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enterprise| enterpriseauthorTom KrazitNoneAre you keeping up with the latest cloud developments? Get Tom Krazit and Joe Williams' newsletter every Monday and Thursday.d3d5b92349
November 30, 2020
AWS is now an Apple customer.
Apple developers will be able to use AWS-managed Mac Minis to test their Mac and iOS applications, AWS announced Monday evening on the first day of the virtual re:Invent event. The new Mac instances, based around Intel's Core i7 processors, will allow AWS customers to run Apple developer tools like Xcode alongside other AWS services such as Elastic Block Storage and Virtual Private Cloud.
The new service was designed for AWS customers who are building iOS or Mac apps — which is an awful lot of them — and want to get rid of physical Mac hardware needed to test how those apps will perform and look across Apple's family of devices, said David Brown, vice president of AWS' flagship EC2 compute service, in an interview with Protocol.
"When you launch a Mac instance on EC2, it's exactly the same as launching any other EC2 instance," Brown said. "It is the environment that the Apple developer is used to."
AWS currently offers Linux and Windows instances for developers to use as both testing and production computing resources, but this is the first time MacOS will be available on the cloud leader's compute service. It's unlikely that the new Mac instances will actually run public-facing applications given the relatively limited computing power of the Core i7 compared to the server processors from Intel, AMD and AWS itself that are available in EC2.
But testing environments are very important to the software development process, for obvious reasons. Few companies can ignore the iPhone as a development platform, especially in a pandemic that has reduced human contact, and there are lots of different screen sizes, processors and other components being used every day across the generations of iPhones in service.
And given that Apple doesn't license its operating system to companies to install on their own hardware, the Mac Mini has been the cheapest option for a long time. Facebook used Mac Minis as test servers to conduct "hundreds of thousands of tests every hour" on its ubiquitous iPhone app, according to a Wired article from 2013.
That article highlights one of the reasons Brown thinks that Apple developers will be interested in the new Mac instances. At large companies like Facebook, developers testing Mac or iOS apps have to compete for a fixed number of Mac testing machines that someone also has to maintain with operating system patches and all the other routine maintenance that comes along with managing your own hardware.
"If I'm a team, I don't have to worry about whether another team is currently using that capacity. I can just launch that machine and complete my builds, or run a capacity for me, and shut them down when I don't need them again," Brown said.
AWS will likely add Mac Minis based on Apple's M1 chip at a later date, but apps built and tested using the new Intel-powered instances will work on the newest generation of Apple hardware thanks to Apple's Rosetta 2 emulation technology. The Mac instances will use Mac Minis based around Intel's eighth-generation Core i7 processors running at 3.2GHz and 32GB of memory, and pricing is expected to be released later on Monday.
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Tom Krazit
Tom Krazit ( @tomkrazit) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering cloud computing and enterprise technology out of the Pacific Northwest. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET, paidContent, and GeekWire. He served as executive editor of Gigaom and Structure, and most recently produced a leading cloud computing newsletter called Mostly Cloudy.
Power
Yes, GameStop is a content moderation issue for Reddit
The same tools that can be used to build mass movements can be used by bad actors to manipulate the masses later on. Consider Reddit warned.
WallStreetBets' behavior may not be illegal. But that doesn't mean it's not a problem for Reddit.
Image: Omar Marques/Getty Images
January 27, 2021
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
January 27, 2021
The Redditors who are driving up the cost of GameStop stock just to pwn the hedge funds that bet on its demise may not be breaking the law. But this show of force by the subreddit r/WallStreetBets still represents a new and uncharted front in the evolution of content moderation on social media platforms.
In a statement to Protocol, a Reddit spokesperson said the company's site-wide policies "prohibit posting illegal content or soliciting or facilitating illegal transactions. We will review and cooperate with valid law enforcement investigations or actions as needed."
