Why Is AWS Forking Elasticsearch After Elastic’s License Shift?
The article explains Elastic's switch to SSPL/Elastic License for Elasticsearch and Kibana, Logz.io's criticism, AWS's fork under Apache 2.0, and the broader open‑source licensing battle between cloud providers and the original vendor.
Elastic recently announced that it would change the open‑source licenses of Elasticsearch and Kibana from Apache 2.0 to SSPL and the Elastic License.
This move prompted strong criticism from the cloud‑service provider Logz.io.
In response, AWS announced on January 21 that it would create a fork of the still‑open‑source Elasticsearch and Kibana (version 7.10) and continue to distribute it under the Apache License 2.0, also committing to maintain the fork.
AWS framed its fork as the "truly open source" version, implying that Elastic’s new dual‑license model is not OSI‑approved.
The situation echoes a similar episode in 2019 when AWS launched Open Distro for Elasticsearch, marketing it as 100% open source under Apache 2.0.
Historically, Elastic sued Amazon over trademark issues related to Open Distro, and the ongoing licensing dispute has escalated to the present conflict.
The article invites readers to share their own perspectives on this evolving open‑source saga.
Signed-in readers can open the original source through BestHub's protected redirect.
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Programmer DD
A tinkering programmer and author of "Spring Cloud Microservices in Action"
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