Hi!
Maybe you can see ElasticSearch change license from Apache2 to SSPL
please coment this, how you wil work in the futures.
Hi @skks thanks for the question, this is a very important point.
ReadonlyREST code is released as a plugin, and as such, it interacts with SSPL software via the official plugini API, or via localhost network. Therefore, it does not qualify as derived work. Moreover, at no point in time we distributed or will ever distribute any material covered under the intellectual property of Elastic, neither as is, or as part of our product.
In virtue of the above, we preserve the full rights to release and distribute our own work under the license we best see fit, that is, nothing changes.
To corroborate the argument, please see the attachment straight from Elastic’s SSPL FAQ , or at least the version published on Jan 22, 2021:
1 Like
@sscarduzio how does this affect the other kibana patching scrpits that you were planning to do to address some of the issues faced in the Kibana ROR plugin?
This is an important bit, thanks for bringing this up @askids!
In order to work correctly, the upcoming “new-platform” version of ReadonlyREST plugin for Kibana will require the end user to explicitly run a command and patch a single line in 3 SSPL licensed files of the standard Kibana distribution.
Two considerations about this:
-
By distributing a patching “kit”, we are not redistributing any “derived work” (a modified Kibana), the act of patching is delegated to the end user.
-
We have no problem to conform to SSPL meaning that it’s fine for us to freely publish our suggested changes to Kibana files under the SSPL, or GPL, or any other licenses. It’s literally one line changed in 3 files.
So in short: our freedom to license ROR plugins under the license we best see fit remains unchanged after Elastic’s shift from Apache 2.0 to SSPL.
If you are legally clear to use Kibana/Elasticsearch after its shift to SSPL, you can continue to use ROR as well without the need of any additional legal considerations.