AWS announced today that it is transitioning OpenSearch, its open-source fork of the popular Elasticsearch search and analytics engine, to the Linux Foundation, establishing the new OpenSearch Foundation.
AWS originally launched the OpenSearch project in 2021 after Elastic changed its licensing for Elasticsearch and Kibana to the proprietary Elastic License. This move followed a trend where several open-source vendors made similar shifts, mainly to prevent large cloud providers, particularly AWS, from offering hosted services based on their software.
Interestingly, this development comes shortly after Elastic reintroduced Elasticsearch and Kibana under the AGPL open-source license, which requires users to share their source code if they modify it. However, Elastic made this licensing optional alongside its more restrictive license due to strong support for the Elastic License v2 (ELv2).
At first, there was skepticism about AWS’s ability to manage such a large open-source project. Mukul Karnik, AWS’s General Manager for Search Services, acknowledged the challenges but emphasized the company’s commitment to a community-driven approach. Over time, AWS has opened up the project, encouraging wider contributions and governance, which led to the current transition.
With the establishment of the OpenSearch Foundation, prominent companies like SAP and Uber are joining as premier members, alongside Aiven, Atlassian, Canonical, Digital Ocean, and others as general members. AWS plans to increase its contributions to the project.
This transition marks a significant milestone, as the OpenSearch ecosystem has evolved with innovations like a shift to cloud-native architecture and updates such as compute-storage separation and segment replication. The rising interest in AI has also driven OpenSearch’s use as a vector database.
The Linux Foundation will provide governance for the new foundation, with a board and a technical steering committee. According to Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, this move will help enhance open-source search and analytics tools for organizations globally.
AWS’s decision to join forces with the Linux Foundation is a strategic one, aimed at leveraging the Foundation’s expertise in managing open-source projects and shedding the perception of OpenSearch as an AWS-centric initiative. This step is expected to boost the project’s growth and adoption across a broader community.
