Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
To be clear, our distributions starting with 7.11 will be provided only under the Elastic License, which does not have any copyleft aspects. If you are building Elasticsearch and/or Kibana from source, you may choose between SSPL and the Elastic License to govern your use of the source code."
In another
post Banon added some clarification. "SSPL, a copyleft license
based on GPL, aims to provide many of the freedoms of open source, though
it is not an OSI approved license and is not considered open
source.
"
There is also this article
on why the change was made. "So why the change? AWS and Amazon
Elasticsearch Service. They have been doing things that we think are
just NOT OK since 2015 and it has only gotten worse. If we don’t stand up
to them now, as a successful company and leader in the market, who
will?
"
The FAQ has
additional information. "While we have chosen to avoid confusion by not using the term open source to refer to these products, we will continue to use the word “Open” and “Free and Open.” These are simple ways to describe the fact that the product is free to use, the source code is available, and also applies to our open and collaborative engagement model in GitHub. We remain committed to the principles of open source - transparency, collaboration, and community.
"
Posted Jan 20, 2021 19:44 UTC (Wed)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link] (10 responses)
Posted Jan 20, 2021 20:41 UTC (Wed)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (9 responses)
I would be interested in analysis of SSPL. From my cursory understanding it works like GPL for end-users, so regular companies can still install their own Elastic stack without paying.
Posted Jan 20, 2021 20:48 UTC (Wed)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link]
Posted Jan 20, 2021 20:59 UTC (Wed)
by Deleted user 129183 (guest, #129183)
[Link] (6 responses)
That’s why all of Red Hat developers subsist off the sun. Because there’s actually no way to make money off the purely free software after all.
Posted Jan 20, 2021 21:01 UTC (Wed)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Jan 20, 2021 21:10 UTC (Wed)
by Deleted user 129183 (guest, #129183)
[Link] (4 responses)
They didn't kill it, they just changed its focus. And the licence terms of RHEL have not been touched in any way, so basically everyone with relevant experience can create Ye Olde CentOS Part Deux.
Posted Jan 20, 2021 21:13 UTC (Wed)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (3 responses)
RedHat has killed CentOS as it existed: a free OS that in practice is guaranteed to be completely compatible with RedHat. And for pretty much the same reason: it was eating into their commercial subscription business.
> And the licence terms of RHEL have not been touched in any way, so basically everyone with relevant experience can create Ye Olde CentOS Part Deux.
Posted Jan 20, 2021 21:28 UTC (Wed)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
The only "counter-measures" RH has taken here is to stop paying folks to work on freely-provided RHEL rebuilds.
Posted Jan 20, 2021 22:49 UTC (Wed)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link]
I don't think this is the reason or atleast the only reason. Red Hat has stopped funding CentOS developers full time to work on replicating RHEL for free but the sources including the git repos for all the packages are still available and they even did the work in Fedora (which RHEL inherited) to make rebranding easier. With the open sourcing of the build system and management tools including Koji and all of the components behind Red Hat satellite, they aren't holding back on anything there. They don't have to do all this if the goal was to prevent rebuilds. For all the permissive licensed components, they aren't required to publish anything at all. They have gone well beyond their legal obligations.
The stated reasons of having CentOS as it exists now play the role of a more closer upstream that they can build out of seems to be the right value proposition for them. As usual, they botched the way they have announced it and explained it however. What would have been logical is for the RHEL subscription changes to come first, CentOS 8 Stream (and not CentOS 8) to be announced and explained clearly with the current intentions transparent so people can plan around it better.
Posted Jan 21, 2021 9:35 UTC (Thu)
by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935)
[Link]
Posted Jan 24, 2021 7:27 UTC (Sun)
by ras (subscriber, #33059)
[Link]
I'll take a stab at it, and say corbet's comment into the linked article is the heart of the matter:
> The affected code must not only be released, it must be made available under the SSPL.
