Open Distro for Elasticsearch

Re:Open Distro for Elasticsearch by rushabh on Monday March 11, 2019 @01:48PM (#19361045)

When you publish open source, this is what you sign up for. As a publisher of open source software, I think "open core" does a huge disservice to the community as it feels deceptive. While there is no denying that creators needs to be paid, communities thrive on freedom and openness, and dual licensing takes that away.

Companies that publish open source must realize that they cannot make money from the "software". Open source gives companies a brand, that they can then leverage to do other services like support, consulting, hosting, merchandise, events, etc.

There was a time when service companies wanted to move into products because of high margins and artificial scarcity, but enough open source will ensure that software licensing is not a sustainable model to seek rent, and product companies must also move to services to be able to grow and sustain.

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Re:Open Distro for Elasticsearch by indalo on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @04:01AM (#19366190)

Reminds me exactly of an article I read this once. It's about the concept of companies commoditizing their product's complement.[1] AWS sells hosting/infra, for them lowering the entry barrier is beneficial. (I'm not taking sides just a thought)

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

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Re:Open Distro for Elasticsearch by anth_anm on Monday March 11, 2019 @11:08PM (#19365041)

I think Amazon does a much bigger disservice.

> but enough open source will ensure that software licensing is not a sustainable model to seek rent

So your solution to this is to just make it so no one can make money doing work.

Except Jeff. Jeff gets all the money.

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Re:Open Distro for Elasticsearch by hnarn on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @04:04AM (#19366200)

Looking at it rationally, is furthering open source admirable when it's done by a community activist, and loathsome when it's done by someone who has a business interest in the exact same outcome? Why isn't the end result the most important part of the equation? If a stronger, open sourced Elasticsearch comes out of this, why is that a bad thing because it was backed by Amazon?

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Re:Open Distro for Elasticsearch by skywhopper on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @07:37AM (#19367154)

Just be honest, and don't pretend to be open source, when you are attempting to harness goodwill towards open source in order to make a buck. As pointed out, ES builds on the work of hundreds of other contributors to other open source projects. Is Elastic compensating those developers?

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Re:Open Distro for Elasticsearch by weberc2 on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @07:14PM (#19374052)

> don't pretend to be open source

In my mind, a company that makes lots of free contributes to open source is an open-source-friendly company, but this thread and the other on the Elastic post made me realize just how many people think that a True Open Source Company (whatever that means) should prefer to go out of business to dealing in proprietary software.

I personally don't care for any of these puritanical viewpoints that deny economic realities (there's only so much a person or a collective can afford to give away for free, money doesn't grow on trees, etc). Open source is good, but thriving, sustainable open source depends on a symbiotic relationship with for-profit institutions.

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Re:Open Distro for Elasticsearch by Lockd on Monday March 11, 2019 @02:46PM (#19361645)

Well said. The issue is most of the core devs don't want to touch "support, consulting, hosting". It's a mental block. They think they can skip around doing only the "cool" stuff.

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Re:Open Distro for Elasticsearch by zenlikethat on Monday March 11, 2019 @04:20PM (#19362415)

Many OSS companies have no problem with that. It's more of a problem that users demand features and consulting without rendering payment.

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