> companies are formed, invest a whole lot of resources into creating a product, open-source it, and then have Amazon eat into their profits by just installing and maintaining that product as a service?
Why should we be mad at Amazon for adhering to the terms of the license that the ES developers chose?
Software isn't born under the terms of Apache 2/MIT/BSD/a similarly permissive license. The people who developed it chose that license.
Because while it's true that Amazon is following the terms of the license, it's having real repercussions in that the people actually maintaining the Software are seeing decreased ability to grow the product because a huge company, belonging to the second richest man in the world, is offering it as part of their vertically-integrated oligopoly.
Reducing it to an issue of following license terms is short sighted, it's having negative repercussions on the software ecosystem and it's a dimension that has to be considered beyond merely a discussion on copyleft and the extent of it.
> Reducing it to an issue of following license terms is short sighted
It's really not: the license terms are the root of the problem you are pointing out. We can either voice our (righteous, but ultimately pointless) anger or we can try to analyze what's happening and how to fix it. So let's do the latter.
Amazon offers a fully managed ElasticSearch service running on the core ES code because ElasticSearch was, up to this point, released under the Apache 2.0 license which fully supports Amazon's right to do this.
Amazon offers a fully managed MongoDB compatible database called DocumentDB. It is not based on MongoDB – Amazon reimplemented the core functionality but maintained the MongoDB API layer.
MongoDB Inc. makes the forceful point that it is not a drop in replacement[1] but a rather crippled product that lags behind what MongoDB can do and continues to diverge. This is likely very good marketing for MongoDB and probably helps their company succeed :)
Why did Amazon do this? Why would Amazon use the core ES code but go through a more difficult reimplementation for Mongo?
Because MongoDB's core was licensed under the terms of the AGPL3, but all the drivers that implemented the API functionality were implemented under terms of the Apache 2.0 license.
> the people actually maintaining the Software are seeing decreased ability to grow the product because a huge company, belonging to the second richest man in the world, is offering it as part of their vertically-integrated oligopoly.
When you choose an OSS license, you're giving permission to any company or person to exploit your product in any way they want, this is how OSS works.
Amazon is not the only one that can do this and I would be surprised if other cloud vendors didn't also offer ES and other popular OSS software to their customers.
Do you expect that just because you created some OSS you deserve some kind of exclusivity on profits made from it?? If you do, you need to understand you need to use a non-OSS license. This seems to be what Elastic has finally realised, but a bit late.
Yes but that's what I'm talking about. That's a core principle in OSS so far but you can't sweep the issues of fairness to the people doing the actual work nor the issue of contributing to increasing the power of organizations whose interests are more likely counter to people's freedom and welfare.
I know that prominent figures in FOSS have expressed the sentiment that you have to suck it up, but you know, the people actually living through this have a say.
Thus, licensing changes and a conversation on their moral standing.
You cannot release your software under the terms of a permissive license, then when faced with a large company following the terms of the license, complain that you should get first crack at monetization.
That seems to be the fundamental problem with this whole tempest in a teapot: people have decided on an idea of what "free software" means in their hearts, and many people think it's about "fairness" and "protecting the little guy". That is noble and good, but isn't extensible to an existing large body of software with licenses that clearly spell out how free they are or are not.
But what is great is that if you don't like the state of affairs you don't have to suck it up: you just have to pick a license that is better suited to your goals.
I have a handful of open source projects on my public Github. They fall into two categories for me:
* Software that is trivial, uninteresting, or easy to replicate: these I've released under the terms of the ISC license (2-clause BSD). I have no expectation it will ever come to much, so I'm happy to free it – if it ever turns up in the license file of the iPhone or a Tesla or something I'll say "cool!" (but it won't because it's not that good ;)) Hopefully someone uses it and it makes their life easier.
* Software that is non-trivial, interesting, or difficult to replicate: I've freed it all under the terms of the AGPLv3 and placed a "business use? contact me about the license" note at the top. If I ever decided to work towards building a product around the software (but I won't because it's not that good ;)) I'd look at a dual-licensing strategy, but in the meantime it's out there for anyone to extend and carry forward and build things on. But I know that the AGPLv3 essentially means FAANG will never touch it because the risk is disproportionate for the reward of using it.
