So what's with the whole Elastic open source licenses thing. Seems like a spat btwn then and Amazon?

https://elastic.co/blog/...

Amazon now argues that doing this means Elasticsearch and Kibana will no longer be open sourced and that the Elastic License limits how the code can be used while the Server Side Public License makes it unacceptable to the open-source community.

Elastic just reacts to Amazon being greedy...and Amazon reacts to Elastic by being even more greedy.

"Stepping up for a truly profitable Elasticsearch"

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/...

@lamka02sk but is Elastic more greedy. The problem is both sides blame each other.

And I'm not sure what the license change really does...

@donuts Elastic isn't really greedy in this situation. The licence changes basically only one thing. If you sell (they mention SaaS) modified version of it (like Amazon does), you have to support the upstream project. The thing is that only a few companies do this and these companies are far from poor, so they won't be really affected if they either pay or contribute a little to help the original project. Or will Amazon become poor if they do it?

I mean, AWS said it clearly. They don't give a fuck about the Elastic itself. If it was about to die, they just fork it instead of helping.

@lamka02sk oh just realized, I read your first reply as "reacts to Elastic being more greedy"

@lamka02sk No.
If you do not accept what open source means (others can make money with it without letting you participate), one should not make a project open source in the first place, especially not promising to never change it this but later claim "the circumstances have changed".

Remember that Elastic has a gross revenue of a half billion dollars each year.

@sbiewald ok so what's the difference between these 2 licenses? Why is Amazon making a huge fuss about it?

@sbiewald Open source doesn't mean it is free. The source code is and will still be open.

@sbiewald Also half billion in revenue is not that much for a company of their size. They have more than 1000 employees and the infrastructure is probably not cheap either.

@sbiewald No. Just... no. Any source code, even when publicly available on GitHub, is a property of its authors and can't be used unless explicitly allowed by a licence or author's consent. Only when its licence meets certain conditions it's considered open source.

In case of Elasticsearch, only core functionality is licenced under Apache licence, while extensions like authentication, access roles, monitoring, etc. has always been licenced under proprietary source-available licence from Elastic.

@donuts Apache and SSPL?

Apache: Mostly do what you want.

SSPL: Please open source everything you have if you want to offer Elastic search as a service.

The SSPL effectively means Amazon would have to open source AWS.

@lamka02sk @hitko I thought it was clear from the context I meant Free/Libre Open Source (FLOSS) not just "source availability". Sigh.

@sbiewald so SSPL, if you want to use this, every other program you write needs to be open source? Even if it is not based on the code the SSPL covers?

Feels like Elastic just killed itself. All enterprise customers would jump...

@sbiewald how can you have open source that's not free though? If you have the source code it means you can compile and run it?

@lamka02sk I know elastic has and had a win margin of -10% (in other terms: _they loose money_) for years. Nonetheless, they call it a "strong result" again and again...

Please don't get me wrong, I don't defend Amazon here, but I rather want to state Elastic doesn't play fair either.

@donuts The ability to compile does not mean the permission to use however you want. This is a misconception about open source sites like GitHub.

Look at pfSense. They are not open source and yet their code is on GitHub.

@donuts For the first question: Only if you provide Elastic Search (or the whole ELK stack) as a service for third party, the license restrictions are in effect.
For your own use (commercial) use you are (still) fine.

Independently there is still the Elastic Search License which grands you more rights, but without the right of modification (IMHO, please check for yourself).

About available source and "freedom": Unity (the game engine) provides its source for debugging purposes, but to use Unity you still have to pay a license.
Microsoft offers the same for Windows, but only for large companies.

@sbiewald Does windows really provide source for debugging? TIL

@sbiewald so it's sorta like pirating...

If your not caught downloading it. It's still illegal to distribute and you will be persecuted when they catch you and have evidence to prove it?

@junon I think so when developing drivers as a larger company.

@donuts It is illegal as soon you contradict their license. If there is none, the laws apply (in essence that means pirating).