Because while it's true that Amazon is following the terms of the license, it's having real repercussions in that the people actually maintaining the Software are seeing decreased ability to grow the product because a huge company, belonging to the second richest man in the world, is offering it as part of their vertically-integrated oligopoly.
Reducing it to an issue of following license terms is short sighted, it's having negative repercussions on the software ecosystem and it's a dimension that has to be considered beyond merely a discussion on copyleft and the extent of it.
> Reducing it to an issue of following license terms is short sighted
It's really not: the license terms are the root of the problem you are pointing out. We can either voice our (righteous, but ultimately pointless) anger or we can try to analyze what's happening and how to fix it. So let's do the latter.
Amazon offers a fully managed ElasticSearch service running on the core ES code because ElasticSearch was, up to this point, released under the Apache 2.0 license which fully supports Amazon's right to do this.
Amazon offers a fully managed MongoDB compatible database called DocumentDB. It is not based on MongoDB – Amazon reimplemented the core functionality but maintained the MongoDB API layer.
MongoDB Inc. makes the forceful point that it is not a drop in replacement[1] but a rather crippled product that lags behind what MongoDB can do and continues to diverge. This is likely very good marketing for MongoDB and probably helps their company succeed :)
Why did Amazon do this? Why would Amazon use the core ES code but go through a more difficult reimplementation for Mongo?
Because MongoDB's core was licensed under the terms of the AGPL3, but all the drivers that implemented the API functionality were implemented under terms of the Apache 2.0 license.
> the people actually maintaining the Software are seeing decreased ability to grow the product because a huge company, belonging to the second richest man in the world, is offering it as part of their vertically-integrated oligopoly.
When you choose an OSS license, you're giving permission to any company or person to exploit your product in any way they want, this is how OSS works.
Amazon is not the only one that can do this and I would be surprised if other cloud vendors didn't also offer ES and other popular OSS software to their customers.
Do you expect that just because you created some OSS you deserve some kind of exclusivity on profits made from it?? If you do, you need to understand you need to use a non-OSS license. This seems to be what Elastic has finally realised, but a bit late.
Yes but that's what I'm talking about. That's a core principle in OSS so far but you can't sweep the issues of fairness to the people doing the actual work nor the issue of contributing to increasing the power of organizations whose interests are more likely counter to people's freedom and welfare.
I know that prominent figures in FOSS have expressed the sentiment that you have to suck it up, but you know, the people actually living through this have a say.
Thus, licensing changes and a conversation on their moral standing.
You cannot release your software under the terms of a permissive license, then when faced with a large company following the terms of the license, complain that you should get first crack at monetization.
That seems to be the fundamental problem with this whole tempest in a teapot: people have decided on an idea of what "free software" means in their hearts, and many people think it's about "fairness" and "protecting the little guy". That is noble and good, but isn't extensible to an existing large body of software with licenses that clearly spell out how free they are or are not.
But what is great is that if you don't like the state of affairs you don't have to suck it up: you just have to pick a license that is better suited to your goals.
I have a handful of open source projects on my public Github. They fall into two categories for me:
* Software that is trivial, uninteresting, or easy to replicate: these I've released under the terms of the ISC license (2-clause BSD). I have no expectation it will ever come to much, so I'm happy to free it – if it ever turns up in the license file of the iPhone or a Tesla or something I'll say "cool!" (but it won't because it's not that good ;)) Hopefully someone uses it and it makes their life easier.
* Software that is non-trivial, interesting, or difficult to replicate: I've freed it all under the terms of the AGPLv3 and placed a "business use? contact me about the license" note at the top. If I ever decided to work towards building a product around the software (but I won't because it's not that good ;)) I'd look at a dual-licensing strategy, but in the meantime it's out there for anyone to extend and carry forward and build things on. But I know that the AGPLv3 essentially means FAANG will never touch it because the risk is disproportionate for the reward of using it.
This feels right to me. Your calculus may be different so you can license as you'd wish.
Reducing it to an issue of following license terms is short sighted, it's having negative repercussions on the software ecosystem and it's a dimension that has to be considered beyond merely a discussion on copyleft and the extent of it.