ElasticSearch Keeps Fighting Open Source Fork by Amazon AWS (amazon.com) 161
In January ElasticSearch made what it calls "an incredibly hard decision" — to change the licensing on its scalable data-search solution. They called this an effort to "stand up to" Amazon's AWS for offering ElasticSearch functionality as a service "without collaborating with us... after years of what we believe to be Amazon/AWS misleading and confusing the community." Amazon then forked ElasticSearch, releasing a new "OpenSearch" product under the original Apache 2.0 licensing. Last month AWS's fork reached General Availability/1.0 status.
Now Mike Melanson's "This Week in Programming" column reports that ElasticSearch is "making further attempts at closing off access to ElasticSearch and shutting out AWS — while AWS is fighting back: AWS says that "OpenSearch aims to provide wire compatibility with open source distributions of Elasticsearch 7.10.2, the software from which it was derived," making it easy to migrate to OpenSearch. While Elastic can't do anything about that, they can make changes to some open source client libraries that are commonly used. "Over the past few weeks, Elastic added new logic to several of these clients that rejects connections to OpenSearch clusters or to clusters running open source distributions of Elasticsearch 7, even those provided by Elastic themselves," AWS writes. "While the client libraries remain open source, they now only let applications connect to Elastic's commercial offerings..."
AWS is again coming out as the savior of open source in this scenario, it would seem, this time promising to offer "a set of new open source clients that make it easy to connect applications to any OpenSearch or Elasticsearch cluster" that "will be derived from the last compatible versions of corresponding Elastic-maintained clients before product checks were added."
"In the spirit of openness and interoperability, we will make reasonable efforts to maintain compatibility with all Elasticsearch distributions, even those produced by Elastic," they write. In the meantime, while the OpenSearch community works on creating the replacement libraries, AWS recommends that users do not update to the latest version of any Elastic-maintained clients, lest their applications potentially cease functioning.
"It's disappointing to see this," reads a comment (upvoted 35 times) on the ElasticSearch repository announcing the change in late June. "You're forcing us as bystanders in a battle to choose sides." And Amazon responded with its own take on the situation in their AWS press release this week. "Our experience at AWS is that developers find it painful to update their already-deployed applications to use new versions of server software, so backward compatibility for clients and APIs weighs heavily in our designs..."
The press release also calls ElasticSearch's changes "disruptive," adding "The most broadly adopted open source projects generally emphasize flexibility, inclusion, and avoidance of lock-in..."
Now Mike Melanson's "This Week in Programming" column reports that ElasticSearch is "making further attempts at closing off access to ElasticSearch and shutting out AWS — while AWS is fighting back: AWS says that "OpenSearch aims to provide wire compatibility with open source distributions of Elasticsearch 7.10.2, the software from which it was derived," making it easy to migrate to OpenSearch. While Elastic can't do anything about that, they can make changes to some open source client libraries that are commonly used. "Over the past few weeks, Elastic added new logic to several of these clients that rejects connections to OpenSearch clusters or to clusters running open source distributions of Elasticsearch 7, even those provided by Elastic themselves," AWS writes. "While the client libraries remain open source, they now only let applications connect to Elastic's commercial offerings..."
AWS is again coming out as the savior of open source in this scenario, it would seem, this time promising to offer "a set of new open source clients that make it easy to connect applications to any OpenSearch or Elasticsearch cluster" that "will be derived from the last compatible versions of corresponding Elastic-maintained clients before product checks were added."
"In the spirit of openness and interoperability, we will make reasonable efforts to maintain compatibility with all Elasticsearch distributions, even those produced by Elastic," they write. In the meantime, while the OpenSearch community works on creating the replacement libraries, AWS recommends that users do not update to the latest version of any Elastic-maintained clients, lest their applications potentially cease functioning.
"It's disappointing to see this," reads a comment (upvoted 35 times) on the ElasticSearch repository announcing the change in late June. "You're forcing us as bystanders in a battle to choose sides." And Amazon responded with its own take on the situation in their AWS press release this week. "Our experience at AWS is that developers find it painful to update their already-deployed applications to use new versions of server software, so backward compatibility for clients and APIs weighs heavily in our designs..."
