Elasticsearch and Kibana reappear under an open source license: the developer puts the Elasticsearch engine and related analysis software under the AGPL. The move comes after a controversial change three years ago, when the provider published its products only under ELv2 and SSPL.
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Important point: Although Elastic stressed at the time that the source code with the SSPL is still openly available, the license is not open source software in the OSI sense. But the AGPL clearly falls under it, as Elastic’s announcement itself shows.
Amazon AWS as the culprit
At the same time, the developer emphasizes that Amazon was to blame for the situation at the time: due to the cloud giant’s confusing offering, Elastic should have provided clarity with the license change. AWS offered the ELK software (ElasticSearch, Logstash and Kibana) as its own distribution – with Elastic accusing Amazon of copying its own work but not collaborating with the developer.
During the dispute, AWS decided to create a fork called OpenSearch. In the current announcement Elastic claims that they expected such a fork. It would essentially have not only a new name, but also a different goal.
However, after three years, the dispute is fully resolved – Elastic and Amazon now maintain a strong partnership. Accordingly, it is now time to put Elasticsearch and Kibana under true open source licenses again. Elastic insists that the change was not a mistake at the time, as that is the only reason why all the changes that make the change possible now were made.
Just an additional option
It is important that AGPL is added as another license option, so that ELV2 and SSPL remain. Elastic emphasizes that nothing will change for existing users. The provider’s hope is clear: it wants to attract more users through additional open source licensing.
The full announcement can be found on the Elastic blog,
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