Elasticsearch changes licensing | Open source community is furious
Elasticsearch, a hugely popular open source project, is changing its licensing terms
It’s going from Apache 2.0 to SSPL & Elastic License
Why are they doing this?
It is aimed at hosted Elasticsearch services like AWS’
Elastic wants companies like AWS to pay for redistribution rights
Does it affect every single Elasticsearch user?
No. If you host your own Elasticsearch, nothing changes
How did AWS respond?
AWS will be forking Elasticsearch
According to a Fireship poll – 65% prefer the AWS fork over the SSPL version
AWS did the same thing with MongoDB
When Mongo switched to SSPL, AWS created DocumentDB
DocumentDB is just a renamed service with full support for MongoDB
Why is this a big deal?
Around 1600 developers have contributed to Elasticsearch
Now, Elastic has taken exclusive rights to all their work
The open source community is furious with Elastic
Elastic was stuck between a rock and hard place
They’ve made a decision
And now let the chips will fall where they may
This will lead to a lot of changes in open source projects
Open source devs are wary of committing to projects with no oversight committee
Interestingly, Linkerd just announced a steering committee
Istio is a big concern as Google still holds the reins to the project
Bodies like the Linux Foundation, and CNCF help keep OSS truly open
Next time you decide to adopt open source, take a second look at its parent organization
To know more about Elasticsearch and related topics, please visit www.TwainTaylor.com
by Twain Taylor
linux foundation