The press release also calls ElasticSearch's changes "disruptive," adding "The most broadly adopted open source projects generally emphasize flexibility, inclusion, and avoidance of lock-in..."
You have chocolate in my peanut butter. (Score:3)
Ah for the days when open-source didn't have politics.
Re:You have chocolate in my peanut butter. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure.
When was that again?
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Pre-sabotage the competition days.
Re:You have chocolate in my peanut butter. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are either looking at the past with rose colored glasses, or too young to remember the past.
Miguel+Mono vs GNOME?
GNOME vs GTK?
GTK vs QT?
OpenOffice vs LibreOffice?
IBM+Linux vs SCO?
Open source has always had politics, and always had various aspects of "us vs. them"
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Emacs vs xEmacs (or LucidEmacs), back in the late 70s or early 80s.
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Why, in the years B.S., of course . . . before Stallman . . .
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there was no "open source" before Stallman ... yes you could look to the source and even change it ... but then finding either that you could not distribute it or get your own code merged in some commercial unix (with bugs) and unable to update it and even being forced to pay for using it. There were no politics, few licenses but then commercial companies started to limit the established freedom with laws, money, licenses and that sparked the free software movement (and later the open source movement)
If yo
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When [was Open Source not political] again?
I think it was between the announcement of the words "open" and "source". During the few milliseconds between those two words, there was no politicking.
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Ah for the days when open-source didn't have politics.
"Open Source" was a specifically political organisation and ESR, in founding the OSI, had very political aims in coming up with it, specifically wanting to push far right / libertarian (but at least probably not fascist) politics. This was in reaction to a feeling that, whist the Free Software Foundation is explicitly capitalist [gnu.org] and pretty clearly partly liberatarian [gnu.org], it wasn't far right enough for ESR.
Other founders may have had other ideas, however that is quite likely why they were forced out later.
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The way I remember it, the Open Source Initiative was created as a way for us to be able to us Linux and other DFSG-free software at work. Microsoft had been telling people that Linux is a cancer ( https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com] ), implying that running anything on Linux would render it subject to the GPL.
The Open Source name also helped frame the market for companies like Red Hat with Enterprise Linux offerings. UNIX also had source code available and was licensed with support contracts available for
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The way I remember it, the Open Source Initiative was created as a way for us to be able to us Linux and other DFSG-free software at work. Microsoft had been telling people that Linux is a cancer ( https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com] ), implying that running anything on Linux would render it subject to the GPL.
Note that your history is the wrong way round. The OSI was already formed in 1998, your Balmer campaign comes from 2001. SCO group started their claims in 2003. In my work Linux was already in use by 1998 also. In fact it's more likely the other way around; the formation of the OSI was one of the triggers for Microsoft to take Linux seriously and start their campaign against it. It's not a coincidence that the Halloween Documents [wikipedia.org] were leaked to ESR who was a co-founder of the OSI.
Re:You have chocolate in my peanut butter. (Score:4, Insightful)
Open Source doesn't have "politics," Amazon is using Apache 2 license correctly, these people are whining that they didn't get to play politics, and now they're wishing they could force somebody to collaborate with them. But they can't.
This type of situation is the purpose of the Apache 2 license; the source has already been given away, nobody even has to tell you they're using it, nobody has to collaborate with anybody. They have the source, and it is open.
Whining loudly doesn't mean there is politics. Here, it means somebody wishes there was politics. But there isn't, because license. They don't matter. Nobody has power over anybody else in this situation. Having people in charge of things is a necessary precondition for "politics."
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Ah for the days when open-source didn't have politics.
Ha ha, you made me laugh.
The last time open-source "didn't have politics" was sometime in the early 1940s.
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"early 1940s" is indeed accurate. Turing had this to say in 1947 which I think was more prescient than his overrated "Turing test" (which he actually proposed as a thought-exercise, not a goal).