At a guess, had they said it must be released under an OSI approved licence (so for open source projects the existing one would do), it would have been OK. As it is, it's incompatible with lots of them. That makes using SSPL licences code in any commercial project, even one that open sources all of its code, impossible.
As someone who firmly believes earning a buck and open source belong in bed together, SSPL looks as bad as pure proprietary.
Posted Jan 20, 2021 20:24 UTC (Wed)
by Yui (guest, #118557)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 20, 2021 21:29 UTC (Wed)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jan 22, 2021 17:15 UTC (Fri)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 22, 2021 19:05 UTC (Fri)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link]
Posted Jan 20, 2021 20:28 UTC (Wed)
by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896)
[Link]
> So imagine our surprise when Amazon launched their service in 2015 based on Elasticsearch and called it Amazon Elasticsearch Service. We consider this to be a pretty obvious trademark violation. NOT OK.
If Amazon violated a trademark, then the solution is to go to court (as they say they've done). Changing the license doesn't fix anything.
> I took a personal loan to register the Elasticsearch trademark in 2011 believing in this norm in the open source ecosystem. Seeing the trademark so blatantly misused was especially painful to me. Our efforts to resolve the problem with Amazon failed, forcing us to file a lawsuit. NOT OK.
But that's what you're supposed to do. Changing the license doesn't make anyone comply with trademark rules. If you think your trademark is being violated, you have to bring it to court. Trademarks just give you standing to sue in a court.
> We have seen that this trademark issue drives confusion with users thinking Amazon Elasticsearch Service is actually a service provided jointly with Elastic, with our blessing and collaboration. This is just not true. NOT OK.
That's why you have to go to court to enforce trademark rules. Changing the license does nothing.
> When the service launched, imagine our surprise when the Amazon CTO tweeted that the service was released in collaboration with us. It was not. And over the years, we have heard repeatedly that this confusion persists. NOT OK.
You can also go to court if fraudulent claims are made (if they are fraudulent & material). I don't the legal terms, but I'm sure a lawyer would.
I'm not a lawyer & I'm not speaking for my employer. But I'm struggling to see how Shay's article about why they changed the license actually provides any real justification (especially considering how much money they're raking in).
This text claims that Amazon is misleading customers by calling it "Amazon Elasticsearch Service", yet they're calling their new license "free and open" which sounds rather misleadingly similar to the term "free and open source". Hmm.
Shay clearly didn't like some of things that Amazon did. I understand that. But the issues don't seem have anything to do with the license. Changing the license so it's no longer open source software does not solve the issues claimed, but it DOES cause problems for everyone who depended on this software, and it also forcefully demonstrates the serious risks of signing CLAs with commercial organizations.
If someone can help me understand the real reasons that'd be great. I'm still looking.
Posted Jan 20, 2021 20:55 UTC (Wed)
by Deleted user 129183 (guest, #129183)
[Link] (14 responses)
Though it kind of feels like it is already lost. The programming community doesn’t care anymore about software freedom. There’s no Stallman 2.0 to reinvigorate it, and Stallman 1.0 is stuck too much in the 70s to be relevant (and when people think of Stallman, for them he’s rather that Interjection for a Moment Guy, and not the person who formulated probably the most influential philosophical idea about software ethics).
Posted Jan 20, 2021 21:20 UTC (Wed)
by Yui (guest, #118557)
[Link] (12 responses)
Posted Jan 20, 2021 23:01 UTC (Wed)
by jra (subscriber, #55261)
[Link] (11 responses)
Posted Jan 21, 2021 0:19 UTC (Thu)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (5 responses)
Is there a reason why you wouldn't just summarize the answer here?
Posted Jan 21, 2021 1:56 UTC (Thu)
by jra (subscriber, #55261)
[Link]
I was disgusted with the answer, I will tell you that.
Posted Jan 21, 2021 7:00 UTC (Thu)
by joib (subscriber, #8541)
[Link] (3 responses)
It's an interesting talk, worth watching in its entirety.
