AWS is the company which did this, with Open Distro for Elasticsearch.
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.
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?