I wouldn't necessarily say AWS' ability to use ES as a loss-leader for their Data Transfer charges is better for AWS's clients in the long-run. I can certainly see the argument for calling it exploitation.
Due to the market share of AWS for many potential customers it will come down to a decision between
a) click here in the aws marketplace and have my service added to the invoice my company gets every month anyway
b) start the painful process of onboarding a new vendor, get a quote, have procurement haggle with them for months etc etc etc. (overstating it a bit, I know)
And that is where to me it becomes a question of using/abusing your position in the market to a certain extent..
The rest of the 500+ comments here do a good job arguing both sides of it so I won't rehash that. Just saying that I can see that AWS taking the free thing and using it as a loss-leader (i.e. no possible way Elastic can compete) could be construed as exploitation of the free thing.
Even if it is though, I'm just not sure I find the idea of free software being a loss-leader a bad thing. Having a loss-leader implies that AWS is providing + capturing value elsewhere. In this case, you assert this is from Data Transfer. But regardless of where the cost-centers are, AWS is delivering value to their customers and charging for it. There is competition in the cloud space, and in all honesty moving clouds generally isn't a huge deal, at least if you've architected your systems with that in mind (which any SysAdmin worth their salt should be doing in 2021).
The fact is, customers like having all their cloud managed under one roof. Customers like the exceedingly strong uptime guarantees provided by AWS. If customers have choice (which they do), and they're choosing AWS, why is it a bad thing if Elastic can't compete? If AWS is winning, it's because they have a holistic offering that customers like better.
Which OT1H is a valid reason not to go all "spirit" and "ideology" in business; OTOH, if what you're all about is spirit and ideology, it's a valid reason to stop thinking what you're doing is "Open Source" and go back to the original "Free Software" terminology.
As I think someone else mentioned already in this discussion, the term "FOSS" does more harm than good by conflating these different things, and should be avoided.
Or Amazon (or a third party) may take over maintenance of ES if it's worth it to them. That's the whole point of open source.
> You can frame this question in terms of ethics, you can frame it in terms of licensing naivety, you can frame it in whatever way you want but Amazon is doing what it always has done: exploiting smaller businesses in its goal to become a conglomerate.
There's no exploitation here. ES are grownups and responsible for their own business decisions. Amazon is outcompeting them by providing a better service to their clients.
> Edit: a lot of people talking about the license forget that there's an entire spirit to open source. The permissiveness of open source was one thought to be "we can all succeed together" and what people get upset about is the fact that this obviously violates that spirit. The businesses set up to back companies like Elastic Search were setup to sustain the project while continuing to empower it's creators to take their vision further. If Amazon takes the pie, that doesn't happen. At best, the creators are now Amazon employees and have to follow their desires. Just because you can exploit a license, doesn't mean you should.
The whole point of "open source" as distinct from "free software" was to get away from all the ideological baggage and focus on pragmatic licensing that would appeal to businesses. Guess what: it worked.