[pydry]

If you need to see why stuff like the BPL and FSL is needed you only need to compare the commit histories of ElasticSearch and its fork when Jeff Bezos bravely "stepped up for open source" with OpenSearch (https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/stepping-up-for-a-tr...).

It's not like Jeff couldnt invest to make better software than elastic. They have the money. Theyd just rather feast off Elastic's plate until Elastic is dead.

[drewdevault]

Elastic's revenue was north of half a billion dollars when they changed their license. Amazon was most decidedly not killing them. It was motivated by greed, like it always is.

[pydry]

Still posting losses.

It's not generally considered a wise business move to wait until your corpse is already being feasted upon before changing direction.

Long term they absolutely would have been killed - computing is being consolidated onto one of 4 platforms, all of which would squeeze out elastic using their market dominance as leverage.

[drewdevault]

Elastic's losses are a classic story of VC-funded promises of infinite, unsustainable growth. Success for Elastic is defined by the classic impossible measure of becoming a monopoloy so you can raise prices every year and cite growth indefinitely. They had everything they needed to reach a sustainable business model, and the problem was not in their licenses but rather that they set impossible goals for themselves.

[pydry]

You have literally just 180'd your argument from "they're rich and greedy they didnt need any more money" to "Im glad they are dying they squandered their opportunities".

May Amazon feast on their rotting open and free corpse, eh?

[indymike]

> You have literally just 180'd your argument from "they're rich and greedy they didnt need any more money" to "Im glad they are dying they squandered their opportunities".

I don't read Drew's comment that way at all. He's pointing out correctly that they were well resourced, and had built a $.628 Billion revenue business (at the time). Well done.

Incidentally Since the change, they've grown to just north of $800M, so Elastic is still growing, but that growth is significantly slower than in years prior, so evidence supports Drew's assertion. Had Elastic done something different, they may have had more or less success.

[pydry]

>I don't read Drew's comment that way at all.

Perhaps you missed the part where he tried to imply that they were swimming in profit by stating their revenue and sweeping the cost of paying for the development of this software under the carpet.

[drewdevault]

I haven't 180'd anything. The throughline is the same: they have more than enough money and they had many opportunities to use it effectively, but the tied their ankles together with their infinite-growth business model.