"Our relationship with various cloud vendors is actually very good." Elastic solution architect Zhu Jie added "actually" when he said this.
For the disturbance between cloud vendors and open source companies, you can make up the lesson: " The "Rebel Tide" is Coming, Open Source Presents a Three-Party Game Pattern . To put it simply, many open source companies prevent cloud vendors from "free-riding" by changing their protocols, but the changed protocols no longer meet the OSI definition of open source. As a result, disputes and discord among open source companies, cloud vendors and open source associations began to ferment...
On October 20th, there was a magical round table at the Open Source Gravity Summit of the Yunqi Conference, which brought together various stakeholders at the center of the story, including Elastic, Alibaba Cloud, the Linux Foundation, and the Apache Software Foundation. The style of painting is harmonious and subtle. :
Elastic said: "Our truth is 'water and milk blending'. We hope that cloud manufacturers will do a good job in the underlying ecological cultivation. The bigger the cloud platform, the more responsible it is to promote the atmosphere of innovation."
Alibaba Cloud said: "Without open source, there would be no cloud computing, and there would be no AWS and Alibaba Cloud. Companies like Alibaba Cloud have actually done a lot of dirty work and organized a lot of infrastructure."
The foundations also said that open source is not a charity, and both parties have common interests. It is better to put aside disputes and work together to push the project to a higher level.
01 The problem of freedom of license - open source is not "idyllic"
As a world-renowned big data search and real-time processing company , Elastic has nearly 2,000 employees in more than 40 countries and regions around the world. After going public in 2018, it now has a market capitalization of more than $15.9 billion (as of October 25, 2021). Clearly, Elastic has had a lot of commercial success as an open source company.
On January 15, 2021, Elastic announced that the license of the open source software Elasticsearch and Kibana will be converted from the Apache License 2.0 to a dual license of Server Side Public License (SSPL) and Elastic License 2.0.
Because of this incident, Elastic was sprayed miserably, and many people expressed their disagreement . OSI also tweeted to reiterate that "SSPL is not an open source license."
If I'm an Evil People, should I be banned from open source licenses? OSI's answer is: no. As an open source agreement, it cannot be discriminated against, and it cannot be said that it is used for this organization or not, in one language and not another. Therefore, agreements such as SSPL and Elastic License 2.0 that exclude cloud vendors naturally do not meet the definition.
"OSI's suggestion is that if you do not meet the ten definitions, it is recommended not to use the term open source." Zhu Jie talked about this matter at the round table. He said that Elastic has great respect for the OSI organization, and according to the suggestion, Elastic is no longer Use the words open source instead of "open and free" .
Under the principle of "open and free", Elastic, which has modified the protocol, still values the right to modify and redistribute the code, and maintain as much freedom as possible, although it cannot meet the OSI open source standard.
In Zhu Jie's view, this is actually a question of degrees of freedom . "If the degree of freedom of traditional closed-source software is zero, then the degree of freedom defined by him (OSI) has reached 8 or 9. This requirement is very, very high." We can kill one degree of freedom. Isn't 7/10 software free?
The open source definition has such a high degree of freedom that it is not friendly to entrepreneurs. In the business world, an open source license that gives freedom to everyone also means giving your competitors that right and freedom. At this level, open source, like charging, is a business model. It is meaningless to care about whether it is "true open source" or "fake open source". It is the business that the startup can survive.
Interestingly, Wu Sheng , the founder of Skywalking who relied on ElasticSearch and was greatly affected by the modification of the protocol, was also on the round table of the summit. In addition to the founder of Skywalking, he also had a title: Director of the Apache Software Foundation .
At the beginning of this year, when Elastic revised the agreement, Skywalking's statement was: "We can no longer use only Elasticsearch, and we will consider other storage solutions, such as InfluxDB, TiDB and H2 Server, which are also licensed under the Apache License 2.0." (In fact, Skywalking also announced in May this year that it would use OpenSearch to replace Elasticsearch as a storage solution, and the former came from Elastic's "enemy" Amazon .)
"The widespread use of Apache 2.0 shows that everyone recognizes this license, and Elastic, as a commercial company, has the right to set intellectual property rights. This is a very standard commercial behavior and will not have a big impact on open source. ." The same is attributed to business, Wu Sheng said.
Elastic has long been aware of the impact of protocol modifications on downstream software. "The impact on other software is only a technical problem and can be repaired." Zhu Jie responded.
When multiple interests are involved, the most important thing is to reach a consensus. Whether it is an agreement or a law, the problem that open source companies and cloud vendors are now facing is actually a problem of distribution of interests . How can all parties ensure that they can maximize their interests under the premise of consensus?
