I wouldn't put it past the Elastic team to include some sort of phone-home mechanism here.
Nor would I put it past them to consider legal demand letters as part of their sales funnel.
Nor would I put it past them to consider legal demand letters as part of their sales funnel.
Suing users is a pretty terrible business practice and not, at all, a funnel creation opportunity.
Re. License, there are a few FAQs on https://www.elastic.co/products/x-pack/open#faq that may help clear up any misunderstandings. Free features are free and governed by the Elastic EULA but are enabled by default. Paid features are available through an opt-in trial and, if they help solve a problem, can be purchased.
<disclaimer: I work at Elastic in Developer Relations>
They have an incredible product that I can't live without, it's just incredibly painful trying to actually pay them money for something.
Honestly, I think their real play here is getting community contributions to fix stuff that's very broken and also to edge out Siren Solutions. SearchGuard, Kibi and Sentinl are all _very_ good tools.
If you want, I'd be happy to talk more about it so that we can understand where we can improve. Feel free to email me tyler.hannan<at>elastic.co
<disclaimer: I work at Elastic in Developer Relations>
There actually still is a pricing page somewhere on the site, but you have to dig for it, and I don't think it's correct anymore.