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Open Source Businesses Cloud

Why AWS Is Forking Elasticsearch and Kibana (zdnet.com) 47

Posted by EditorDavid from the license-expired dept.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes at ZDNet: When Elastic, makers of the open-source search and analytic engine Elasticsearch, went after Amazon Web Services (AWS) by changing its license from the open-source Apache 2.0-license ALv2) to the non-open-source friendly Server Side Public License, I predicted "we'd soon see AWS-sponsored Elasticsearch and Kibana forks." The next day, AWS tweeted it "will launch new forks of both Elasticsearch and Kibana based on the latest Apache 2.0 licensed codebases." Well, that didn't take long!

In a blog post, AWS explained that since Elastic is no longer making its search and analytic engine Elasticsearch and its companion data visualization dashboard Kibana available as open source, AWS is taking action. "In order to ensure open source versions of both packages remain available and well supported, including in our own offerings, we are announcing today that AWS will step up to create and maintain an ALv2-licensed fork of open-source Elasticsearch and Kibana.... AWS brings years of experience working with these codebases, as well as making upstream code contributions to both Elasticsearch and Apache Lucene, the core search library that Elasticsearch is built on — with more than 230 Lucene contributions in 2020 alone... We're in this for the long haul, and will work in a way that fosters healthy and sustainable open source practices — including implementing shared project governance with a community of contributors..."

Yet another company, Logz.io, a cloud-monitoring company, and some partners have announced that it will launch a "true" open source distribution for Elasticsearch and Kibana.
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Why AWS Is Forking Elasticsearch and Kibana More

Why AWS Is Forking Elasticsearch and Kibana

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  • Not sure I see a problem here (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday January 23, 2021 @05:52PM (#60983522)

    That's how open source works, after all. The terms don't change just because a company is big, or because we don't like them.

    Although I suppose someone could write a "free as in beer... unless we don't like you" license.

    • It will be interesting to see how the separate products evolve. My impression is that AWS broke the spirit of open source in that you give back and support projects that you use, especially ones that you profit from.

      • Re:Not sure I see a problem here (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DRJlaw ( 946416 ) on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:35PM (#60983644)

        My impression is that AWS broke the spirit of open source in that you give back and support projects that you use, especially ones that you profit from.

        They broke the "spirit of open source" by doing what the Apache license specifically allows?

        Or did they break the "spirit of copyleft" despite Elastic's decision not to use the Affero GPL or standard GPL, but a non-copyleft license? I mean, you can hardly call copyleft the "spirit of open source" when licenses like the Apache license rejected the very spirit that you're claiming has been broken.

        Meanwhile, Elastic's broken the spirit of "open source" by making its code so insanely viral that it makes the scare theories concerning the GPL look downright reasonable. Have you actually read the SSPL? If you offer the Program as a service, you have to offer the Service Source Code. But the Service Source Code is not limited to the "open source" that you've licensed. Oohh no.

        "Service Source Code" means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software, all such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available.

        But yeah, blame AWS for this attempt to pry open their entire infrastructure because, allegedly, the didn't "give back and support projects" like this.

        • Causes don't come before effects (Score:4, Insightful)

          by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:56PM (#60983692) Journal

          The SSPL is part of Elastic's response to AWS actions, not the cause of it. A final part of their response after trying to get AWS to participate in the open source development didn't work.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Luthair ( 847766 )
            I feel like the real issue here is that VCs see the open source business model as viral user growth, but with all the benefits of closed source.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

            The SSPL is part of Elastic's response to AWS actions, not the cause of it. A final part of their response after trying to get AWS to participate in the open source development didn't work.

            Do tell how AWS was refusing to contribute code back to Elastic [techrepublic.com]. "Participate in the open source development" quickly became stop competing with our commercial services [geekwire.com].

            • It's always good to hear from you, brother.
              The second article was interesting.

              I will admit lately I've been talking to people employed by Elastic, and therefore hearing their side of the story.

        • My comment does not mention licensing at all. I didn't say anyone did anything wrong. I didn't say that I'm taking a side here. *My impression* is that there was a change of license because Elastic wasn't getting what it wanted, it needed enforcement over a Gentleman's Agreement.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by deKernel ( 65640 )

            If Elastic is not getting what they want then it is safe to say they screwed up and choose the wrong license. Unless you can show us all an email or IM conversation where AWS agreed to some terms that exceed the Apache license then your point about a Gentleman's Agreement is made up by you and a moot point . I see Elastic as the child trying to take their toys home from the sandbox because they are mad that another kid actually played with a toy that was designated as "free to play".

            • I see Elastic as the child trying to take their toys home from the sandbox because they are mad that another kid actually played with a toy that was designated as "free to play".

              More like, the issue is Amazon's "what's mine is mine and what's yours is ours" attitude. When you have a company doing the majority of development on a free project, like Elastic, they may at some point get fed up with all take and no give and address it with a dual license scheme where a big invested user like Amazon is welcome to continue their proprietary schemes, provided they pay for the proprietary license. Otherwise they have to (oh horrors) share their improvements back to the community, and they c

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by deKernel ( 65640 )

                Where exactly do you come up with Amazon is only taking and never gave back? They followed the exact license and actually gave back countless times and still Elastic was acting like a bunch of whiny ass kids who didn't get want the wanted and that is what you ask....they wanted a big-ass payday by AWS buying them, and they didn't. Heck, I am guessing AWS made a very good decision by not buying them because Elastic has just shown they aren't worth the $0.02. Now regarding your comment about Amazon acting lik

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by Deaddy ( 1090107 )

                So you are worried that Amazon will abandon their open elasticsearch and kibana forks just as elastic.co abandonend their open branches?