02 Cloud and open source are a game, but not a zero-sum game
In order to maximize the benefits, the "zero-sum game" cannot be played between the cloud and open source, with the aim of defeating the other side. In practice, cloud and open source are more of a partnership of "one prosper, one loss and one loss".
On the one hand, cloud is both a subversion and an opportunity for open source.
Despite the tension with Amazon , Elastic still built its own SaaS service in AWS, and in China, Elastic also introduced a commercial version through cooperation with Alibaba Cloud. In fact, many open source products are well suited to run on the cloud, and the cloud helps build new business models for these open source software.
https://www.elastic.co/cn/partners/aws
"In the early days, our open source was based on a public welfare mentality, but today, open source has become a very good business, which benefits from cloud computing." Jiang Jiangwei, vice president of Alibaba Group and head of Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Basic Products Division, believes that , the early open source companies provide consulting services, in fact, because there are too many differences between basic software and enterprises, cloud computing can solve these problems, coupled with good brands and high-quality developers on open source software, once the two are combined It will generate huge commercial energy.
This view is not a family's words. Huang Dongxu, founder of PingCAP, once expressed a similar view that cloud is the only way for open source to be monetized at scale.
In his opinion, a good business should be scalable, but the traditional open source business model requires human intervention (sales/pre-sales/post-sales delivery, etc.), and a human-based business cannot be scaled. The essence of the cloud is a resource leasing (Hosting), users buy on demand, making the scale of open source possible.
It's hard to understand isn't it? In fact, to put it bluntly, if basic software such as open source software is regarded as "water resources", then before the emergence of the cloud, these "water resources" only exist in wells. Playing several barrels at a time will inevitably lead to waste. The cloud is like a "water company". The infrastructure is laid out and every household is connected to water. The "water resources" are fully used on a large scale, and users are also convenient.
Therefore, capital also particularly favors technology innovation companies that combine cloud and open source. GGV Capital, Linear Capital and other investment institutions have expressed interest in turning to open source software for cloud services.
On the other hand, open source to the cloud is the starting point and the future.
"Without open source, there will be no cloud computing, and there will be no AWS and Alibaba Cloud." Jiang Jiangwei is right, and it is easy to understand. Open source software has developed to this day and has become the majority of the basic software in the world. The development of cloud is inseparable from open source. .
In addition, the collaborative and win-win model of open source is also an "aphrodisiac" for cloud development. First, cloud services can quickly build trust among users with open source offerings. For example, with the help of open source communities and open source platforms, let everyone know quickly; for example, with the help of open source brands, using open code to gain customer trust...
Second, open source can also attract a large number of developers to perfect software and services, often from all over the world, with many skills that your team does not possess.
Finally, software is an industry that pays attention to "market size", and the status of a million dollar company and a billion dollar company is very different. Open source allows software development to achieve larger-scale collaboration, arguably the best choice for entrepreneurs in the field of technology.
03 Why not "win-win"? Focus on consensus rather than controversy
"Open source is not a charitable cause. Open source manufacturers can make profits through open source and form a closed business loop, which is what we most hope to achieve." said Yang Xuan, head of the Asia-Pacific region of the Linux Foundation. He gave an example of Kubernetes, which has driven a huge industry and cultivated a large number of companies in the cloud-native industry foundation, including many new open source startups.
Clouds, open source, and communities can form an ecosystem to have a positive impact, and naturally everyone will be happy. Therefore, the "user interest" was put forward. As Wu Sheng said, open source and cloud vendors should form a consensus on users and values .
When Elastic's modification protocol had a certain impact on Skywalking's client, both the Apache Foundation and Skywalking "did a very, very strict review of this license, and finally we think that our community users will still like the Elasticsearch server and their SaaS service." Wu Sheng explained.
Therefore, the Skywalking community re-implemented all of the user-ends set by Elastic last month to ensure that the 8.8.1 version redistributed by Skywalking will not contain any SSPL or Elastic 2.0 binary packages, so that users are not affected by protocol conflicts.
"Chinese software developers are a very sentimental group of developers. What we lack is a (consensus) to develop together and push the project to a higher level. Whether it is a cloud vendor or an open source enterprise, We all have common interests, so there is no need to put things on the opposite side of contradictions." Wu Sheng said.
Indeed, compared with life and death, "win-win" is a more ideal situation.
"One more point," Zhu Jie said a few more words after expressing the friendly relationship with cloud vendors:
"We suggest that cloud vendors do more to cultivate the entire underlying ecosystem. (Cloud vendors) have this obligation to create an atmosphere of innovation. I suggest that cloud vendors vigorously join the community, cultivate startups, and help them grow up. Only in this way can we Encourage a large number of people who have come one after the other to devote themselves to this cause. After all, from cultivating the community to monetizing, the failure rate is very high, and cloud manufacturers need to take care of these entrepreneurs.”
The relationship between open source and the cloud is anything but simple.