<p>It's still unclear whether any such investigations will result from this, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is "monitoring" the situation. But the fact is, Reddit writes lots of site-wide rules that have nothing to do with whether certain behavior is illegal. Reddit is <a href="https://www.protocol.com/reddit-powermods-war" target="_blank">unique among platforms</a> in that it leaves much of its content decisions to the moderators of different subreddits. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Still, the company does have rules. It <a href="https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043071072" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">prohibits</a>, for example, "directing unwanted invective at someone" or "following them from subreddit to subreddit," classifying that as harassing, bullying behavior. Redditors aren't allowed to send "large amounts of private messages to users who are not expecting them" or repeatedly post "unrelated/off-topic/link-farmed content," because, under Reddit's <a href="https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043504051" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">rules</a>, that's spam.</p><p>That means if Reddit decides that what r/WallStreetBets is doing is dangerous or disruptive, it could very well take action. That would be tricky for Reddit. Given the range of offensive stuff that regularly appears on the platform, it could be tough to justify outlawing stock trade tips. So far, that hasn't happened, and the Reddit spokesperson was unable to comment on whether any content policies related to the GameStop issue might be implemented in the future. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, for one, seemed unconcerned in a Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/alexisohanian/status/1354407436732387335?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">thread</a> Wednesday. "It's a perfect storm at a time when lots of people are hurting, interest rates are so low, inescapable student loan debts loom, and every major institution has caught Ls during a /global pandemic/ over the last year," Ohanian wrote. "This is something to believe in."</p><p>That may be true for now. But experts on social media manipulation argue the model WallStreetBets has created could morph into a bigger long-term problem for Reddit. "The WallStreetBets manipulation of [GameStop] is now the best template for how one could monetize an influence operation," <a href="https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1354499573209653251?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tweeted</a> Stanford researcher Alex Stamos who, as Facebook's former chief security officer, worked on detecting and rooting out foreign influence operations after the 2016 election. "I don't know if any laws were broken this time, but Reddit now has a problem: it is the home for a community of hundreds of thousands of people who have demonstrated the ability to move billions of dollars based upon the urging of, at most, a couple dozen anonymous accounts."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Facebook's current chief security officer, Nathaniel Gleicher, agreed with Stamos, <a href="https://twitter.com/ngleicher/status/1354517057673392129?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tweeting</a>: "Good reminder that while political [information operations are] a serious threat, there are many harmful cases of these tactics driving financial gain."</p><p>Gleicher added: "[Money] is a driver across security threats, from hacking to phishing to good old bank fraud, & [information operations are] no exception. Getting ahead of how these tactics enable fraud is essential to disincentivize bad actors."</p><p>To be clear: There's no evidence that the GameStop mob has any ties to a malicious influence operation, and aside from some hedge funds that tried to short GameStop in the first place, it's not immediately obvious who WallStreetBets is hurting. What are hedge funds anyway if not an institutionally sanctioned pool of people betting on the success or failure of businesses for profit? For now, it's easy to root for the underdogs banding together to stick it to the man. </p><p>But one thing that seems obvious from the last decade or more on the internet is that the same tools that can be used to build mass movements — be they political or financial — can be used by bad actors to manipulate the masses later on. If and when that happens, Reddit will have few excuses for not being prepared. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
Protocol | Enterprise
SAP unveiled a big sales promo. It's a bid to juice cloud customer numbers.
The move is the culmination of CEO Christian Klein's efforts to turn around the German software giant.
SAP unveiled "RISE with SAP" on Wednesday.
Image: SAP
January 27, 2021
Joe Williams is a senior reporter at Protocol covering enterprise software, including industry giants like Salesforce, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. He previously covered emerging technology for Business Insider. Joe can be reached at JWilliams@Protocol.com. To share information confidentially, he can also be contacted on a non-work device via Signal (+1-309-265-6120) or JPW53189@protonmail.com.
January 27, 2021
SAP CEO Christian Klein is trying out a major sales gambit in his attempt to get more customers onboard the software giant's signature cloud platform.
A new offer unveiled on Wednesday called "RISE with SAP" bundles together several products, including the flagship S/4 HANA platform, under one contract with a flat cost, a promotion that the company is hoping will encourage more users to more quickly switch from the on-premise services that dominated the company's product line until the last few years.
