Amazon announced the creation of the Opensearch Software Foundation, controlled by the Linux Foundation, which will oversee the further development of the Opensearch project. This project involves the fork of the search, analysis, and storage of Elasticsearch data, as well as the Kibana Web interface. The move to an independent and neutral platform not controlled by individual companies is expected to attract new participants and enhance the project’s appeal for implementation.
Project management will be led by a technical committee consisting of representatives from the community and companies involved in development. The guiding principle of the management model is stated as “community development for the community.” Several companies, including Amazon, SAP, Uber, Avon, Iron, Atlassian, Canonical, Elastix, Graylog, Netup, Instaclustr, and Portal26, have announced their participation in Opensearch. The Opensearch community boasts several thousand participants, over 200 of whom are contributing from 25 different companies and organizations. Since its inception, the project has recorded over 700 million downloads.
The fork was created in response to Elasticsearch’s transition to a non-free SSPL license (Server Side Public License) and the cessation of changes being published under the old Apache 2.0 license. Despite Elasticsearch’s recent return to using a free license, the OpenSearch project remains relevant. This is due to its continued use of the permissive Apache 2.0 license instead of the AGPLv3 license adopted by Elasticsearch. Additionally, Opensearch is developing specific enhancements that were previously delivered by Amazon in a separate distribution called Open Distro for Elasticsearch, which replaces paid components of Elasticsearch.