Back to the topic, see the video starting at 14:00. Basically FSF/RMS left glibc at LGPLv2.1 for fear of losing users. Have to agree the optics don't look good with the FSF trying to convince others to upgrade to *GPLv3, but not having the courage to do it for one of their own flagship projects.
Adding insult to injury, jra's baby (Samba) switching to the GPLv3 cost them a lot of popularity. Guess I would be pretty miffed if I was in his shoes.
Posted Jan 22, 2021 18:45 UTC (Fri)
by jccleaver (guest, #127418)
[Link]
I think that's a big part of it. But the GPL2->GPL3 transition seems almost quaint at this point. Legal enforcement of linking is far less important nowadays than the degree to which services and Big Tech are eating the world. The GNU Affero License helps bring services back on a level playing field, but it doesn't change the economics of tech behemoths throwing a tsunami of resources at a project and stiffling the viability of anything else.
Posted Jan 22, 2021 19:09 UTC (Fri)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link]
Thank you. That helps understand more of the details.
Posted Jan 23, 2021 8:39 UTC (Sat)
by timrichardson (subscriber, #72836)
[Link]
The funny thing is that for the purpose of selling a service, Amazon only needs to implement Elastic's APIs, just as jra says. AWS probably doesn't use a real elastisearch server, they probably would just middleware it to some massively amazing backend. But as early as 2019 they prepared an independent project and now they have activated it. It's interesting to speculate what Amazon's motivation is. Enlightenment?
He really believes community is at the heart of open source (not licence enforcement), and he concedes there is one big value of a licence: it helps builds a community around a common statement of values, which Elastic should think about, perhaps.
Posted Jan 21, 2021 2:09 UTC (Thu)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (4 responses)
GNU has become the Nintendo of its niche. A weird law cult (and a lot of orbiting rabid fanboys) that devotes its time to jealously guarding a hoard comprised mostly of 80s reruns; most people with any sense of perspective stopped caring about it a long time ago. All the ideas worth stealing are being made elsewhere.
Posted Jan 21, 2021 4:58 UTC (Thu)
by jra (subscriber, #55261)
[Link] (3 responses)
It's a tragedy in progress. In desperately trying to preserve his legacy, he's destroying it.
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
Posted Jan 26, 2021 5:51 UTC (Tue)
by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2021 6:25 UTC (Tue)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2021 23:24 UTC (Tue)
by jra (subscriber, #55261)
[Link]
Posted Jan 20, 2021 21:42 UTC (Wed)
by ejr (subscriber, #51652)
[Link]
There is no "war." There are trade-offs made for reasons. Some (including myself) may disagree. But then we must disprove the assumptions leading into these disagreements.
Posted Jan 20, 2021 21:52 UTC (Wed)
by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418)
[Link]
It's like https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/openwashing, but redefining the terms and pretending that's their normal definition is more like gaslighting or just corporate propoganda. It's despicable. In case you want a reference for the history of the meaning of free and open https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software defined as free software and open source, never free cost or source available, since 2005. Of course, it's worth mentioning https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html which appeared in 2013. And https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#FOSS.
Posted Jan 20, 2021 22:24 UTC (Wed)
by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418)
[Link] (3 responses)
Elastic sells a service giving access to their instance of Elasticsearch for your data. This is SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute, https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-reall...), which takes away people's freedom even more than nonfree software. They keep much of that software secret, and run none of it under SSPL. The source they do release is SSPL, so different requirements for anyone but them. Afaik, mongodb is the exact same situation.
Posted Jan 20, 2021 22:25 UTC (Wed)
by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418)
[Link]
Posted Jan 21, 2021 5:43 UTC (Thu)
by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 21, 2021 6:43 UTC (Thu)
by joib (subscriber, #8541)
[Link]
SSPL was after all invented when companies playing the dual AGPL/commercial license game thought the AGPL wasn't poisonous enough. The entire reason for it is to drive people to buy the commercial license, while still allowing the marketing department to waffle about "free & open".
Bradley Kuhn has a good writeup on the dual licensing scheme at https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equal...