<p>The offering, and the promotional blitz behind it, are a culmination of sorts of Klein's work over the past several months to remake SAP. While it signals progress in his vision to become a core tech provider — one that links data from all a company's operations on a single — it's also a big gambit, particularly if Klein can't address key concerns from customers, many of whom might be looking to shrink their IT spend on SAP's products. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>To incentivize the pivot, SAP is promising a "highly automated" migration with "near-zero downtimes," effectively a move to try to standardize an often arduous and costly transformation that may have prevented new and existing customers from pursuing such an upgrade. And in a nod to the open partner ecosystem Klein is pushing, those who take advantage can use SAP's cloud, one of several of the major providers (Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud or Alibaba Cloud) or a private network. </p><p>Embedded in the packaged system are also numerous "business process intelligence" tools, such as robotic process automation, that help organizations, among other applications, pinpoint tasks that can be done solely by machines. SAP <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sap-to-acquire-business-process-intelligence-company-signavio-301216350.html" target="_blank">purchased Signavio</a>, a provider of software that helps businesses manage workflows, to help further amplify these offerings, per a Wednesday announcement. </p><p>"We are bundling everything companies need to holistically transform their business, with a fast time to value regardless of their starting point," Klein told reporters.</p><p>Since COVID-19 hit, investments in the type of technology that SAP offers, the bulk of which center around the core enterprise resource planning system, fell in priority for many enterprises. Existing customers are also putting off upgrading, instead choosing to elongate use of their current platforms, many of which run via on-site data centers. The convergence of both led Klein to issue a stark warning in October that SAP's recovery would last until 2025 at the earliest. The stock price has yet to fully recover after dropping roughly 23% following that proclamation. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Wednesday's announcement shows that he's hoping to accelerate that timeline by quickly juicing the company's number of overall cloud customers. Under such a system, expensive, long-term contracts are traded for monthly subscription payments. While that might mean lower upfront costs for some clients, industry experts say they may end up paying more over the long term, especially if customers add on other services, which is one reason why the strategy is so attractive for vendors. SAP, for example, previously estimated that cloud revenue could exceed traditional sales and reach roughly $26 billion by 2025. </p><p>When asked, on average, how much more clients would end up paying under this promotion, Klein said the offering "has a lot of value in it." A spokesperson declined to say how SAP was factoring this offer into its overall financial outlook. </p><p>And for clients that held off on the cloud until now, the offer provides a seemingly viable rationale to move, with one consolidated contract likely covering the bulk of their needs, including service and deployment costs. </p><p>"It will take a great deal of work to move these large customized enterprises off of their legacy applications," IDC Program Vice President Mickey North Rizza told Protocol. "SAP customers have been given a pathway towards the intelligent enterprise using modern software." </p><p>The offering ran as a pilot project since July, with 130 customers currently signed up. As of Wednesday, it's now available for new and existing customers. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>"The machine internally is already ready," said Klein. </p>
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Joe Williams is a senior reporter at Protocol covering enterprise software, including industry giants like Salesforce, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. He previously covered emerging technology for Business Insider. Joe can be reached at JWilliams@Protocol.com. To share information confidentially, he can also be contacted on a non-work device via Signal (+1-309-265-6120) or JPW53189@protonmail.com.
Microsoft wants to replace artists with AI
Better Zoom calls, simpler email attachments, smart iPhone cases and other patents from Big Tech.
Turning your stories into images.
Image: USPTO/Microsoft
January 25, 2021
Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
January 24, 2021
Hello and welcome to 2021! The Big Tech patent roundup is back, after a short vacation and … all the things … that happened between the start of the year and now. It seems the tradition of tech companies filing weird and wonderful patents has carried into the new year; there are some real gems from the last few weeks. Microsoft is trying to outsource all creative endeavors to AI; Apple wants to make seat belts less annoying; and Amazon wants to cut down on some of the recyclable waste that its own success has inevitably created.
And remember: The big tech companies file all kinds of crazy patents for things, and though most never amount to anything, some end up defining the future.
