[HN Gopher] Elastic and Amazon reach agreement on trademark infr...
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Elastic and Amazon reach agreement on trademark infringement
lawsuit
Author : dhd415
Score : 63 points
Date : 2022-02-16 21:33 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.elastic.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.elastic.co)
| uji wrote:
| Looks like pretty good news. Have worked in AWS before. So AWS is
| very famous for making money using open source products without
| contributing upstream.
|
| One very good example is Amazon redis. Amazon figured out that
| redis asynchronous replication didn't work at scale so instead of
| fixing issues upstream they chose to develop Amazon redis in
| house and monetized it.
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/memorydb/
|
| Enhanced version means patched made by AWS.
| https://aws.amazon.com/elasticache/redis-details/
| rabuse wrote:
| Ahh, the new Oracle.
| ignoramous wrote:
| At this point in AWS' life, enterprise sales is king. Not
| surprising that there's shades of Oracle / Microsoft in them.
| May be, Google hired Oracle #2, Thomas Kurian, to head GCP
| for similar reasons. Like it or not, Oracle-sized shadow
| looms large over BigCloud.
| LoveGracePeace wrote:
| It surprises me when people lump Oracle (or AWS for that
| matter) in with the likes of Microsoft.
| adventured wrote:
| No, not everything negative is the new Oracle. AWS has very
| little in common with how Oracle has operated historically.
|
| Oracle didn't build their company in the style of AWS Redis,
| that cloning maneuver. Oracle's database was a pioneer.
| Oracle didn't get where they are by cloning open source and
| claiming it as their own. Despite the numerous bad things
| that can be said about Oracle's culture, that's not one of
| the key negatives about Oracle.
| LoveGracePeace wrote:
| Agreed. Not an Oracle fan boy but they didn't deserve to be
| brought up in the context.
| deepsun wrote:
| Sometimes fixing upstream is hard / not possible, when
| maintainers don't want to accept others' proposals/vision, or
| are cautious to change architecture with breaking changes.
| DelightOne wrote:
| So they don't release the result as OSS because upstream
| wouldn't have included it?
| WaxProlix wrote:
| I was sort of curious, so I went to see what impact this had on
| the customer experience at AWS. Searching for 'elasticsearch' in
| the AWS console services dropdown now yields:
|
| ''' Amazon OpenSearch Service (successor to Amazon Elasticsearch
| Service)
|
| Run and Scale OpenSearch and Elasticsearch Clusters (successor to
| Amazon Elasticsea... '''
|
| This seems like a petty, small win from the Elasticsearch people.
| I understand AWS has a history of gobbling up OSS and
| productizing it, and that that's detrimental, but it's hard to
| see Elastic, Inc as anything but sore that they got their lunch
| eaten here. Maybe that's justified. But it comes off as
| incredibly petty.
|
| (disclaimer: i used to work at aws, but not anywhere near the
| referenced offerings).
| dhd415 wrote:
| Wow, it's pretty surprising to me that the agreement allowed
| AWS to refer to Elasticsearch at all when promoting their own
| managed search offering.
| judge2020 wrote:
| There's a constant struggle between allowing free speech
| versus restricting it via trademark laws. In general, they
| want to make sure companies can talk about and mention their
| competitors by name and not be silenced by trademark
| lawsuits, while still ensuring the trademark isn't being
| infringed to the point of confusion. "Amazon Elasticsearch
| Service" sounds an awful lot like they have permission to use
| the Elasticsearch brand, while simply referring to it in
| parentheses indicates it's a competing service to the actual
| elasticsearch.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's "detrimental" to companies who perhaps shouldn't have
| chosen a license that allows AWS to do exactly what they did.
| Those companies can't simultaneously claim to be competent and
| to have made that choice without knowing what they were doing.
|
| IMO, they chased the benefits of being open source and then
| changed course when the costs to them exceeded the benefits
| (which is fine for code going forward), but trademark concerns
| aside, I can't see AWS as the bad actor here.
| ignoramous wrote:
| If anything AWS has increased its co-operation with F/OSS
| businesses of late and this clear shift in strategy was
| apparent in product / partnership announcements leading up to
| 2021 re:Invent. AWS, I believe, realise the F/OSS ecosystem
| mustn't be taken undue advantage of. I mean, AWS stands a
| good chance of getting caught in a vehement backlash (let
| alone sporadic bad PR) from the developer community, who
| ironically form the basis of an entire industry AWS sells
| into and operates in.
|
| With Microsoft + GitHub intensifying their investments in
| F/OSS, AWS had to play ball. It is smart, not petty on
| anyone's part.
|
| Judging from the tone of the article, I am glad Elastic is
| content in their current business relationship with AWS.
| Hopefully, the companies also find an agreement to have AWS'
| OpenSearch fork merged back in, as well.