"As time goes on the [computer] itself will take over the functions both of [programmers] and of [users]â¦The [programmers] are liable to get replaced because as soon as any technique becomes at all stereotyped it becomes possible to devise a system of instruction tables which will enable the electronic com
That's how open source is supposed to work (Score:5, Insightful)
That's how open source is supposed to work, it's great if you can open source your project, but make sure you are perfectly fine with it and have some monetization scheme that you are comfortable with, as after you release it with a flexible license, it is mostly out of your hands.
When your project becomes big partly because people who make money off of it use it, you can't start going back and closing it off. I mean you *can*, it's your choice, just don't expect others to applaud you or not fork your stuff to ensure interoperability.
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Audacity comes to mind.
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Audacity comes to mind.
Exactly, I can't believe the audacity of ElasticSearch to break backwards compatibility!
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Re:That's how open source is supposed to work (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon is the one upholding the open source cause with Opensearch. Elastic is the one distributing software under something that can't even be classified as an open source license.
If Elastic wanted the license to Elasticsearch to cover "AWS open sourcing all the stuff that they are using to run elastic on their cloud," choosing the Apache license version 2.0 was certainly the wrong way to do it. Hell, choosing the GNU Affero license would have been the wrong way to do it.
"This is about basic fairness."
Basic fairness is that you make intelligent choices and live with the consequences of them. Elastic wanted to be an open source-based company. Then Elastic decided that it wanted to be a commercial software company with a PR buff, because that was more profitable. Now it's attempting to do that with Apache-licensed client software where its software checks can simply be stripped-out. Look forward to a subsequent round of non-open-source behavior quite soon.
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Amazon is the one upholding the open source cause with Opensearch.
The SSPL is an Open Source License, even though the politics of the OSI mean that they lie and pretend it isn't. Amazon saw Elastic move to protect their open source status by switching to the SSPL which would have blocked Amazon from keeping parts of their code proprietary and that is why they forked. This has nothing to do with "upholding the open source cause" except for the very limited part of that which serves Amazon's interests.
Elastic is the one distributing software under something that can't even be classified as an open source license.
If Elastic wanted the license to Elasticsearch to cover "AWS open sourcing all the stuff that they are using to run elastic on their cloud," choosing the Apache license version 2.0 was certainly the wrong way to do it. Hell, choosing the GNU Affero license would have been the wrong way to do it.
In fundamentals I agree. Nobody should chose the Apache license for re
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The SSPL is a silly bit of theatre.
Re:That's how open source is supposed to work (Score:4, Insightful)
The SSPL is not even close to being an open source license, and the OSI isn't lying about a thing. You cannot discriminate based upon how the software is used in an open source license. OSI definition rule 6 [opensource.org]. It's been that way for years. GNU freedom zero [gnu.org]. It's been that way for decades.
OpenSearch is not proprietary in the least. You're complaining that Amazon isn't releasing other code that isn't even a derivate work of OpenSearch. That's a degree of virality that exceeds even GNU's philosophy, even with respect to the Affero GPL. Sorry, but open source is not a pry bar for liberating proprietary programs from the evils of commerciality.
Amazon did that.
Not something that is asked of 99% of open source users.
Who has no problems violating rule 6 or freedom zero, apparently...
You cannot. You cannot do what Amazon does, and provide commercial hosting services for others. The fact that you don't want to doesn't negate that you cannot.
Oh, just wait for the Client Side Public License, which will forbid you from removing the checks unless you distribute the source code to all of the software running on the same CPU. It'll come... soon enough.
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I apologise, but I'll rearrange a bit for clarity
You cannot. You cannot do what Amazon does, and provide commercial hosting services for others. The fact that you don't want to doesn't negate that you cannot.
This is the lie. You absolutely can use the software for that. You to have to make the source code available, it's true, and that is quite onerous since it includes support software also, however there is nothing in the SSPL which stops you from providing a commercial hosting service like Amazon does as long as you provide back the source code in just the same way as the GPLv2 works if you want to "use" the code for software development and then have to prov
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But
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But nobody does that, now do they. And Open Source licenses do not allow you do require that, now do they.
