OpenSearch 1.0 Released

We’re super excited that OpenSearch, the community-driven, open-source search and analytics suite is now available as 1.0 GA release. As announced in yesterday’s community meetup, OpenSearch is available as x64 and arm64 .tgz package and x64 for Docker. OpenSearch 1.1. will add supoort for x64 rpm, x64 deb and arm64 deb. Platform support for Mac x64, Mac arm64, and Windows x64 is already on the roadmap.

Apart from the regular OpenSearch distribution that includes some of the former ODFE plugins, there is also a “minimal” distribution. It contains the bare minimum of features and is most likely comparable to the former OSS builds of Elasticsearch and Kibana.

If you haven’t already done so, check out the downloads page and give OpenSearch a spin!

Apart from the official OpenSearch roadmap, AWS announced additional tools and plugins that do not need to be coordinated with the OpenSearch release schedule and are being worked on in parallel. These releases will include:

To guarantee a smooth transition from Elasticsearch to OpenSearch, a migration tool to convert configuration files and other artifacts is already in the making.

AWS also announced that they would switch their managed Amazon Elasticsearch Service cloud offering to OpenSearch. The name will most likely be “OpenSearch Service - Successor to Amazon Elasticsearch Service,” and we expect an announcement in August.

This year, many users of Elasticsearch learned the hard way what it means when an Open Source project is owned by one company with huge commercial goals. After riding the wave of OSS and hugely benefitting from free OSS software over the years (after all, Elasticsearch is powered by Apache Lucene), Elasticsearch pulled the plug. Elasticsearch and Kibana were moved from the Apache2 license to the proprietory SSPL and Elastic v2 licenses.

This came as a surprise and was a big slap in the face for all users, contributors, and OSS evangelists. This move clearly showed that even if a vendor promises to keep their product Open Source, this promise might not be valid anymore tomorrow.

Therefore we applaud the decision of AWS to set up OpenSearch as a shared governance project. This means that while OpenSearch was initiated by AWS, it is not owned by AWS. OpenSearch is a true community project where everyone is free to contribute. The ultimate goal is to move OpenSearch to a foundation like the Apache Software Foundation.

There have been a lot of discussions about whether the decision from Elastic to move away from Open Source was justified. They argue that companies other than Elastic have profited from their work and that this is “not ok.” We disagree.

Choosing a license like Apache2 is a deliberate decision and undoubtedly no one-way street. The ASL2 license clearly states that users can do everything they want with the software, including offering it as a paid service. If this is something that you do not want, just chose a different license. What is really “not ok” is to benefit from the Open Source community for years but move in a completely different direction once other companies start to offer paid services based on your software. In alignment with the ASL2 license that you have chosen.

However, whatever the motivations of Elastic might have been, we think that the winner here is Open Source Software and the Open Source community. It is great to see a path forward for all Elasticsearch users who want or need to use pure ASL2 licensed software. OpenSearch and OpenSearch Dashboards provide just that.

If you are still using Elasticsearch and thinking about migrating to OpenSearch, Eliatra is here to help. We offer: