> A relevant question is "would they have been that successful if Elastic were 'just another closed source enterprise product'."
> Elastic was successful because a lot of companies tried it out for free and then purchased licenses, or because hobbiysts used it on their personal project and then pushed for it at work.
That model is not actually incompatible with closed source. You can always distribute binaries with a liberal usage license. And if your model is selling support, that might actually be helpful, since it's even less practical for a 2nd or 3rd party to support software when they don't have access to the source code, so you'd sell more support contracts
I think Amazon's behavior may end up just harming open source, by punishing the idealism that leads companies to try to make commercialized open source business models work.
You would be surprised how many third party companies support closed source software product of another company. This is very common in enterprise world. It is also a common way for a vendor to get their foot into an enterprise entrenched with a competitor's product.
> You would be surprised how many third party companies support closed source software product of another company. This is very common in enterprise world. It is also a common way for a vendor to get their foot into an enterprise entrenched with a competitor's product.
I'm aware of that, and have even worked with such companies. However, IMHO it's way harder (and less effective) than supporting an open source product. For instance, it's way harder for a 2nd or 3rd party to diagnose and patch a bug if they don't have the source.
> Elastic was successful because a lot of companies tried it out for free and then purchased licenses, or because hobbiysts used it on their personal project and then pushed for it at work.
That model is not actually incompatible with closed source. You can always distribute binaries with a liberal usage license. And if your model is selling support, that might actually be helpful, since it's even less practical for a 2nd or 3rd party to support software when they don't have access to the source code, so you'd sell more support contracts
I think Amazon's behavior may end up just harming open source, by punishing the idealism that leads companies to try to make commercialized open source business models work.