        • They broke the spirit because the licenses predated the idea of returning to all software running in the cloud with only the results being returned to people. As far as I can tell, the only functional difference is the new license merely requires that if you distribute or host the binaries, you have to make the source public.

      • It will be interesting to see how the separate products evolve.

        It could well go like OpenOffice and LibreOffice. Amazon presses on bravely, emplying all the usual corporate mismanagement tools at its disposal, and the community gets back to actually caring about their code, secure in the knowledge that nobody is going to take the fruits of their labour private.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        It will be interesting to see how the separate products evolve. My impression is that AWS broke the spirit of open source in that you give back and support projects that you use, especially ones that you profit from.

        Your impression is just simply wrong.
        It's not interesting, it's just obvious, how the products will evolve.

        Elastic tried to gain mindshare of its users and code contributors by claiming their software has an open source license.
        They up and changed that license to a closed one, no longer giving back to all those that contributed to their code, and no longer offering the software others helped make.

        They are now positioned to take that work freely given to them, and turn around to sell it at a profit. Includi

  • That's pretty much Amazon's business model. That something with a non-restrictive license. Make it a "new product" on AWS... profit!

    • Why not? I mean there are good ways to nitpick at Amazon but this doesn't seem like one. If you build software into your platform and provide services on how to use it, such as documentation or consulting, then what's wrong with profiting for this? This seems fair because what's being provided as a service and ultimately the "ease of use" from the packaging.

      What I don't like is when companies claim to be "open source", hide and bury their repositories, have virtually zero contributors that aren't employees,

  • Logz.io partnering with AWS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nadass ( 3963991 ) on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:13PM (#60983586)
    The Logz.io team made an additional blog post regarding the response they received from others, including AWS. The outcome is that Logz.io is actually partnering with AWS on the Elasticsearch and Kibana forks.

  • So, did Elastic have one of those odious copyright assignment terms for contributing code?

    If not, then re-licensing the code of other contributors is violating their copyrights.

    If they did, then this is yet another example of why copyright assignment is a bad idea.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      Any company, or foundation running an open source project is going to have contributors sign a CLA, I can't imagine anyone at this point would be that clueless at this point.

      • Anyone who hands out his code to a company to sell closed source is clueless unless it's for networking purposes and fishing for a job, I can't imagine anyone contributing code to those projects for any other purpose. If it's a no profit with a charter which would make it almost impossible for them to take your contribution closed source, okay.

        Otherwise just work on something actually open source, like Linux, or fork it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luthair ( 847766 )
          This isn't a corporate construct, the large foundations also require you to sign a CLA, if you want to maintain your downstream patch forever go ahead.

    • As long as they make private additions that only run in their cloud, they're fine without the copyright assignment. Essentially, they'd be doing what they're complaining Amazon is doing, but that we all know is allowed: run customized open source software on your own servers without releasing your changes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jeremyp ( 130771 )

        Parent is talking about Elastic, not Amazon. If the contributors to their code base did not assign copyright to them, they can't switch from Apache 2 to some other licence without obtaining the permission of all the contributors.

    • Elastic basically all ignore all pull requests. Go see for yourself it takes months before they ever even look at a PR and by then of course there are merge conflicts and gets nothewere n the end.

  • How does this license change impact things like security onion? As far as turnkey goes it is pretty good, not sure how changing the licensing underneath a big part of it would impact things.

  • Never understood why anyone would use ElasticS, there are so many bugs it not funny, and they refuse or dont care about contributions to fix those bugs. Except for the JSON end points theres basically no point to using ES in the end.
  • I thought that Elastic Search is based on Apache Lucene. If that is the case, it seems like Elastic Search is the one who is "monetizing" an open source project in the first place. Not a bad thing at all - but it weakens their position of complaining about AWS doing that.

  • Original devs move to new cloud hostile license - cloud provider forks last non-cloud hostile licensed version while respecting previous license.

    AWS haven't done anything wrong (what they were doing was permitted by the previous license) and instead of breaching the new license, they forked - which is the right thing to do. Or are they meant to be automatically hated because they're a megacorp like MS, Google, etc?

  • When you open source your code, you give up the right to control how it is used or how it will be licensed in the future. That is the nature of the beast. Anyone can simply fork the project at any time and take it a different direction. If you want to change the terms of the license, then anyone can take all the code you have released up to that point and come up with their own terms. If you have a problem with any of that, then don't release your code to open source.

    • When you open source your code, you give up the right to control how it is used or how it will be licensed in the future.

      No you don't! When you release open-sourced code, that code remains bound to its license for the duration of the copyright's term. The license may allow a fork of the code to be released under a different license as well, but that is certainly not the case with all open-source licenses, and the existence of that fork does not change the licensing terms of the originating project.

  • Quote from a blog post I wrote recently:

    The key to making money with FOSS is to make software a commoditized complement [gwern.net] of other, more profitable services. Examples of such services include selling support, customization, consulting, training, managed hosting, hardware, and certifications. Plenty of companies use this approach instead of building proprietary software: Red Hat, Collabora, System76, Purism, Canonical, SUSE, Hashicorp, Databricks, and Gradle are some names that come to mind.

    Managed hosting is

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