Posted Jan 21, 2021 1:19 UTC (Thu)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (1 responses)
How can they claim that when the GPL prohibits derivative works of itself, right in the first paragraph?
Posted Jan 21, 2021 3:35 UTC (Thu)
by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418)
[Link]
Posted Jan 22, 2021 7:56 UTC (Fri)
by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958)
[Link] (2 responses)
Giving advice on how to grow your community and so on.
And I was just thinking that elasticsearch has no community. It's a commercial product through and through and I doubt anyone outside of their job has ever made a contribution to it.
Posted Jan 26, 2021 5:54 UTC (Tue)
by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604)
[Link] (1 responses)
I was wondering about that as well, are they accepting outside contributions at all? That would make it difficult to change the license later on unless outside contributors have given them permission to do that in advance.
Posted Jan 26, 2021 6:26 UTC (Tue)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
Posted Jan 22, 2021 12:49 UTC (Fri)
by amarao (guest, #87073)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 23, 2021 6:38 UTC (Sat)
by timrichardson (subscriber, #72836)
[Link]
Posted Jan 22, 2021 12:55 UTC (Fri)
by joib (subscriber, #8541)
[Link]
Posted Jan 23, 2021 4:12 UTC (Sat)
by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
[Link]
Posted Jan 26, 2021 5:48 UTC (Tue)
by jaymell (guest, #106443)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2021 12:04 UTC (Tue)
by timrichardson (subscriber, #72836)
[Link] (2 responses)
Read the Elasticsearch prospectus for the IPO. Tech investors buy into growth, and the open source model delivered rapid growth in adoption, and Elastic B.V. is very clear about the role open source plays. "Our origins are rooted in open source, which facilitates rapid adoption of our software and enables efficient distribution of our technology." and "Our business model is based on a combination of open source and proprietary software. Many features of our software can be used free of charge. Some are only available through paid subscriptions, which include access to specific proprietary features and also include support. "
Also, the paragraph above that says: "The Elastic Stack and our solutions are designed to run on premises, in public or private clouds, or in hybrid environments."
The business model was to sell support, and proprietary features. It is hard to see how AWS caused that to fail. The biggest threat to selling proprietary features is people adding the features to the open source code base, which is kind of how open source is supposed to work.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1707753/000119312...
Posted Jan 26, 2021 15:51 UTC (Tue)
by jaymell (guest, #106443)
[Link]
Posted Jan 28, 2021 15:53 UTC (Thu)
by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
[Link]
Probably as in "hey, I thought elasticsearch was an AWS service!" ;) I honestly didn't know it was an independent project! (I am ashamed to admit)
Drew DeVault doesn't mince his words on this change.
For a different view
For a different view
We had a look at the SSPL back in 2018.
SSPL
For a different view
For a different view
For a different view
For a different view
Unless RedHat is planning to deploy more counter-measures. We'll see.
For a different view
For a different view
For now this is what Red Hat has deployed: free RHEL for small production workloads and development teams.
For a different view
For a different view
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
License change does not appear to be justified by claims
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Worse yet. Stallman 1.0 was subjected to a witch hunt and driven away from every organisation.
If he was just stuck in the 70s then at least he would still be here.
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
> Adding insult to injury, jra's baby (Samba) switching to the GPLv3 cost them a lot of popularity. Guess I would be pretty miffed if I was in his shoes.
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
I don't personally have a lot of sympathy for Elastic or MongoDB, but I am sympathetic to the fears of startups that Amazon/AWS will effectively co-opt your business model. AWS's offerings have grown dramatically over the last five years, and many of the services they offer are indeed just repackaged versions of open-source tools like Elasticsearch.
It's also been widely reported that Amazon has used the pretense of investment in startups to instead develop competing products.
It just makes me uncomfortable at times to see the way open-source software is blatantly used to further the dominance of companies like Amazon, whose quest for world domination seems never-ending.
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana
Banon: License changes to Elasticsearch and Kibana