This feels right to me. Your calculus may be different so you can license as you'd wish.
> Why should we be mad at Amazon for adhering to the terms of the license that the ES developers chose?
We shouldn't. But you can't have your cake and eat it too, and say "well these are the terms you chose so why be mad at someone following them" and then ALSO say "hey, you can't change your terms!".
They're their terms, they can change them if they want to.
> But you can't have your cake and eat it too, and say "well these are the terms you chose so why be mad at someone following them" and then ALSO say "hey, you can't change your terms!".
I haven't said that. And as far as I know, Amazon hasn't either. Have I missed something from them?
You seem to be the only person passing value judgements:
> Amazon hinders that, period. I don't think Elastic is in the wrong here, I think Amazon is.
This is incorrect: Amazon used Elastic per terms of the license. Elastic didn't care for an infringement on their business, so they've relicensed. No one is in the wrong here.
> I haven't said that. And as far as I know, Amazon hasn't either. Have I missed something from them?
I'm talking about the general sentiment here. Either Amazon have been playing by the rules and Elastic is within their rights to change those rules, so no problem anywhere, or Amazon has been harming a part of the OSS ecosystem and forced Elastic to make an unpopular change.
> Amazon used Elastic per terms of the license
Maybe I shouldn't have used "in the wrong" and said "is the problem" instead. I don't so much care about whether the rules are being followed as I care that more companies are encouraged to release their software as OSS because they can make money for it. That's a win-win situation to me.
> I care that more companies are encouraged to release their software as OSS because they can make money for it.
But they can't! Tell me how many companies make profit off purely OSS... RedHat maybe? What else?
And even if they can, they shouldn't be surprised when competitors use their OSS for their own benefit because OSS explicitly allows for that. Making money off OSS is a red herring, just because it works in a couple isolated cases, doesn't mean it's a viable business strategy.
Fundamentally, there's no "profit" to be made in OSS, nor public goods in general. If you try to charge for more than "at cost", someone else can and will come along and undercut you.
Why the scare quotes? Well, I don't mean all profit according to definition, but specifically the "returns for investors" type. Company profits. Technically you can run a sole proprietorship, and make (say) $100k in profit.. or you could structure as a corporation, pay yourself a $100k salary, and make no profit. It's all the same money, but it's two ways of looking at the portion that I would like to describe as fair compensation to a human for the work they do. When I say "at cost", I don't mean that it's fundamentally impossible to make a living working on OSS; I mean it's fundamentally impossible to get filthy rich with it.
And in my opinion that's a good thing. In my experience, "getting filthy rich" / providing outsized returns to investors almost always comes at someone else's expense. Usually the little guy. It happens when the poor sod paying you can't afford to switch to a competitor, so you're able to wring them dry. The counter-argument goes that we need the "filthy rich" incentive to motivate people to make these things. I think it likely increases the rate of innovation, but I think the amount of cool and useful OSS written by people in their spare time is evidence enough that profit is not a requirement in that area, only financial security.
There is a problem, though, where it's currently very difficult to even make a living wage working on OSS (again, or public goods in general). I think can be solved, and I am working on a project trying to solve this (as a volunteer; we could use help). I'll cut it here (I spent far too much time writing this comment already...), but you can read more at https://wiki.snowdrift.coop
Well past the edit window now, but I discussed this with someone else yesterday and they pointed out the word I'm looking for to describe "at cost, including cost of living", non-exploitative part of income is earnings.
The main problem is not Amazon using the Elasticsearch product, but using the Elasticsearch trademark without permission, even creating a fork with that trademark in it. That is not OK.
And then doing stuff like this:
> When Amazon announced their Open Distro for Elasticsearch fork, they used code that we believe was copied by a third party from our commercial code and provided it as part of the Open Distro project.
That makes it all the more dodgy. The fact that AWS is also the only cloud provider they complain about, and explicitly name others where they don't have these issues with, paints a pretty clear picture imho...
Why should we be mad at Amazon for adhering to the terms of the license that the ES developers chose?
Software isn't born under the terms of Apache 2/MIT/BSD/a similarly permissive license. The people who developed it chose that license.