Ever since AWS took Elasticsearch and decided to sell a managed version of it there has been controversy around AWS and Elasticsearch. Now that the software created by Elastic is being switched to the Server-Side Public License
(SSPL), which is not a very permissive license, AWS is going ahead and forking the projects.

The debate rages around this. Few people feel sympathy with the behemoth that is AWS, but they don’t seem to be in violation of any licenses. Elastic have definitely worked hard on Elasticsearch and arguably deserves an opportunity to profit from their work. This new license raises significant concern though.

I don’t think we’ll see this settle anytime soon, just like the issue of open source sustainability is neither easy nor straightforward.