonder how many companies would be willing to pay $100 a month for their elastic search to continue to receive security updates... in theory the right individual could make a decent living simply forking the various OSS projects that have since gone noSS, applying security fixes, and collecting money from the companies build on them.
Almost all the examples you give are GPL. That is the only license that protects the freedom of your software. Any 'permissive' license can be converted to 'private'. Too bad nobody really understood that for the past 20 years.
They are welcome to do that if they feel that way. But it's not theft for people to use software under the terms of the license you offer it to them under, and it's a fucking stupid accusation to make.
Of course, they should "encourage" Amazon not to steal their product and business model. Right.