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I don't believe the issue most are taking here is the license itself that elasticsearch now has, I think its the relicensing of existing contributions (ironically including those from AWS and their employees) which were originally under a true, well-accepted and liberal FOSS license.

If elasticsearch had this license from day one, that would be fair enough, but many people do not freely contribute time and effort to improving something which is not freely available to all others (whether individual or large corporation).

Elasticsearch is self-victimising here when they are arguably exploiting FOSS contributors good will (though due to the CLA what they are doing is most definitely legal).



> ironically including those from AWS and their employees

Does AWS ever contribute anything that isn't an AWS integration? I'm not asking rhetorically -- those are the only kind of "contribution" I've ever seen from them.


Quoting another earlier comment from an elasticsearch thread here, credits to user _msw_ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25783509): https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/pull/61400 https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/pull/59563 https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/pull/57271 https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/pull/53643 .

None of the above appear to be related to AWS specific APIs and offer a small sample of total contributions from AWS employees.


Elastic is not and legally cannot change the license of code contributed in the past. That code will always carry the original license.


You are correct, sorry my wording was clumsy and inaccurate. I should have clarified that the project itself is now under a different license, though I believe the net effect is similar to relicensing the original code, as forks are unlikely to be sustainable.




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