News

AWS-Developed OpenSearch Changes Hands, Opening Old Open Source Wounds

• By David Ramel
• 09/17/2024

An AWS project based on Elasticsearch has been turned over to a new group under the direction of the Linux Foundation.

The project, OpenSearch, is based on the open-source version of the Elasticsearch search/analytics engine originally developed by Elastic. AWS in 2019 took exception with "significant intermingling of proprietary code into the code base" of Elasticsearch, which it was using for its own managed Amazon Elasticsearch Service. "We have discussed our concerns with Elastic, the maintainers of Elasticsearch, including offering to dedicate significant resources to help support a community-driven, non-intermingled version of Elasticsearch," AWS said in a post at the time. "They have made it clear that they intend to continue on their current path."

Elastic then fired back, claiming, "Our brand has been used and abused, hijacked, and misrepresented many times. Companies have falsely claimed that they work in collaboration with our company, topically Amazon."

So AWS launched Open Distro for Elasticsearch, which led the way to OpenSearch, announced in April 2021 as an open-source alternative (Apache 2.0 license) after development on the open-source version of Elasticsearch stopped.

At the time, AWS said, "We are making a long-term investment in OpenSearch to ensure users continue to have a secure, high-quality, fully open source search and analytics suite with a rich roadmap of new and innovative functionality."

An OpenSearch FAQ says:

Developers embrace open source software for many reasons, one of the most important is the freedom to use that software where and how they wish. Elastic ceased making open source options available for Elasticsearch and Kibana, releasing them under the Elastic license, with source code available under the Elastic License or SSPL. These are not open source and do not offer users the same freedoms. Because of this, we made the decision to create a fork from the last Apache 2.0 version of Elasticsearch and Kibana and provide OpenSearch under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2).

On Monday, the transfer of OpenSearch to the newly formed OpenSearch Software Foundation under the umbrella Linux Foundation was announced in multiple posts.

"By opening up the project governance and moving to a neutral home, the OpenSearch team is taking concrete steps to further the project's founding principle that it is for the community and by the community," said AWS exec Kris Freedain in one. "This includes fostering an inclusive and transparent environment, actively encouraging participation from contributors, and prioritizing community-driven decision-making processes."

"As part of the creation of the OpenSearch Foundation, AWS has transferred ownership of OpenSearch to the Linux Foundation," said AWS exec Jon Handler in another. "At the launch of the project in April of 2021, in introducing OpenSearch, we spoke of our desire to 'ensure users continue to have a secure, high-quality, fully open source search and analytics suite with a rich roadmap of new and innovative functionality.' We've maintained that desire and commitment, and with this transfer, are deepening that commitment, and bringing in the broader community with open governance to help with that goal."

"The OpenSearch Software Foundation will focus on supporting OpenSearch as it continues to be adopted by organizations around the world to power business-critical workloads," said the Linux Foundation in a news release. "As a part of the Linux Foundation family of open source projects, OpenSearch and its community will benefit from deep resources for programming and infrastructure, such as training and professional certification initiatives, product documentation, developer collaboration and release support, and local and global events programs."

The release included supporting quotes from execs at foundation member organizations SAP, Uber, Aiven, Aryn.ai, Atlassian, Canonical, DigitalOcean, Eliatra, Graylog, NetApp Instaclustr and Portal26. There was no quote from Elastic.

The move is the latest in a long list of perceived slights levied against the open source community by cloud giants, which have been accused of taking advantage of open-source projects without giving back to the community. Cloud providers retort by emphasizing the value they add in terms of accessibility, contributions to the ecosystem, support for governance, and adherence to licensing terms. While they acknowledge that some tension exists, they maintain that their involvement is ultimately beneficial to the open-source community.