Here’s a question, what defines an open source license? 

Well, in short, they allow software to be freely used, modified, and shared. Some popular licenses most people know about are Apache, Mozilla and Eclipse. 

Well, it looks like Open Source may have a big problem and a few companies might have a solution that might not be so open.

What’s up everybody, Will here and thank you guys for stopping by. If you haven’t already, click that thumbs up button, smash that subscribe, and let’s just jump right on into it today.

What was once a big step for the community has seemingly backfired on big companies that work with Open Source. Elastic has reignited the open-source licensing debate when it announced it will be changing it’s license model to help protect the code they have made. Still leaving it open to the public but not as profitable.

See, this issue has been seen for some time now and this isn’t the first we have heard of this problem. Redis Labs announced previously it was moving towards it’s own licensing to protect it’s code but remain open source in a sense. This has also happened with Confluent, MongoDB and several others.

The fear is that leaving a code or program open-source will leave it available for cloud based companies like Amazon to come along and snipe the source and then dump money into it and profit from their version of another work taking all the money and thunder. 

Honestly, their fear is pretty valid; however, this is also something that should have been thought of before the release of a program or code. The very definition of open-source allows companies like Apple, Amazon and more to come in and utilize someone else’s work that may have not had the power a larger company like that has.

But the thing with open-source is that it is a community, not a brand. Luckily technology giants like Google and Red Hat have a very successful reputation in the open-source world. Meanwhile, others like what we are seeing with Amazon need to work on their standing in such a community. 

I’d like to know your thoughts on the whole open-source debacle. Do you like it? Do you think what companies like Elastic, Redis Labs and others are doing is a good or bad thing? Let us know in the comments section down below. Thank you guys for watching. And I’ll see you in the next video!