Free/Libre Open-Source (FLOSS) and Elastic

[chlarsen]

Dear All,
I have been monitoring, if that is the right expression, Elastic's core component, i.e. LogStash, Elasticsearch and Kibana for a number of years now, and have started using them more intensively recently. While in the old days, there were separate plugins that were not freely available, but could quite easily be replaced by FLOSS alternatives, things have become a bit less clear with the arrival of the Kibana X-Pack. While version 5.3 offers a trial for the X-Pack's monitoring functionality, only, with subsequent versions there seems to be an explosion of locked (trial) features. I need clarity here, as the intended implementation has FLOSS as a precondition, and any drift from FLOSS to dual licensing with an increasing limited set of features will be unacceptable.
Rather disconcertingly, I noted a similar trend with Kibi, which is trial only, for up-to-date releases, after several years of promoting itself as a FLOSS and friendly fork of Kibana.
Maybe there is someone out there to enlighten me, as a durable, robust and consistently free/libre licensing and development approach will be of paramount importance for the next steps from my end.
Your kind assistance is highly appreciated!
Chris

[Ivan (Ivan Brusic)]

I do not have answers, but there was an interesting exchange on the subject
a couple of months ago:

Conflict of interest between open source Elasticsearch and closed source Swifttype?

First congrats on the acquisition! Second, I wonder how this will work in practice? Are there conflicts of interest? Could such conflicts of interest threaten the health of the Elasticsearch project? Imagine a search feature. If I put my open source hat on, I want that search feature to be as usable as possible in the open source Elasticsearch. I want to advocate for usability -- better than the proprietary options! For example, I'm personally passionate about building more in the Elasticsearc…

[chlarsen]

Thank you, Ivan, this pretty much reflects my concerns. I am very actively looking into Grafana as replacement for Kibana, as I am very concerned about the creep towards closed source. I trust that Elasticsearch is important enough to the Community at large that any similar developments there my trigger a "LibreOffice/MariaDB/..." event - I hope this is not just wishful thinking.
Have a great weekend!
Chris