Elastic’s decision to return to open source has sent waves through the tech world, especially in the context of its ongoing battle with AWS. As Elastic’s founder and CTO Shay Banon stated, “We never stopped believing in open source at Elastic.” Elastic is now set to add the AGPL (GNU Affero General Public License) to its licensing options, alongside its previous licenses, ELv2 (Elastic License 2.0) and SSPL (Server Side Public License). This shift is seen as a return to the company’s roots and marks a major shift in its licensing strategy. Banon was visibly excited about this change, reflecting a sense of relief and optimism for the future of the company.
The key factor that enabled Elastic to make this move is the evolving relationship with AWS. When Elastic changed its licensing in 2021, AWS was no longer able to directly copy Elasticsearch as part of its cloud services. This prompted AWS to create OpenSearch, a competing fork of Elasticsearch, which has seen some success in its own right. Banon explained that with Amazon’s full commitment to OpenSearch and the market confusion over Elasticsearch trademarks largely resolved, Elastic no longer needed to worry about AWS commodifying its product. The new dynamic, Banon notes, has led to a stronger partnership between Elastic and AWS, highlighting that, despite previous conflicts, collaboration can still thrive.
This shift has raised questions about the broader open-source landscape. Will other companies that have shifted away from open-source licenses, such as MongoDB, follow Elastic’s example and return to more permissive licensing models? Banon’s comments suggest that much of this depends on AWS’s own decisions and how it chooses to engage with open-source projects moving forward. The question remains whether AWS’s past behavior of co-opting open-source projects will hinder future open-source relationships or foster more collaboration in the cloud-native ecosystem.
The underlying tension that led to this shift is rooted in the way AWS used Elastic’s trademarked product. While open-source licenses traditionally allow anyone to use the software, Elastic’s frustration arose from AWS selling a version of Elasticsearch under the “AWS Elasticsearch” brand without contributing to the community. This issue was not about competition but rather about the misrepresentation of the product. As Banon explained, the problem was that AWS called it their own service, which led to significant trademark infringement issues. Elastic fought back legally, but the case underscored a significant gap in how trademarks are handled in the open-source world, especially when large corporations leverage them without contributing back.