That may be the OSI's new definition of Open Source that they came up with since they decided they are offended by the SSPL. However that's in no way the original definition of Open Source which preceded the formation of the OSI. Open Source is a very vague term which just means that you have access to and can work on the source. The OSI was an attempt to put a definition on top of that, but unfortunately got wound up on "libertarian" anti-freedom politics and so is, in no way a legitimate authority in th
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Version 1.9, last modified, 2007-03-22 [opensource.org]
The SSPL came out in 2018. Your temporal causality is reversed by more than a decade.
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Goliath was just trying to defend the poor Israelites and then David came along and started bullying him!
Or, if you need something more contemporary: Trump was just trying to stand up for women's rights, and the oppressed and harassed women like Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Kathy Shelton, while that awful Hillary was running her misogynistic campaign of terror, and trying to keep women down!
Or, if you know the
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One distributes the same package under an Apache 2.0 license (Amazon), one distributes the package under a non-free, non-OSI license (Elastic).
I really don't care whether you want to treat Elastic as being the underdog or not. They're not upholding open source.
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Amazon is the one upholding the open source cause with Opensearch
They are legally upholding the license, but they have also been extreme jerks about it. They used Elastic's source code, modified it, and didn't give back their modifications. Of course, Elastic should have used a different license if they wanted to force Amazon to give back, and they have since switched to a different license that would require that.
So while Amazon is technically following the law, they are still assholes.
Unless they distribute the code outside of Amazon they are within the original license terms. Elastic doesn't like it because it is a big company doing it, but they agreed to allow that when they started the project.
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Wow, it's like you completely ignored what I wrote.
Well, I guess I should have added "which doesn't make them assholes." to the end of my sentence.
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Following the license doesn't mean you aren't an asshole. Obviously. Why are you even disagreeing with this?
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Following the license doesn't mean you aren't an asshole. Obviously. Why are you even disagreeing with this?
It's pretty simple. Elasticsearch offered a deal based on a specific license. The license wasn't something they came up with and thus may need clarification or further discussion as it became clear some situations arose that weren't properly covered; rather it was a well known license that has a history of how it has been used by companies and individuals.
This is not like the cases where a company uses OSS, modifies it and uses it to run a physical device they sell and refuse to provide the source, or cla
Re:That's how open source is supposed to work (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon is the one upholding the open source cause with Opensearch
They are legally upholding the license, but they have also been extreme jerks about it. They used Elastic's source code, modified it, and didn't give back their modifications.
That's not being a jerk, that's called using the Apache 2 license the way it was intended.
Giving people permission, and then calling them names when they do what was agreed, that's being a huge jerk. And you're being a jerk too. You're old enough to figure out what permission means, and who gave it, and if it is normal to add conditions after the fact. Grow up, old man.
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Nobody cares, nobody is doing that. Almost all new code is Apache 2 or BSD/MIT licensed.
Nobody is asking you to be smart enough to understand that.
Nobody is asking you to say anything intelligent.
But also, nobody cares.
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Escalation was required here, re-using cupcake was not enough - call them a muffin. perhaps even a macaroon if you feel they deserve it.
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My gosh you're such a noodle.
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Following the law does not make one an asshole.
Indeed. Many people are assholes who also follow the law. I am one of them.
That you think they're assholes is just your opinion, and irrelevant to this discussion
Amazon violated freedom zero [gnu.org]. They were allowed to do so legally, but it is a decision that hurts society, not helps society, and they did it for their own selfish benefit. What would you call that?
Re:Objection: Facts not in evidence. (Score:4, Insightful)
AMAZON violated freedom zero? Hell no. Even if I accepted that freedom zero could be violated in this instance (Elastic was Apache licensed, not GNU licensed -- Elastic made that decision and gets to live with it), Amazon's OpenSearch does not violate freedom zero.
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
Amazon lets you do that. Elastic does not. Elastic does not let you run the program as you wish, for any purpose, because they have a bug up their ass about Amazon running the program as they wish, for their purposes.
You people really need to stop making argument that can be trashed with 30 seconds worth of actual thought. It doesn't reflect well upon you.
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So at least they are being consistent.
