NetApp is excited that the OpenSearch® Project’s new home will be the Linux Foundation, and that we will be a General Member of the project. 

Through the  Instaclustr Managed Platform, we’ve been part of the OpenSearch community since its launch in 2021, and before that with Open-Distro for Elasticsearch. During this time, we have seen OpenSearch go from strength to strength, becoming one of the most popular open source search and analytics data stores in use today.   

The future of OpenSearch is in safe hands 

When Amazon Web Services (AWS) initially announced that they would host and maintain the OpenSearch Project in 2021, some in the industry had concerns about whether this would truly be a community project. However, we soon discovered that those worries were unfounded.  

The OpenSearch Project has flourished, building and releasing features at a regular cadence and growing a thriving community of developers. Additionally, NetApp has worked closely with the OpenSearch team at AWS to build a strong relationship with the project and its community.  

From these strong foundations, the time has come for AWS to pass the project to a more permanent home, one which sets it up for long term success. The transition of OpenSearch into the Linux Foundation means that no one organization or party has a disproportionate influence over the roadmap. It also means that the technology will always remain truly open which maintains innovation and adaptability into the future.  

This is why we’re so excited about this announcement.  Developers can continue to build OpenSearch with the confidence that the code won’t one day become proprietary. Similarly, more and more organisations can adopt or contribute to OpenSearch knowing that they won’t have to deal with a license change or vendor lock-in situation down the road. 

Open source is the best model for long term success 

Over the past few years, we’ve seen many large technology vendors such as Redis, MongoDB, and Elasticsearch turning their back on the open source model.

While these companies claim that they’re still “open source”, there will always be concerns when a single organization has complete control over a project. This allows the controlling organizations to change licenses at any point in the future and reject valuable contributions that don’t align to their strategic goals.  

In late August 2024, Elastic.co announced that it would be moving to include a third licence, the strict copyleft open source  AGPL license, after pursuing a proprietary model since 2021. The restrictions places by the AGPL license requires careful evaluation, other organizations such as Google have gone as far as prohibiting the use of AGPL licensed software internally. In general, we do not see any evidence that Elastic.co is moving to run Elasticsearch as an open, community-driven project.

We strongly believe that community–driven open source is the best model for long term innovations. That’s why we will continue to back OpenSearch as fully open source, Apache 2.0 licensed software. Open source software and its principles fuels innovation, broadens usage, and ultimately enhances value without vendor lock-in.

We’re all in on OpenSearch 

Here at NetApp, we’re all-in on OpenSearch. But what does that actually mean in practice? Here’s just a few ways NetApp is demonstrating its commitment to OpenSearch:  

• NetApp employs dedicated OpenSearch developers whose job it is to work in the community to contribute to the project, fixing issues and building new features. This ensures that we’re giving back to the community in a meaningful way, ensuring the product stays performant and leading-edge.  
• Being General Members of the OpenSearch Project, we provide input and oversight for the strategy and roadmap. This position recognizes the experience and expertise NetApp has built over years of helping customers with migrating to OpenSearch from other alternatives.  
• We offer both fully managed OpenSearch through our Instaclustr Managed Platform and enterprise support contracts for those that choose to run OpenSearch themselves. Our fully managed OpenSearch offering is available in AWS, GCP, Azure, and any other environment where you can run a VM, including on-premises. 

If you’re interested in going on the OpenSearch journey with us as the project enters this exciting new phase, get in touch with us today.