|
| disclaimer: ex-AWS, but zero insider information.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| This comment is in every thread about this, but there has to
| be a solution that satisfies FOSS purists as well as casual
| users without allowing a massive, evil megacorp to just stomp
| on every company built around open-source solutions.
| Salgat wrote:
| How is AWS stomping all over it? Being able to fork for
| your own needs is a good thing. You don't make something
| open source and accept the world's free contributions
| without acknowledging that.
| zakki wrote:
| Except AWS is not forking open source for their own use.
| They sell it and get a lot of profit from it.
| growse wrote:
| > Except AWS is not forking open source for their own
| use. They sell it and get a lot of profit from it.
|
| They sell a hosted service that uses the software.
| They're not selling the software.
|
| Pretty difficult to see how a company building a SaaS
| business around some software is not "for their own use".
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Again, you're leading with the definition-of-FOSS
| argument.
|
| Step back from FOSS for a second.
|
| I think most people would agree that there's somewhat of
| a moral issue with just taking someone else's open source
| software and just hosting it and making billions, with
| nothing for the creators, because you are a megacorp who
| is good at hosting.
|
| Now, is there a way to solve that and have the benefits
| of FOSS?
|
| Both Mongo and MariaDB have tried to address this with
| licensing - MariaDB seems to have done this _much_ less
| clumsily than Mongo, but both still had FOSS advocates
| shrieking
|
| Edit to include my below comment:
|
| If everyone stomps their feet and says "there's no
| solution, otherwise it's not OSS!" then the end result is
| only going to be a lot less open-source software.
| shawnz wrote:
| Don't you think there's a moral issue expecting free
| contributions to something which only you are allowed to
| monetize? And how can you satisfy users to the greatest
| extent while also preventing them from using the provider
| that is best able to meet their needs?
| owenmarshall wrote:
| You've got it precisely backwards. The license placed on
| a software encodes what you wish to allow other people to
| do with it.
|
| If you have a moral qualm with bigcorps using your work
| for free, you don't license in such a way that they can.
| Make your own license, or slap AGPL3 on it - either way,
| no bigcorp touches it.
|
| But you cannot be mad when you say "I release this code
| under these terms" _and AWS takes you up on your offer_.
| bobertlo wrote:
| if their service is hosting an open source product maybe
| they should be competitive at it
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Now, is there a way to solve that and have the benefits
| of FOSS?
|
| The answer is simple - no. Either your product is fully
| free and you accept that people can fork iz, even Amazon,
| or you choose a restrictive license. You can't make
| "free" (as in libre) compatible with "but".
|
| I can totally see that you think this is unfair, but they
| did allow it and they were perfectly happy when being
| FOSS brought them market share. You have to take the good
| with the bad.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| If everyone stomps their feet and says "there's no
| solution, otherwise it's not OSS!" then the end result is
| only going to be a lot less open-source software.
| growse wrote:
| How is there a moral issue when the software creators
| specifically and explicitly granted that right?
| mullingitover wrote:
| > someone else's open source software
|
| This feels like an oxymoron: if it's open source licensed
| there is explicitly no 'owner.'
| growse wrote:
| Perhaps they mean the copyright owner?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| AGPL?
| skrtskrt wrote:
| AGPL seems to guarantee mostly that you can obtain
| changes people are applying downstream in order to host
| your software, and apply them back up.
|
| It does not prevent someone from making billions off of
| doing nothing but hosting your software because they are
| better than you at hosting.
| touisteur wrote:
| But, if the value-add is hosting more than the software
| itself, why would you prevent the 'value-adder' making
| the bulk of the money?
|
| I'm like OP, trying to take a step back. What do we want
| here? As users? As developers? That no one does too much
| (or any) money hosting our software for other people
| willing to pay? Profit-sharing? On what basis?
|
| Really, naively, apart from the use of the Elastic brand,
| that I might conceive could cause problems, who's hurting
| whom?
| totony wrote:
| Nor should it, that's what OSS is about. Why should they
| not do what they want with your software? As long as it
| stays open it's OSS
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Ok, but I am asking is there any solution?
|
| Is there a way to get the benefits of OSS AND for the
| creators to get more then zero dollars when someone makes
| a shitload of money off of just putting their software on
| an enterprise cloud?
| growse wrote:
| > Ok, but I am asking is there any solution?
|
| > Is there a way to get the benefits of OSS AND for the
| creators to get more then zero dollars when someone makes
| a shitload of money off of just putting their software on
| an enterprise cloud?
|
| You're basically asking if something can be
| simultaneously open and not open.
|
| The benefits come precisely because someone can come
| along and create a successful business using your
| software without owing you anything. That is the reason
| for the benefits.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| There is. AGPL + dual licensing.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| How would dual licensing go down, ideally in these cases?
