Elastic announced changes to the licensing of Elasticsearch and Kibana, moving from the Apache 2.0 to a dual license under the Elastic License and Server Side Public License (SSPL). The change primarily affects those who sell Elasticsearch and Kibana as a service, like Amazon's Elasticsearch Service, but not on-premises or Elastic Cloud customers. While the Elastic License restricts the direct sale of their products as a service and the modification of source code for paid features, the SSPL, although copyleft and not OSI approved, allows some freedoms typical of open-source licenses. Elastic is considering adopting a model similar to the Business Source License (BSL) for future versions, which balances business needs with open-source principles by allowing production use under certain conditions and transitioning to an open-source license after a set period. The company is seeking feedback on this potential licensing approach ahead of their next release.