[1] https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/05/elasticsearch-scores-70m-i...
[2] https://www.elastic.co/blog/shield-know-security-coming-soon
I know there's more context here, and I'm sympathetic to Elastic's position, but "Elastic loves open source so much they made proprietary features to hurt their competitors!" is a bit....Orwellian as far as defenses.
I don't think this comes across as pro-Elastic as you think it does. :)
I don't think that's a fair interpretation. They're not going on the attack, after all. Amazon's capitalization on ElasticSearch constitutes an existential threat to Elastic, not the other way around. Elastic is very much defending its existence, which, by the way, is the primary sponsor for the open source project. Moreover, the interpretation ignores that the "proprietary features" in question (including their source code) are available for free to the public.
I'm open to the idea that there were better (i.e., friendlier to open source) recourses available, but I'm not pursuaded by purist arguments that don't address the existential threat to Elastic and the ElasticSearch project.
The first is not a given at all, and the second is what leads to it being a foregone conclusion with the question being not if but when someone will eat your lunch whether its Amazon or users choosing to DIY.
Most of Elastic's critics in this thread seem to believe that, as the primary sponsor of the project, everything Elastic does must be open source (apparently) at all costs or they are somehow anti-open-source or otherwise "worse for open source" than Amazon.
Given that and the fact that Elastic is the primary sponsor of the ElasticSearch open source project, it is obvious that this action actually is in the best interest of open source, as it allows Elastic to continue sponsoring ElasticSearch.
Most of the criticism of Elastic in this thread seems to be predicated on the purist notion that proprietary software is the antithesis of open source software. That's obviously untrue, and we really need to disillusion ourselves of this.
The ability to fork in open source is a feature not a bug and ultimately the community of users and developers of these projects will decide what works best for them. In this case it isn't even a fork, it's new plugins that the community can consume under a FOSS license.
If by "what do you expect a company to do" you mean what is _ethical_, then what's good for their business seems like an entirely orthogonal concern to me.
If the question is: What is good for the continued viability of open source -- I honestly do not know.
> Elastic is the rare company that truly is committed to open source
On their face, those two statements seem mutually exclusive. What context am I missing that would make them not so?
Don't think it was that nefarious. More likely that the original developers were committed to open source, and then took lots of venture capital money to keep coding and making cool things. Now those VCs want a return on their investment, and effectively have control over the product.
It’s a strategy that isn’t working out for a bunch of companies.
Releasing it for 'free' is the not the same as an equitable Open Source license.
It's nothing like open source; it's proprietary software that attempts to leverage the goodwill of the “open source” label without adhering to what that label means.
> We aren't all hippies who can sit around at MIT.
Look, if open source doesn't work for your business situation, that's fine, just don't lie about being committed to open source where you are truly only committed to your own profits, all while making disparaging portrayals of the people who actually are committed to open source.
In your mind, how should a "committed to open source" company respond to an existential threat (not only to the business, but to the project given the business is the primary sponsor of the project)? Are there better open source licenses that allow them to meet the same ends? Or should they just cease to exist, lay off their staff, and abandon the project out of a Stallmanic dream of open source?
Why? Because < 100% of their code is open source? This seems infeasibly idealistic, and a false dichotomy. You can be a proprietary software company that is still very committed to open source. Anyway, if < 100% is the standard, surely Amazon is worse yet, no?
AWS ElasticSearch is not great, but it's way better than Elastic.
I realize "patent" is a dirty word around here, but aside from that, what are the issues with the above strategy and is there truly no possible way around those issues?
You kidding? You have no idea how many user authentication patent battles have been fought.
Or not. I'm no fan of software patents.
You can't beat Amazon. You can't beat google. You can't beat Microsoft.
As I understand it, Amazon took ElasticSearch and monetized it, therefore competing directly with Elastic (the company that develops ElasticSearch). Elastic felt Amazon was taking advantage of Elastic's commitment to open source, and started developing new features under a proprietary license, but releasing them for free. The idea was to prevent their work from benefiting a competitor.
Basically in this blog post, Amazon is trying to make the case that they're a Good Tech Company and Elastic are the Bad Guys or something. Generally I'm all for nuance and "the truth is probably somewhere in the middle", but Elastic is the rare company that truly is committed to open source (at least at the current moment in history) and Amazon is, well, Amazon.