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To be fair, the GPL expressly doesn't apply to either internal use or use as a service. That was a conscious choice on their part, and on the part of those adopting the GPL license.
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You made two claims; one is correct, and one is not. The first, "the GPL expressly doesn't apply to [..] internal use", is correct, and as you said, purposeful. However, "the GPL expressly doesn't apply to [..] use as a service" was not originally an intentional outcome. It's been a few years since I've read through all of the
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Actually it was an intentional outcome with GPLv3 and the Affero GPL, which distinguished between the two. I didn't specify which version, and I'm not super interested in things that weren't intended more than 15 years ago. This is now.
Nope. If you can dish it out, you can take it too.
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Thanks for playing, though.
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I accept your unconditional surrender.
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Even if I accepted that freedom zero could be violated in this instance (Elastic was Apache licensed, not GNU licensed -- Elastic made that decision and gets to live with it), Amazon's OpenSearch does not violate freedom zero.
A) You are a moron.
B) Violating freedom 0 does not require violating a license.
C) Laws are not ethics. They are not equivalent, and some laws are unethical. There's a difference.
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A) You are a moron.
Prove it. Right now you're just appealing to your own authority and unfortunately have not. Address the GP's claims and show us in what way he's a moron.
B) Violating freedom 0 does not require violating a license.
Indeed it doesn't. But it does actually require violating freedom 0 which Amazon doesn't do. Your claim, your responsibility to prove that it is actively happening.
C) Laws are not ethics. They are not equivalent, and some laws are unethical. There's a difference.
You're right. Ethics requires also following the intent of the creator which in this case Amazon is doing by agreeing to the chosen license. There are unethical things at play here, for example a
Re:Objection: Facts not in evidence (Score:2)
Then you're being beaten like a toy drum by a moron. It speaks worse of you than it does of me.
No, it requires violating freedom zero. You have not yet explained how Amazon has done that.
We're not speaking of laws. We're speaking of private contracts. If you care about an issue, you put terms relevant to the issue into the priva
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If you don't like this situation then the answer is to boycott Amazon over their lack of commitment to the "open source" cause.
I don't disagree, but the problem is that boycotting on a personal level won't make any difference to them (it's statistically irrelevant).
At a corporate or business-level, well, it's not always so easy to boycott a specific service or migrate away to another platform. I mean, it should be, but it's not.
If you're involved with AWS at any real scale, moving away can be a huge, expensive undertaking. Setting up an alternative to some of their integrated services can be an endless crawl into a black hole of tr
Open source (Score:2)
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If the open source no longer works for the owner, then changing it to a more closed source model is the solution. The only protection open source really can provide is insuring that innovation is sourced back to community and insuring that software is not retroactively closed and made a closed commercial product. It does not limit open source innovation or enforce arbitrary desires of the original owner.
Retroactively changing to a closed source license is difficult and dangerous as we can see in this case. The solution is to stick with strong copyleft licenses from the beginning of all projects. E.g. the SSPL or the AGPLv3 (if server delivery is not an issue). If there's a good reason and you ensured you got the correct assignments for all the software you want to change, you can always easily change to Apache or MIT later but going the other way is liable to lead to unwanted competitive forks, as seen h
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The only protection open source really can provide is insuring that innovation is sourced back to community
No, that's "free software" not "open source," and the result is that companies choose not to contribute to it very often, so you don't actually ensure anything by using it. I mean, you ensure that a competing project with an open source license will be more popular. That's all that is ensured.
The community will get the source that it is convenient to release, they don't need to be greedy for more. In fact, there is a glut of available source, including from companies, because there is a lot of PR (and other
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No, that's "free software" not "open source,"
Free software is a subset of open source. The defining characteristic is that the source is available. Numerous possible licences are possible other than various GPL versions as other subsets of open source.
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If the open source no longer works for the owner, then changing it to a more closed source model is the solution.
Who owns it? If various people contributed code und a contributor license agreement, they hold the copyright to their code and going closed source could violate that agreement. So, depending on the agreements and codebase no one entity may own all the rights to it.
