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by maest 45 days ago
> It's weird to me that the Hacker News community doesn't think that sort of competition is good.

Negative externalities. The company makes money using a free resource and disincentivises future development.

I'm sure you can see why killing the most popular business model for open source companies is bad for the ecosystem, right?
2 comments
alexey-salmin 45 days ago
I can't? I mean, if Amazon does commercial version of Elastic better than Elastic themselves then so be it. I don't see how one company is entitled to turn an open source project into business and the other is not.

I do see issues with monopolies pushing inferior products onto users. But that would be a completely different issue, nothing to do with open source.

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JambalayaJimbo 45 days ago
I mean it’s a free country either way then. Elastic can change the licensing and Amazon is then free to compete with a fork of the software pre-licensing change.

Amazon doesn’t really have a leg to stand on in objection here. Building a platform to re-sell an open source project may end up fracturing that open source community’s user base, that’s a consequence of their own actions.

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dns_snek 45 days ago
> I don't see how one company is entitled to turn an open source project into business and the other is not.

According to the original license they are both entitled to do that, that's the problem. Do you think it's sustainable for one company to make the software for free and another one to sell it for profit?

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alexey-salmin 45 days ago
> According to the original license they are both entitled to do that, that's the problem.

I really don't see how Amazon is to blame for this problem, they weren't the ones who picked the license.

> Do you think it's sustainable for one company to make the software for free and another one to sell it for profit?

They both sell it for profit, let the most profitable one win.

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dns_snek 45 days ago
> I really don't see how Amazon is to blame for this problem, they weren't the ones who picked the license.

Because parasitic antisocial behavior is viewed negatively.

> They both sell it for profit, let the most profitable one win.

Trying to apply market dynamics to selling things you didn't produce (or pay for) is fascinating...

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gcr 45 days ago
They both sell it for profit, but Amazon doesn’t contribute changes upstream, so the public + rest of the industry won’t benefit from their work. It’s not an equivalence.
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dmantis 45 days ago
> Amazon doesn’t contribute changes upstream

Are you sure that's the case with AGPL? Cause they can sue them and enforce the contribution. I doubt that's the case. And those who went with MIT/BSD openly allow distribution without contribution.

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gcr 44 days ago
In the USA, small companies don’t generally have the resources to take large companies to court, even if they’re in the right.
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kortilla 44 days ago
Many companies build on top of open source to make money and don’t contribute back. That’s not the problem.
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DangitBobby 45 days ago
Because you don't see AWS as having sort of moral or ethical duties. I see all companies and people as having moral and ethical duties.
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Orygin 45 days ago
Why isn't this a problem for other databases then? I'm sure most cloud sell some MariaDB services. Why would they be able to profit from it?

It's because the business model for ES is direct competition with AWS and others, and they got out competed. So they had to play licenses games to try and level the field.

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dns_snek 45 days ago
> Why isn't this a problem for other databases then?

It is?

- MongoDB went from AGPL to SSPL

- Redis went from BSD to SSPL

- Elasticsearch went from AGPL to SSPL

- CockroachDB went from Apache to BSL

- TimescaleDB went from Apache to Apache + TLS

- Graylog went from GPL to SSPL

> It's because the business model for ES is direct competition with AWS and others, and they got out competed. So they had to play licenses games to try and level the field.

That's why intellectual property law exist. If I spent years writing a book and you were allowed to copy it and sell it then obviously you're going to "out compete" me by default. You didn't incur any costs in producing the thing you're selling, duh!

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Orygin 45 days ago
Yes and the result is these databases got forked, and the community got rightfully mad.

But other databases don't need it, and stayed truly open source, because their business model doesn't rely on being the only hosting provider.

> You didn't incur any costs in producing the thing you're selling, duh!

Indeed, you gave it away for free, saying I could sell it... It doesn't take a business genius to know AWS can undercut your hosting services.

It goes to show that most of these companies don't really care about open source. They cared more about making money and open source was a useful facade to get people to contribute for free.

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dmantis 45 days ago
> don't really care about open source.

Exactly. You can sell the products of your work all the way you want.

But pretending to share with the world and then push back when the world actually use it under these same open terms is a hypocrisy.

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dns_snek 44 days ago
No "buts", this is an extremely common trend not some one-off example like you tried to claim.

Other databases are already funded by cloud companies, predate the cloud, or they're too niche to bother.

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kortilla 44 days ago
Don’t get into open source if you don’t like your users using the software however they see fit.
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gcr 45 days ago
Don’t you see how bankrupting the Elastic devs pushes an inferior product onto users?
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jasonlotito 45 days ago
> The company makes money using a free resource and disincentivises future development.

Open source companies should pick open source licenses that support that business model. They don't. It's short term thinking.

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