Elastic’s licence change
Elasticsearch (distributed search engine based on Apache Lucene, Shay Banon, 2010) has been for a decade the open source reference for search and log analytics under Apache 2.0. In January 2021 Elastic announces a licence change: Elasticsearch 7.11+ and Kibana move to a dual SSPL + Elastic License, not OSI-considered open source.
Elastic’s stated motivation is slowing cloud providers (AWS primarily) who offer Elasticsearch-as-a-service (“Open Distro for Elasticsearch” by AWS) without contributing to the project.
AWS fork
AWS responds by forking the Elasticsearch 7.10 code base (last Apache version) and Kibana under the name OpenSearch. OpenSearch 1.0 is released on 12 July 2021. Apache 2.0 licence.
Governance
OpenSearch is initially managed by AWS but with explicit intent of open governance. In September 2024 the project is donated to The Linux Foundation as OpenSearch Software Foundation — independent foundation with AWS, SAP, Uber, Aryn, Canonical, Oracle board.
Compatibility
OpenSearch 1.x maintains API compatibility with Elasticsearch 7.10, allowing drop-in replacement. Later divergences (OpenSearch 2.x, 3.x) break partial compatibility but migration drivers and adapters exist.
Adoption
- AWS Elasticsearch Service → renamed Amazon OpenSearch Service
- Linux distributions — some include OpenSearch as alternative
- Licence-sensitive companies — migrate toward OpenSearch for FOSS compliance
- Community-driven deployments
In the Italian context
Italian adoption split between those staying with commercial Elasticsearch (Elastic Cloud, on-premise with licence) and those migrating to OpenSearch for cost or open source policy reasons.
References: OpenSearch 1.0 (12 July 2021), AWS fork. Based on Elasticsearch 7.10 + Kibana. Apache 2.0 licence. Elastic License 2.0 + SSPL from 2021 (for Elasticsearch). OpenSearch Software Foundation (Linux Foundation, September 2024).