|
| I figured if that worked, Elastic, Redis, MariaDB, Mongo,
| Timescale, and Cockroach Labs would have gone that route
| Macha wrote:
| Start out that way, and you'll find it harder to build a
| user base. So instead companies have done it as a bait
| and switch (planned or otherwise)
| chrsig wrote:
| From what I understand about trademark law, unlike copyright,
| trademarks _must_ be defended at risk of losing them. So it may
| seem petty, but might actually have some necessity behind it.
|
| IANAL, and certainly not an expert on trademark law. Hopefully
| someone with more legal knowledge can provide some resources.
|
| Even if it is just petty, it's petty against amazon, and I for
| one don't really feel the need to have sympathy for them.
| wumpus wrote:
| Most people don't really get what trademark defense is --
| having Amazon label the trademark in some places as
| "Elasticsearch is a trademark of <whoever>" is enough to
| count. Even linking the elasticsearch software repo or
| elastic.co in conjunction with the trademark name is enough.
|
| Source: I have a best-selling book author friend who has been
| defending her trademark on a somewhat popular pop-culture
| term this way for a few decades.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| That makes sense. I do sort of wish there were something to
| take away from this though that might lead to better outcomes
| for future endeavours, so that people could learn from
| Elastic's blunder, but if there's anything I don't see it.
| sdesol wrote:
| Full disclosure: This is my tool that I'm using to generate the
| insights.
|
| When OpenSearch was announced, I shared some insights into how
| both Elasticsearch and OpenSearch were evolving, and I'll share
| some more up to date insights here.
|
| Looking at recent pull request activity, OpenSearch had 52
| contributors
|
| https://oss.gitsense.com/insights/github?q=pull-age%3A%3C%3D...
|
| while Elasticsearch had 181
|
| https://oss.gitsense.com/insights/github?q=pull-age%3A%3C%3D...
|
| The metric that I'm most interested in, is knowing how many
| people committed within the last 14 days compared to those that
| committed more than 14 days ago. For Elasticsearch, they had 87
| contributors which accounts for 68% of all contributors.
| OpenSearch had 20, which accounts for 67%. With these numbers, I
| can ball park how many people are working on Elasticsearch and
| OpenSearch full time and I would say Elasticsearch at the present
| moment has probably 5 times more people working on it fulltime vs
| OpenSearch.
|
| An important thing to note is, Amazon has other projects that are
| related to OpenSearch so these numbers don't necessary give the
| full picture, but it is pretty obvious that Elasticsearch is
| evolving at a much faster pace and time will tell if they
| (OpenSearch) can keep up.
| TSiege wrote:
| I'll be curious to see what happens as well. I ended up going
| with Opensearch since I use AWS. I figured I'm already locked
| in to that environment anyways, so why not
| sdesol wrote:
| Somebody that does consulting work with Elasticsearch
| mentioned that they had some pretty innovative features in
| the pipeline and these are the things that can really pull
| people away from OpenSearch. It could also be that, people
| only really want basic search functionality so who knows
| right :-)
| deknos wrote:
| i think that for all the people which just want a logging
| system in their k8s, opensearch is pretty good.
|
| lots of software ist stable and just works. everyone uses
| bash. let the elastic guys make their new software more
| shiny, good for them. i am now glad i can use a real
| opensource version at home and for small to midsized
| projects. if opensearch won't cut it? no problem, the
| customer can pay elastic :)
| CSDude wrote:
| Elastic is already a mature product, with little to improve.
| Even 8.0 release is focused on speed and footprint. Many
| companies still use 2.x happily. License implications are not
| worth it.
| dhd415 wrote:
| Having interacted with Elasticsearch a lot, I assure you
| there is a lot for them yet to improve. Frankly, I think
| Elasticsearch followed the MongoDB model of "make it easy for
| developers to adopt and then make it good." MDB did that by
| making it easy to throw "schema-less" documents into their
| database and then later working on "advanced" things like
| avoiding data loss [0]. Elasticsearch did something similar
| in that you don't have to run a separate cluster coordination
| server like Zookeeper which Solr requires. It's also easy to
| get up and running with indexing unstructured data. Running
| it at scale with heavy workloads? There are still plenty of
| rough edges there. It's a good way to gain market share and
| both products have definitely improved, but I wouldn't want
| my day job to involve the operation of a large Elasticsearch
| cluster.
|
| [0] https://pastebin.com/raw/FD3xe6Jt
| jbverschoor wrote:
| It would be nice if we can get some sort of standard license
| agreement for cases like this..
|
| It's such a shame that this happened
| [deleted]
| deknos wrote:
| What does this mean for opensearch?
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| This announcement is confusing, because it makes no mention of
| OpenSearch. The announcement implies that OpenSearch should no
| longer be available on AWS, but (of course) it is.
| sdesol wrote:
| It was announced by elastic and I'm not sure it is in their
| best interest to advertise their competitor.
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