I think ElasticSearch license change was biggest such change, as was discussed previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25776657
https://camo.githubusercontent.com/71f7e9147092c7d4b08df18da...
Worth bearing in mind that the only reason fork even exists was so that they didnt have to pay Elastic a cut when selling hosted ElasticSearch.
If they cared about open source they could start by not undermining the business models of companies that do more than just pretend to support it.
(Not to mention lying about "partnering" with them)
If allowed to continue this would kill the project. If only Amazon can monetize it, it doesnt get developed. The open source project then dies.
Amazon is no more doing the right thing here than they were when they destroyed diapers.com with a strategy of sustained predatory pricing.
The fact that they want a pat on the back for being "pro open source" now after pulling this kind of crap is just icing on the cake.
Notably, you could build GPL software on top of OpenSearch. You could not do so on top of ElasticSearch at the moment.
So, Elastic then chose to change their license to try and counter it.
> Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form.
Especially so, it seems, if those restrictions promote the growth of open source.
Elastic changed to a license that is completely open except insofar as it blocked Amazon from profiting from it.
>Notably, you could build GPL software on top of OpenSearch. You could not do so on top of ElasticSearch.
Notably you can't build MIT software based on GPL software either. This is 100% about MIT being a weak open source license with few restrictions and GPL being a strong open source license with restrictions.
Not coincidentally the very-much-also-open-source-license GPL also had a history of infuriating big tech for exactly the same reason - they hate restrictions put in place designed to help open source flourish.
E.g. Here's Google getting publicly grumpy about the AGPL: https://www.theregister.com/2011/03/31/google_on_open_source...
It didn’t just block Amazon, and even if it did, selectively blocking a single downstream commercial user would make it not open source.
The freedom of third-party competitive commercial downstream use is a guarantee against effective vendor lock in, and it is one of the important reasons to choose open source solutions.
Does that make it hard to monetize development of software by just rent-seeking in the “we don’t want to expend the effort to host our own things” SaaS market with a hosted implementation? Yes, but, too bad.
No, I guess it also blocked google, oracle, etc. from monetizing their work without sharing the proceeds from the quite considerable profits they make (something they seem happy to do).
Didnt block anybody else though, as you well know. Any regular user of Elastic faced 0 additional restrictions.
>Does that make it hard to monetize development of software
No. As Amazon demonstrates the software can still be monetized by the most powerful rent seeking players in the market like Amazon.
Does it make it hard for the companies not running monopolistic rent machines that actually build open source? Yes. MUCH harder. It would have killed elastic.
>too bad.
Yes, too bad for open source.
You can be anti open source if you like (it has made a lot of people mad, not just MSFT and Amazon) but don't try to dress it up.
> Does this mean that Elasticsearch and Kibana are no longer Open Source?
> Yes. Neither the Elastic License nor SSPL have been approved by the OSI, so to prevent confusion, we no longer refer to Elasticsearch or Kibana as open source. We updated our website and our messaging to refer to these products as “Free & Open,” and when talking about the licenses directly, we describe them as “source-available.” If you notice an area we missed, please let us know, so we can correct it.
I am not sure anyone should care what OSI thinks about a given license
To the corporate funded OSI. I know.
The same corporate OSI who joined in the character assassination attacks on Richard "open source comes before profit" Stallman for very similar reasons.