<h3>Alphabet</h3><p><a href="https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=10887548&IDKey=EEF3B7984CE3%0D%0A&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsearch-adv.htm%2526r%3D81%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526d%3DPTXT%2526s1%3Dgoogle.ASNM.%2526p%3D2%2526OS%3DAN%2Fgoogle%2526RS%3DAN%2Fgoogle" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><u>Making Zoom meetings a little nicer</u></a></p><p>Even after nearly a year at home, some people have still not figured out the best way to set up their digital meetings. They're either too close to the camera or so far away they might as well not be there. Part of the problem lies in the cameras they have available, as many webcams are too wide-angled: No one needs to see what's 8 feet to either side of you on a Zoom call. But this recent Google patent might help; it involves the meeting platform being able to gauge how far you are from the camera (by measuring the proportions of your face) and zooming in on you when you're speaking, hopefully making everyone look a little more uniform. The patent also included this wonderful diagram to explain it, which appears to have been made in Microsoft Paint: </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/2ZK0yTSkP4yE0nf5UBKwHsNu3eoS1BfhMPzivzm43jOAQ7jtOLKAMRV0MJzA9MZzH-cyVGVUsQGTlxpJwHV3kDhw3oKJB2OElrO38NikIae6v-IBnyo1sWXGs7pB8S_Qzc84eMzK"></p><h3>Amazon</h3><p><a href="https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=10891879&IDKey=9A6594CF1637%0D%0A&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526p%3D1%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsearch-bool.html%2526r%3D45%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526co1%3DAND%2526d%3DPTXT%2526s1%3Damazon.ASNM.%2526OS%3DAN%2Famazon%2526RS%3DAN%2Famazon" target="_blank"><u>Reusing Amazon boxes</u></a><br></p><p>Everyone is shopping online far more than ever before, meaning ever-more cardboard boxes are littering our homes and recycling facilities. Amazon's new patent aims to help rectify this by creating a system that allows customers to easily reuse boxes that products come in. It's trying to remove all the steps usually found in shipping — such as weighing your package, getting a price to ship and bringing the package to a shipping facility — and replacing them with software. You'd scan the box you have and what you're trying to send, and Amazon's app would recognize what it is and estimate how much it'll cost to ship. You then pack it up and a courier comes to retrieve it. Now your friends and loved ones will never be without their Bad Monkeys.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUxNjQ3MC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2MDI2ODY5M30.EkwGsay63N-lFWpfMh7KInjiCf9ev5vsL_htdvnjk1g/img.png?width=980" id="ddd43" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="174cb26e99641a035a7e3e603522692a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
</p><p><br></p><p><a href="http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=49&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=amazon.ASNM.&OS=AN/amazon&RS=AN/amazon" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><u>Choosing music based on BPM</u></a></p><p>If you're making a playlist to work out — or perhaps you're a spin class instructor looking for songs with specific tempos — this idea might be for you. Amazon's patent suggests creating a way to search music to download based on songs' beats per minute. If you want a mix of slow songs to cool down with and uptempo ones to rock out, this could be useful (and is similar to something Pandora offers today). Or if you want a playlist that includes the fastest music ever to help you write faster, this could help. Or maybe that's just me. </p><h3>Apple</h3><p><a href="https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=10887260&IDKey=F5990016F873%0D%0A&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsearch-adv.htm%2526r%3D86%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526d%3DPTXT%2526s1%3D%252522Apple%252BInc%252522.ASNM.%2526p%3D2%2526OS%3DAN%2F%252522Apple%252BInc%252522%2526RS%3DAN%2F%252522Apple%252BInc%252522" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><u>Auto-returning attachments</u></a></p><p>Have you ever been sent a PDF that you're supposed to download, print, sign, rescan and email back, and then you lost the file in your downloads, opened up an old version and had to hunt down for the right one before you sent it back? Maybe you're not as scatterbrained as me, but Apple's new idea for a system that allows you to just interact with an attachment that needs to be sent back to your correspondent without leaving the email program sounds like a dream. A better dream, though, would probably be to get rid of random attachments altogether. </p><p><a href="https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=10889261&IDKey=0F2DEC21FBE3%0D%0A&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsearch-adv.htm%2526r%3D73%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526d%3DPTXT%2526s1%3D%252522Apple%252BInc%252522.ASNM.%2526p%3D2%2526OS%3DAN%2F%252522Apple%252BInc%252522%2526RS%3DAN%2F%252522Apple%252BInc%252522" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><u>Seat belts that move based on where you sit</u></a></p><p>If you've ever been the third person on a road trip and wanted to sit in the middle seat in the back, you've probably gotten stuck with a seatbelt that's a bit too small; the middle seat isn't <em>quite</em> as large as the other two. This new design from Apple would essentially recognize where you sit in the backseat and move the entire seat belt machinery along so that you would be comfortably strapped in wherever you're sitting. It would also automatically reveal the buckle, so you wouldn't have to spend time hunting for where it's gone. This all sounds like it would make losing out when someone calls "shotgun" a little more bearable.