Everything You Need to Know About the OSS Licensing War, Part 1.

The text discusses the evolving landscape of commercial open-source software and its tension with public cloud providers, particularly focusing on the rise of companies like Red Hat and Elastic NV, and their interactions with giants like Amazon Web Services (AWS). Red Hat's pioneering role in commercializing open source set the stage for future companies, transforming open source into a valuable market, as seen with IBM's $36 billion acquisition of Red Hat. As the software industry shifted from physical media to digital services, a new model emerged, treating software as a utility to be consumed and paid for as needed. AWS capitalized on this by offering popular open-source software as a service without compensating original creators, intensifying the conflict with commercial open-source companies like Elastic NV, which adopted "open core" strategies to balance open-source principles with value capture, ultimately leading to a competitive coexistence and innovation in software delivery. The narrative hints at continuing tensions and a potential escalation in the licensing dispute between these entities.