Elastic's changing their license. No contributions are being stripped of their open source license. You always have the last open source licensed version to go back to and fork if you like.
What this author is upset about is that Elastic are no longer providing updates under a license the author feels they are entitled to.
Maybe the author should fork the project and maintain it under an open license themselves?
Doesn't matter who has contributed to the project - whoever they are they own rights to keep the code base open and licensed open, but they don't own the name or the trademark rights. It would be well within Elastic's rights to change the name on the repo.
Remember the whole Docker/Moby thing?
Don't get me wrong. It would be great if Elastic, Redis and co didn't have to do this (change license) but AWS does pose an existential threat to their business models long term. I'd rather a standardised, so there's less fear around interpretations, more restrictive license than the businesses and _future_ ones becoming unviable.
Important detail: Drew seems to be taking his own medicine and has been doing so for years.
Turns out, AWS is more user and FOSS-friendly than the "open source company" which created the software in the first place. A surprising twist.
I would say Google's approach of partnering with maintainers instead of competing with them is healthier, though only just.
When I think about OSS databases for example I can't think of any widely used ones that don't have at least one commercial entity that provides maintenance and support which funds development.
The incentives and existential threats towards the project are completely different.
To wit, it's an "open-source business" providing the open source software people apparently feel very strongly about, not a "community volunteer project without the pressure".
Open source in a business context is built on the premise of several suppliers competing on the same product. I can't help but notice that the increased competition made the product severely less neutered, as Amazon did publish their Elastic distribution as open source just as the model prescribes, and this put pressure on Elastic to reduce some on the limitations from theirs. No Tivoization seemed to have taken place.
While partnering would have been much better for Elastic, I'm not sure Google would have done it better in this case.
You want some guarantee that AWS, Google, or Elastic will treat the OSS community right. That guarantee doesn't exist. People bought in to Elastic's "guarantee" on this front years ago, and that did not pay off. There's no such thing as a model that stands the test of time; there's only today. Does it solve your problems? Is it licensed in a way that preserves the freedom of its users and maintainers? Is there recourse if that changes?