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/1ljUJhG2G4iQ-v0kSWKki6Z4wg7E_fFCQ03urRM92hO9IbjnRZwUeiqar4l3VLf0tpDYKwpmyU--A-gFUDmYyTRJUPZOcLln-syyOm6vka2a71oqTvcQDgtwi-3O6WJ7e1Qklyqn"></p><p><a href="https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=10892625&IDKey=A689AD279428&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526p%3D1%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsearch-bool.html%2526r%3D49%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526co1%3DAND%2526d%3DPTXT%2526s1%3D%252522Apple%252BInc%252522.ASNM.%2526OS%3DAN%2F%252522Apple%252BInc%252522%2526RS%3DAN%2F%252522Apple%252BInc%252522" target="_blank"><u>Cases for your AirPods, stylus and iPhone </u></a></p><p>Apple hasn't been without Jony Ive for very long, but it seems it's going ham on truly zany design concepts in his absence. In this patent, Apple explores various ways to combine a holder for AirPods and a stylus into a folio-style case for an iPhone that could also charge your peripherals and potentially display messages on the exterior. If Apple could pull this off in a way that didn't lead to a giant lumpy mess in my pocket, I'd potentially be interested, but the drawings in the patent are … less than promising: </p><p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/0fbpPZ0ZDVCff0oNBktt-yaJYXoqyEz1rqXRPPbaaS1pHp5KSeO5LZm3vG8FsmdBu9Ms5s6QihhQVTWadTfWvGNn5h01dv2y1yiFfcVuRgHNvWteHNcRYb_rBPmAz03PctjwU4_A"></p><h3>Facebook</h3><p><a href="https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=10885693&IDKey=D4DB683187A2%0D%0A&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526p%3D1%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsearch-bool.html%2526r%3D48%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526co1%3DAND%2526d%3DPTXT%2526s1%3Dfacebook.ASNM.%2526OS%3DAN%2Ffacebook%2526RS%3DAN%2Ffacebook" target="_blank"><u>Animating digital avatars with VR headsets</u></a></p><p>Facebook is still pushing hard to make interacting in VR the future of … interacting … and this patent might help things feel a bit more natural. It suggests using cameras mounted on a VR headset pointed back at you to map real human facial expressions onto your digital avatar. Most VR programs with avatars either have faces that don't move when you're speaking or they just flap their mouths wildly; a system like this could make talking to someone dressed as a wizard or an elf or whatever else they've chosen to represent themselves online feel at least a little more normal. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><h3>Microsoft</h3><p><a href="https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=10896455&IDKey=507447D630AA%0D%0A&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsearch-adv.htm%2526r%3D14%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526d%3DPTXT%2526s1%3Dmicrosoft.ASNM.%2526p%3D1%2526OS%3DAN%2Fmicrosoft%2526RS%3DAN%2Fmicrosoft" target="_blank"><u>Cortana for your car</u></a></p><p>Microsoft is apparently looking into application-specific virtual assistants, such as one designed for use in a car. It's a Car-tana, if you will. The assistant would be designed to provide specific insights about driving and how you could be saving money. That would include things like preemptively letting you know when a part might need servicing, how many miles it's been since you last fueled up or that your electric car's charge is low and chargers are nearby. It could announce these things over the car's stereo system, allowing you to keep your eyes on the road.</p><p><a href="https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=10891928&IDKey=28C797030461%0D%0A&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsearch-adv.htm%2526r%3D50%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526d%3DPTXT%2526s1%3Dmicrosoft.ASNM.%2526p%3D1%2526OS%3DAN%2Fmicrosoft%2526RS%3DAN%2Fmicrosoft" target="_blank"><u>Computer-generated songs</u></a></p><p>Who needs musicians? Microsoft's new patent seems to want to make them obsolete. It suggests a system that can take an input, like a picture or some text, and turn it into a song. It can identify elements in the input, like the sentiment of the words or aspects of the image (like if people are outside or in a crowd) and build a melody and lyrics off of that. Sadly, as this is just a written document, there are no examples of this concept's potential output, if Microsoft has even built something like this. But if it does prove to be possible, I've got <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOck0kPtlfk" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><u>the perfect robot</u></a> to perform this system's songs. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p><a href="https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=10891969&IDKey=2B298D9FF592%0D%0A&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsearch-adv.htm%2526r%3D48%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526d%3DPTXT%2526s1%3Dmicrosoft.ASNM.%2526p%3D1%2526OS%3DAN%2Fmicrosoft%2526RS%3DAN%2Fmicrosoft" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><u>Turning speech into images</u></a></p><p>Microsoft is really on the art-generating bandwagon this week. This patent outlines a similar idea to the last one, envisioning a system that can take what someone is saying and turn it into images. The system could even string together generated images into a sort-of picture book: You could narrate a day you've had to the AI, and it generates something like a series of Instagram Stories based on what you say to it. Though it'd probably just be easier to actually take photos of what happened, honestly. <img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/YiHWGhgP3yGoWZ_QImFlegpqjzeVfS3SxBB2LcXH0Ap5oMwIMtDJdzzw4iPRsFgYlGPT2v4Jl5o3ueTFWJcQlw4nMwehlG7Y2jytW7QDFNq1fzPJUScU69UflhoMV-GJbdWNSezS"></p>
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Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
Protocol | China
More women are joining China's tech elite, but 'Wolf Culture' isn't going away
It turns out getting rid of misogyny in Chinese tech isn't just a numbers game.