Some utopians finally discover ... (Score:5, Interesting)
... that open source actually means open source. It doesn't mean open source only to the nice fluffy cuddly libertarian people you like, it means its open to any shark infested corporation to do what they like with so long as they follow the GPL/BSD license. Don't like that? Tough, go to your safe space and cry about it, no one is interested in your sour grapes.
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It means that if you want corporations to give back, you should use a license that requires it. There are multiple licenses now for this purpose.
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There's plenty of it, only the names have changed to protect the hypocritical.
Consider, Gap once got a nasty drubbing for using the phrase "Go Solstice" in a winter themed holiday commercial.
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Parler, GETTR, need I say more?
But go ahead and use the "no true Scotsman" defense... or simply deny the banning that keeps happening on these "free speech" alternatives.
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There's also the way they froth at the mouth if you suggest that gay people should have the same rights to marry, adopt, and buy a cake for their wedding as hetros; or that trans people should be allowed to live their lives with equal rights and the same access to society and commerce as cis people; that athletes and other entertainers should be allowed to have opinions on politics or civil rights; that atheists and agnostics should not have other peoples' religions forced upon them; or that black people sh
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Funny, I could swear the goalpost was a lot wider when I kicked the ball.
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Since when do libertarians need safe spaces? What a strange comment. If they were libertarians, they'd be selling their product, not giving it away for free(!)
You seem to have a very odd understanding of the term libertarian. Libertarians may elect to give things away for free. Capitalists sell things, and there is overlap with libertarians. But even then, some capitalists may still give things away for free.
The future is Copyleft? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Sorry, but that is horseshit. No one is pushing anything here. Elasticsearch actively chose a license that doesn't require sharing source or prevent locked in derivations. The "companies" are not the bad ones here for doing exactly what they were told they could do.
You don't need copyleft or any other radical agenda. You just need people to have the balls to stick by a decision they make when they pick their license.
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I have worked commercially with GPL licensed software for many years, and there was never any problem doing this - if I modify the GPL'ed code for my business, I gladly share that code with everyone, and for the very few things that need to not leave the company, I can pay for a commercial license that is not the GPL.
Naive idealism (Score:4, Interesting)
"Software should be free! The user should be able to do whatever they want with it! (Unless we don't like them.)"
Their objection isn't how the open source license is being used, but by whom.
This kind of bitter wake-up call isn't even rare enough to be noteworthy.
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Their objection isn't how the open source license is being used, but by whom.
Amazon modified their source code, and didn't give back the modifications. Elastic has since switched to a different license that prevents that.
Re:Naive idealism (Score:5, Informative)
Their objection isn't how the open source license is being used, but by whom.
Amazon modified their source code, and didn't give back the modifications. Elastic has since switched to a different license that prevents that.
However, the original license allowed that, and once Amazon forked it Elastic is SOL. Amazon can do whatever tehy want with the fork as long as they follow the original license.
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What kind of fucked-up morals do you have such that you think Amazon behaved unethically by following the rules someone else chose. It's like calling someone unethical because they beat you at a game you made up.
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It strikes me as extremely childish to have expectations of someone, not inform them of those expectations, then complain when they are not met. The license lays out the expectations. They should have chosen a different license if they had different expectations. There is absolutely no 'moral' or 'ethical' issue here.
If someone asks you for a steak dinner, and you give them a lovely steak dinner, are you morally or ethically deficient for not also providing lobster which they wanted but didn't bother to
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It's a pretty clear moral and legal principal that "ignorance of the law is no excuse."
Right is right and wrong is wrong, regardless of what the law says. There are many examples of where the law has been wrong, and you know it.
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You somehow think that a particular ideology is 'the law' or defines what is morally or ethically correct. This is utter nonsense.
OK, I'll play your little game. Here is 'the law' for open source https://opensource.org/about [opensource.org]. What part of this 'law' are you accusing Amazon of violating?
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Amazon can legally do whatever they want, but ethically, they are still wrong.
How so? Elasticsearch offered the code under a specific license, and Amazon stuck to the terms of the license; and Elasticsearch later decided they didn't like what the license allowed and changed it for subsequent releases. No, you can argue Amazon didn't follow the spirit of the license, but what Amazon did has long been allowed and accepted as a practice, even the EFF says so in its FAQ.
