[Koha-devel] Elasticsearch changing licences

[dcook at prosentient.com.au]

I think that Shay Banon was exaggerating calling "Open Distro for Elasticsearch" a fork. 

If you look at https://github.com/opendistro-for-elasticsearch/opendistro-build/blob/master/elasticsearch/linux_distributions/opendistro-tar-build.sh#L29 and https://github.com/opendistro-for-elasticsearch/opendistro-build/blob/master/release-tools/scripts/manifest.yml, you'll see that Amazon downloads the pre-built open source version of Elasticsearch and then adds its own seemingly open source plugins. (I'm guessing the dig by Shay Banon here is implying that these open source plugins were actually copied from the proprietary plugins developed by Elastic.)

Amazon refute quite a few of Elastic's claims, but it would take time to double-check them all. Unfortunately the graphics in the following article are missing now: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/aws-contributes-to-elasticsearch-and-critics-say-its-kneecapping-competitors/. I did have a look through https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/graphs/contributors and pretty much every contributor I looked at was from Elastic. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/stepping-up-for-a-truly-open-source-elasticsearch/ mentions a number of pull requests from AWS, which appear to be merged, but Github isn't listing stats correctly, so it's tough to easily see. 

Both sides are self-interested so I am skeptical of what both sides say. Looking through Elasticsearch commits, the vast majority come from the Elastic company. While AWS has resources, I wonder how well they'd be able to compete with Elastic's Elasticsearch. With MongoDB, it sounds like Amazon's fork and MongoDB have diverged a fair amount with the Amazon fork being less good than MongoDB. So I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happens with Elasticsearch.

David Cook
Software Engineer
Prosentient Systems
Suite 7.03
6a Glen St
Milsons Point NSW 2061
Australia

Office: 02 9212 0899
Online: 02 8005 0595

-----Original Message-----
From: Campbell, Colin <colin.campbell at ptfs-europe.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, 27 January 2021 11:03 PM
To: dcook at prosentient.com.au
Cc: koha-devel <koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org>
Subject: Re: [Koha-devel] Elasticsearch changing licences

>From elastic's justification it looks as though Amazon already had https://www.elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-AWS

On Tue, 26 Jan 2021 at 22:58, <dcook at prosentient.com.au> wrote:
>
> Not an OSI approved open source licence at least.
>
>
>
> I meant to say before that it seems that AWS are (predictably) forking Elasticsearch: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/stepping-up-for-a-truly-open-source-elasticsearch/.
>
>
>
> It’ll be really interesting to see what happens.
>
>
>
> David Cook
>
> Software Engineer
>
> Prosentient Systems
>
> Suite 7.03
>
> 6a Glen St
>
> Milsons Point NSW 2061
>
> Australia
>
>
>
> Office: 02 9212 0899
>
> Online: 02 8005 0595
>
>
>
> From: Koha-devel <koha-devel-bounces at lists.koha-community.org> On 
> Behalf Of Paul Poulain
> Sent: Tuesday, 26 January 2021 3:07 AM
> To: koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org
> Subject: Re: [Koha-devel] Elasticsearch changing licences
>
>
>
> Yikes, have you seen : https://opensource.org/node/1099 ?
>
> The SSPL is Not an Open Source License :\
>
> Le 15/01/2021 à 06:22, dcook at prosentient.com.au a écrit :
>
> Hi all,
>
>
>
> Have folk heard that Elastic is changing the Elasticsearch licence?
>
>
>
> Depending on your sources and your beliefs, this may or may not matter, but certainly something to be aware of.
>
>
>
> https://www.elastic.co/pricing/faq/licensing
>
> --
>
> Paul Poulain, Associé-gérant / co-owner
>
> BibLibre, Services en logiciels libres pour les bibliothèques
>
> BibLibre, Open Source software and services for libraries
>
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