Chinese tech companies that claim to value female empowerment may act differently behind closed doors.
Photo: Qilai Shen/Getty Images
January 27, 2021
Shen Lu is a Reporter with Protocol | China. She has spent six years covering China from inside and outside its borders. Previously, she was a fellow at Asia Society's ChinaFile and a Beijing-based producer for CNN. Her writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, The New York Times and POLITICO, among other publications. Shen Lu is a founding member of Chinese Storytellers, a community serving and elevating Chinese professionals in the global media industry.
January 27, 2021
A woman we'll call Fan had heard about the men of Alibaba before she joined its high-profile affiliate about three years ago. Some of them were "greasy," she said, to use a Chinese term often describing middle-aged men with poor boundaries. Fan tells Protocol that lewd conversations were omnipresent at team meetings and private events, and even women would feel compelled to crack off-color jokes in front of the men. Some male supervisors treated younger female colleagues like personal assistants.
Within six months, despite the cachet the lucrative job carried, Fan wanted to quit.
A woman we'll call Zhang had a similar experience at her former employer, Baidu. She told Protocol that senior colleagues joked that Zhang and her younger female coworkers were hired to "please their eyes."
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Alibaba and Baidu look and act like they value female empowerment. Alibaba, the ecommerce giant, hosts a <a href="https://www.alizila.com/speakers-talk-womens-empowerment-at-alibaba-conference/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Global Conference on Women and Entrepreneurship</a> every year. Its founder, Jack Ma, has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUuEryO0ogg" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">positioned</a> himself as a champion for women and has repeatedly said that Alibaba <a href="https://www.qianzhan.com/people/detail/271/140925-908063c9.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">owes its success to its female workers</a>. Ma has touted the company's <a href="https://ishare.ifeng.com/c/s/7pVlMyNV25i" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">relatively hefty share</a> of women in top management — currently, <a href="https://www.alibabagroup.com/cn/about/leadership" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">six out of 14</a> of the most senior roles are staffed by women. Search engine behemoth Baidu, too, likes to<a href="http://d.youth.cn/newtech/202012/t20201230_12640898.htm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> tout</a> its relatively high ratio — <a href="http://esg.baidu.com/Uploads/File/2020/06/18/u5eeb598d72472.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">46%</a> — of women in management.
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"Workplace equality is a core value of Baidu. Female employees account for 43% of Baidu's workforce and 46% of management. Women play significant roles as top executives of the company driving technology innovation and strategy," Baidu said in an email reply. Alibaba did not respond to Protocol's requests for comment.
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So why do women like Fan and Zhang have such a rough go of it?
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This is the terrible paradox at the heart of Chinese tech, one that will threaten its capacity to innovate in the future. A wave of Chinese women are joining elite tech companies and their boardrooms, often in numbers that compare favorably to tech industries abroad, but it turns out that getting rid of sexism is far more than a numbers game. Women in Chinese tech are marginalized, demoralized and exhausted. When they get home, they're still expected to shoulder most of the childcare and household chores.
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The result: Those who manage to ascend have to learn to play — and win — a man's game. This paradox is going to sharpen as more women enter tech and become aware of gender inequality.
