[zethraeus]

> I'm sure Elastic never saw that one coming

That's ridiculous. Of course they were keenly aware that they could be competed with with the free software they put out.

They just hoped that no significant competitor would risk upsetting the balance of the open source community, or that they could at least make good money until someone did.

In the meantime, they selfishly avoided licensing with GPLv3 (which would have reinforced the things you care about) because it would have decreased their revenue (which is the thing they care about).