Elastic reintroduces open source licence for Elasticsearch & Kibana

Elastic, a company known for its search AI technology, has reintroduced an open-source licence to its Elasticsearch and Kibana products. The decision involves adding the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL) as an additional licensing option alongside the existing Server Side Public License 1.0 (SSPL 1.0) and Elastic License 2.0 (ELv2). This move marks a return to open-source principles for a subset of Elasticsearch and Kibana's free source code.

The AGPL is a licence approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and is designed to ensure that the source code is readily accessible for use, modification, redistribution, and collaboration. Elastic's decision to implement AGPL aims to foster greater community involvement and transparency.

"We're delighted to reintroduce an OSI-approved open source licence to Elasticsearch and Kibana. Elastic has always strongly believed in the ethos of open source and the clarity and transparency that it enables," said Shay Banon, the founder and chief technology officer of Elastic.

He added, "Adding AGPL will also enable greater engagement and adoption across our users in areas including vector search, further increasing the popularity of Elasticsearch as the runtime platform for RAG and building GenAI applications."

The introduction of the AGPL does not affect existing users who are operating under the SSPL or ELv2 licences. Additionally, the company's binary distributions will remain unchanged. For users building applications or integrating plugins on Elasticsearch or Kibana, the current licensing arrangement for Elastic's client libraries under Apache 2.0 will continue to apply.

Elastic's decision to add an open-source licence aligns with its long-standing commitment to open-source frameworks while aiming to broaden its community-based development. The company's solutions for search, observability, and security are built on the Elastic Search AI Platform, which serves numerous organisations, including over half of the Fortune 500 companies.

Elastic continues to expand its offerings by integrating machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities into its core search and data analytics platform. Enterprises widely use Elastic's solutions for full-text search, logging, security analytics, and observability. The company's focus on combining powerful search capabilities with advanced AI tools enables organisations to derive deeper insights from their data, improve operational efficiency, and enhance decision-making processes. 

The addition of the AGPL licence to Elasticsearch and Kibana represents a strategic shift by Elastic, aiming to encourage more community-driven development and collaboration within its ecosystem. By providing an alternative licensing option that supports open-source principles, Elastic seeks to accommodate a broader range of users and developers while maintaining flexibility in how its products are used and distributed. This approach allows Elastic to support diverse use cases and foster innovation in areas such as search and AI applications, ensuring continued engagement from its existing and potential user base.