Read on Twitter
Some thoughts on Elastic and the SSPL: this shit is hard. I agree with other voices that this was counterproductive and a betrayal of the community but I get it.
To better explain things I think we need to split Elastic into two pieces, the steward of an immensely popular project and a VC-backed startup providing hosting services. In their role as steward, the relicensing leaves their community in a terrible place.
Many don't know for sure if using ES is legally safe, others don't know if they should jump to the fork that Elastic 100% knew was inevitable. That's a betrayal of their responsibilities to the community.
But the part I see many glossing over is that most of the money to pay developers to work on ES is coming from the startup side. Amazon was and is an existential threat to their current business model. But okay, you're a good capitalist so you say "fine, let them go under".
If Amazon provides a better product to the consumer, why shouldn't they win? Because Amazon does not pull in their weight class when it comes to dev work. Maybe now they will devote more resources to their fork, but historically they could rely on using the work funded by Elastic
And so we have a no-win scenario, at least with current business models and (non-terrible) licenses. Databases in particular are beyond the complexity where I think it's reasonable to expect them to happen purely by volunteer effort.
And the all-consuming maw that is SF VC life won't tolerate small returns like you get by competing with a giant. In a better world we would fund this kind of thing via public works, like roads and bridges, but good luck hiring even one dev like that today, let alone a team.
I think weaponzing the OSI-based definition of "open source" to use a cudgel against things like the SSPL is unhelpful and discourages future attempts at solving this problem. There are some limits on freedom that I find acceptable if it lets the things I want be made at all.
So to attack Elastic with "it's proprietary" is, IMO, missing the point. The important things about open source, to me, are the community aspects, being able to tinker, to fix my own bugs. Even though I think it sucks, SSPL does keep those things.
But it adds in so much uncertainty that no one is really sure where the lines are. This is made even worse by organizations that are supposed to be guiding open source declaring these new breed of licenses as "not our problem" and leaving everyone to figure it out themselves.
Personally I would much rather see more direct attempts like a blocklist of companies, but I fear that would be seen as unsporting conduct or unfair. But there is also maybe a way forward using the legal technology in @VanL's CAL and the way it defines combined works.
tl;dr freedom for freedom's sake is not what I think is important about open source and I think the parts that provide value can coexist with modern business realities with some well-scoped and well-explained curtailments on freedom, but Elastic and SSPL ain't that.
