Elastic NV—Elastic switched Elasticsearch and Kibana from Apache 2.0 to restrictive SSPL and Elastic License, prompting AWS fork
In January 2021, Elastic changed Elasticsearch and Kibana from the Apache 2.0 open-source license to a dual SSPL/Elastic License v2, motivated by dissatisfaction with AWS offering a competing managed service. The change prompted AWS to create the OpenSearch fork. Many developers migrated away, and the community felt betrayed by a bait-and-switch after building on what they believed was truly open-source software.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Source Licensing Integrity | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.885 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.59)
Evidence (1 signal)
Elastic switched Elasticsearch and Kibana from Apache 2.0 to SSPL/Elastic License, AWS forked as OpenSearch
In January 2021, Elastic changed Elasticsearch and Kibana from Apache 2.0 to dual SSPL/Elastic License v2. AWS responded by forking both as OpenSearch. Developers who migrated away largely did not return even after the later license reversal.