Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mrskitch 1976 days ago
> This means that Elasticsearch and Kibana will no longer be open source software.

This is categorically not true. The source is open, and will likely always will be. It’s not free for AWS going forward, however. Why is it that Amazon has such a hard time paying for stuff they use and commercialize? There’s no issues here with other providers (GCP, Azure, etc.), so clearly the problem lies with them. While they’re at it, they should also get off this “open and free” high horse they seem to be on. A few patches here and there don’t qualify as big time contributor status. If they want to show that they’re committed, how about the release their infrastructure code that runs all their services? That’d definitely go a lot further than “big bad Elastic changed their license and we’re defending users.” Get outta here with that nonsense, history shows otherwise with all the other tech that’s been ripped off.

I also don’t get all the criticism for Elastic doing this. They own the software, and they can do whatever they want. Should they have done this license from the start? Maybe, but it’s not exactly easy getting a project off the ground without some way to gain attention. If you’ve got no users, you’ve got to show at least what your code is doing, and picking software licenses is not exactly a straightforward task. They changed their license to fight back, and it’s entirely within their right to do so.

Hate to feel like I’m venting, but AWS is being the bully here and feigning that they’re pro-user, which is frustrating to witness.

3 comments

Just because AWS is being an asshole doesn't mean they are also completely wrong. SSPL isn't Open Source per that old definition AWS themselves points to, or the one Fedora seems to take. On the other hand, if you mean to say "I want to be able to read the source code" then yes, we can still do that. But from a legal perspective that is not even close to the same thing.
> But from a legal perspective that is not even close to the same thing.

Very true. However, my rebuttal would be that the majority of folks reading this are of an engineering background, and seeing the words “no longer open source” can land quite differently.

> This is categorically not true. The source is open, and will likely always will be.

The source is available but not open. Open source is a specific thing with a specific meaning, and Elastic no longer qualifies.

The source is available to look at, but the OSI certainly doesn't consider it "open".