> Nothing about the new ES license would've prevented me from using it for free in the previous places I've used it for free, as far as I can tell.
While true, personally I'd not be willing to contribute to such a project.
Of course, such a license would require legal blessing, which in itself is a lot of (paper) work. What if, the company decides to change the license in an year?
I think it’s significant in this case that most of the development of ES and the underlying engine is done by Elastic. This re-licensing is only of interest because it means most ongoing work on the project will now happen under the new license. If that was not the case nobody would care, the contributors could fork back to Apache 2.0 and continue. After all, the ElasticSearch license used up until 7.1 also allows me to fork the project under a new restrictive license, but nobody is likely to care if I did.
While true, personally I'd not be willing to contribute to such a project. Of course, such a license would require legal blessing, which in itself is a lot of (paper) work. What if, the company decides to change the license in an year?