> And that "free software" licences especially the viral ones exemplified by GPL/AGPL are also still relevant in 2021, and having chosen one of those would have given Elastic.co what they claim to be demanding... (I think I agree there too.)
I think we agree up until this point, at which you fall into a trap. This is the same trap I was trying to avoid by giving my SSPL scenario above.
A copyleft license like GPLv3 does not prevent a business from operating a SAAS business.
AGPL would apply, but it only triggers upon modification. So as long as Amazon doesn't modify Elasticsearch itself, they don't have to publish anything (because there's nothing to publish), and if they do modify, they have to share just those changes. Which is very fair to me from a copyleft perspective.
Now SSPL tries to go further and say for merely using the software in a certain way, you must release not just any changes to the software itself but also everything around the software. That is what makes the SSPL neither open source nor free. (I guess I don't actually know how "free" is defined, so I can only say for certain that it's not open source, but I don't think SSPL even counts as copyleft)
I think we agree up until this point, at which you fall into a trap. This is the same trap I was trying to avoid by giving my SSPL scenario above.
A copyleft license like GPLv3 does not prevent a business from operating a SAAS business.
AGPL would apply, but it only triggers upon modification. So as long as Amazon doesn't modify Elasticsearch itself, they don't have to publish anything (because there's nothing to publish), and if they do modify, they have to share just those changes. Which is very fair to me from a copyleft perspective.
Now SSPL tries to go further and say for merely using the software in a certain way, you must release not just any changes to the software itself but also everything around the software. That is what makes the SSPL neither open source nor free. (I guess I don't actually know how "free" is defined, so I can only say for certain that it's not open source, but I don't think SSPL even counts as copyleft)