If you want to make an ethical argument, you could argue Elasticsearch is also evil if they unilaterally took any code
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Amazon can legally do whatever they want, but ethically, they are still wrong.
They are nothing of the sort. They are 100% doing exactly what was asked of them by the original creator. They are ethically completely clear. That the developer is butthurt as a result and trying to retroactively change the deal is what is ethically wrong.
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They are 100% doing exactly what was asked of them by the original creator.
That is 100% false. They are 100% following the license, which is not the same, as you should know.
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There are many licenses for a creator to choose from, including the ability to make their own. To claim the license isn't the will of the creator on how their project gets used is just dumb.
They are following the will of the creator in every way possible. The creator is butthurt that someone made money and is now crying. "I have altered the terms, pray I don't alter them further" is something that unethical people say.
This sounds crazy to me (Score:3)
If I wanted close source... (Score:2)
... I'd just go with Splunk. Elastic is shooting themselves in the foot.
That being said, AWS had plundered open source projects for their own gain.
"Embrace and extend" used to be a Microsoft saying, but now AWS is the M$ of the Cloud.
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AGPL (Score:2)
If only there was a license that would force Amazon to make its changes public.
Right, Affero GPL...
They still might get fucked over, but not as hard.
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MongoDB was AGPL and pulled the same move, because AWS had a whole load of nice management tools they surrounded their MongoDB offering to make it easy to work with - no changes to release back upstream. Mongo didnt like that, so switched licenses to hurt AWS - because they now had their own SaaS offering and didnt like to compete with AWS
Who is forking ElasticSearch? (Score:3)
It looks to me that Elastic is forking the Elastic search. First they changed the license and now they changed the client API. Amazon is giving the same ElasticSearch (before fork) under new name (but with the same license) and giving the same pristine client library which works with all ElasticSearch (original and forked version). Afterall, if I am stuck with Elastic's ElasticSearch only, then it is no more open source under the OSF definition. So Amazon wins by 2-0 over Elastic.
Client control? Won't work. (Score:2)
I'm currently working on an Elasticsearch project using the Node client and am pretty up-to-speed on it.
Although the client is convenient it is far from essential. The real API into Elasticsearch is the REST interface over HTTP(S) not the language level library -- whether it is Javascript, Java, Python, or whatever.
Had the Node client not existed I really don't think my project would have been delayed much if at all. I would have just written a set of routines to compose and receive the well-documente
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For what, specifically? The name "OpenSearch"? That name pretty much conveys what it is, and it's supposed competitive difference from the ElasticSearch product.
Re:Trademark Dispute (Score:5, Interesting)
I could imagine it going the other way. They named themselves Elastic-something in the exact same market as all of Amazon's Elastic-something products. They definitely created enough brand confusion that I thought it was an Amazon created product.
Re:Trademark Dispute (Score:4, Informative)
The origin dates of ElasticSearch and Amazon's Elastic-something products do not support your claim that the former is infringing the latter. Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud went into beta in 2006. The first version of Elasticsearch was released in February 2010.
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I really am some kind of idiot today. Amazon came first, the opposite of what I thought I was typing.
ES could possibly be considered infringing the trademark, but I doubt it would gain any traction.
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For what, specifically? The name "OpenSearch"? That name pretty much conveys what it is, and it's supposed competitive difference from the ElasticSearch product.
I was referring to from TFA:
So imagine our surprise when Amazon launched their service in 2015 based on Elasticsearch and called it Amazon Elasticsearch Service.
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Why? What does this have to do with trademarks? I don't think anyone is going to confuse "ElasticSearch" and "OpenSearch".
I was referring to from TFA:
So imagine our surprise when Amazon launched their service in 2015 based on Elasticsearch and called it Amazon Elasticsearch Service.
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But they were quite literally offering ElasticSearch. This is no different from them offering hosted Linux on EC2 and using the Linux trademark.
The difference is did Elasticsearch give them permission to use their trademark?
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Re:Trademark Dispute (Score:5, Informative)
As a trademark lawyer... how do you figure, exactly?
The mark "search" for search software and services is clearly generic.
The "Elastic" element is completely missing, and instead Amazon uses "Open."
Unless you can make a case for trademark infringement between "Elastic" and "Open" in the relevant market, you don't have a case, because allowing trademark protection for "XXXXsearch" based upon "Elasticsearch" impermissibly extends trademark protection to the generic term "search," which is forbidden.
So I'd love to hear your explanation.
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As a trademark lawyer... how do you figure, exactly?
The mark "search" for search software and services is clearly generic.
The "Elastic" element is completely missing, and instead Amazon uses "Open."
Unless you can make a case for trademark infringement between "Elastic" and "Open" in the relevant market, you don't have a case, because allowing trademark protection for "XXXXsearch" based upon "Elasticsearch" impermissibly extends trademark protection to the generic term "search," which is forbidden.
So I'd love to hear your explanation.
I was referring to the line in TFA:
So imagine our surprise when Amazon launched their service in 2015 based on Elasticsearch and called it Amazon Elasticsearch Service.
If Amazon switched to another name then it's a different story; but I think Amazon Elasticsearch Service is close enough to Elasticsearch to cause the two to be confused.
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If Amazon switched to another name then it's a different story; but I think Amazon Elasticsearch Service is close enough to Elasticsearch to cause the two to be confused.
Do you even know what Amazon EC2 stands for? "Elastic" Is a trademark owned by Amazon. Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is their cloud service. Amazon's Elastic Block Store (EBS) is their cloud storage. Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) is the filesystem they created for scalable storage. Amazon Elastic Beanstalk (EBS) are their web applications. Elastic Container Service. Elastic Kubernetes Service. Elastic Load Balancing. Elasticache (this one inexplicably doesn't follow their normal nomenclature).
They came to
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If Amazon switched to another name then it's a different story; but I think Amazon Elasticsearch Service is close enough to Elasticsearch to cause the two to be confused.
Do you even know what Amazon EC2 stands for? "Elastic" Is a trademark owned by Amazon. Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is their cloud service. Amazon's Elastic Block Store (EBS) is their cloud storage. Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) is the filesystem they created for scalable storage. Amazon Elastic Beanstalk (EBS) are their web applications. Elastic Container Service. Elastic Kubernetes Service. Elastic Load Balancing. Elasticache (this one inexplicably doesn't follow their normal nomenclature).
They came to the party 4 years after Amazon started calling everything cloud related "Elastic". They stand a very real chance of losing the trademark lawsuit and then having to change their name of their own product.
Notice I said "the" trademark lawsuit? Not "a" trademark lawsuit? There is an active trademark lawsuit ongoing right now filed late 2019 by the Elasticsearch project.
Fair enough, as I pointed out I was going by TFA. It will be interesting to see that play out. I assume, if Elasticsearch has a valid trademark dating back a number of years but registered it after Amazon's, I wonder why they did not oppose Elasticsearch's registration. If so, it would seem to me that using the term Amazon Elasticsearch Service would cause confusion. Of course, the court could invalidate Elasticsearch's trademark or weaken Amazon's. Who knows.
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I appreciate the irony that AWS, who use the term "Elastic" in many of its services, will be using the term "Open" in its Elasticsearch-like service.
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Because Amazon remains free to use the term "Elastic" descriptively, rather than as a trademark use, particularly in connection with goods and services that are not, for example, "downloadable computer software for use in searching, indexing, organizing, managing, processing, storing, retrieving, analyzing and reporting information and data."
That's one of the f
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While I doubt they have a leg to stand on given Amazon's use of the word Elastic for many parts of its cloud infrastructure date to a cool 5 years before Elasticsearch even launched as a project, it is worth noting that a trademark infringement lawsuit about this very topic is ongoing.
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About as good as Microsoft's Office would have against OpenOffice...
I was referring to from TFA:
So imagine our surprise when Amazon launched their service in 2015 based on Elasticsearch and called it Amazon Elasticsearch Service.