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Women are increasingly populating Chinese tech offices. Data shows that some of China's biggest internet companies, including <a href="https://pic2.zhimg.com/80/v2-64ca7bcc8aa012b59dbd90cdb6c7b809_1440w.jpg" target="_blank">ByteDance</a>, <a href="http://esg.baidu.com/Uploads/File/2020/06/18/u5eeb598d72472.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Baidu</a> and ride-hailing giant <a href="https://www.yicai.com/news/5260027.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Didi Chuxing</a>, each employ at least 40% female staff. By way of comparison, <a href="https://www.statista.com/chart/4467/female-employees-at-tech-companies/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">statistics show</a> that female employees fill between 28% and 42% of roles at America's five largest tech companies. In India, women make up <a href="https://go.451research.com/women-in-tech-india-employment-trends.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">34%</a> of the tech workforce; in the U.K., the figure is <a href="https://technation.io/insights/diversity-and-inclusion-in-uk-tech-companies/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">19%</a>.
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Women have also made it into Chinese tech leadership. <a href="https://www.svb.com/trends-insights/reports/women-in-technology-2019" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Seventy percent</a> of Chinese startups have at least one female executive, a higher proportion than companies in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, according to a 2019 survey conducted by Silicon Valley Bank. And more than 1,000 women have<a href="https://xw.qq.com/cmsid/20200308A0L9J400" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> made it into the boardrooms</a> of China's public tech companies, according to a study conducted by Tianyancha, a data technology service company.
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Yet Alibaba and Baidu are not the only "greasy" companies. Leading Chinese tech firms, including Tencent, have posted job ads depicting their female employees as "pretty" or "goddesses" to attract male candidates, according to a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/04/23/only-men-need-apply/gender-discrimination-job-advertisements-china#_ftn99" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">2018 Human Rights Watch report</a>. In 2017, WeChat's parent company Tencent apologized after <a href="https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1815/video-of-women-on-their-knees-deals-blow-to-tencent-image" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">footage emerged</a> of a corporate event where female employees were kneeling while using their teeth to open water bottles placed between men's legs. A <a href="https://www.digitaling.com/articles/16221.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">2012 job ad</a> for food-delivery group Meituan declared that "finding a job equals finding a woman," featuring a suggestive image of a thong hanging between a woman's legs. "Do what you most want to do," the ad concluded, using a verb for "do" that colloquially means "fuck." In the years since, Meituan has repeatedly depicted young women in its promotional ads as <a href="https://www.yunyingpai.com/extend/518996.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">food on the plate</a> for delivery.
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In gender studies, the <a href="https://tidsskrift.dk/scandinavian_political_studies/article/download/32616/30682" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">theory of critical mass</a> hypothesizes that deliberative bodies must be made up of at least <a href="https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/eql-men/index.html#:~:text=Women%20have%20gained%20the%20right,States%20of%20the%20United%20Nations.&text=The%20figure%20of%2030%20percent,content%20of%20political%20decision%2Dmaking." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">30%</a> women to impact policymaking. But at least when it comes to tech, it's clear that neither a high percentage of female execs nor a workforce approaching gender parity equate to workplace equality. Julie Yujie Chen, who teaches at the University of Toronto and has researched the experience of Chinese women in tech, doesn't believe the presence of more women executives in a Chinese tech company will work in favor of female employees. "Women in tech is not a representation issue," she told Protocol. "It is about challenging the norms."
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Lin Zhang, an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire who has interviewed dozens of female entrepreneurs in China's tech companies, said many of the women who thrive in this ultra-competitive, male-dominated industry not only have become resigned to workplace masculinity and sexism, but have internalized it. "Because of the generally hostile gender culture in China, there's not much solidarity among women," Zhang said. "Now that they're up there, they feel like, 'I have paid my dues. It's your turn.'"
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Alibaba's Fan echoes this: "Although women are much present in Alibaba's senior management, they all have transformed themselves to be greasier than the men. That's how they entered that powerful circle."
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Shi is a 30-year-old manager of a content-producing team at Nasdaq-listed video-sharing platform Bilibili. Like Fan and the other female tech workers interviewed for this story, she spoke to Protocol on the condition that she be identified by a pseudonym to avoid retaliation from her employer. Shi said the women in her company leadership "completely subscribe to the 'wolf' mentality. They are just as territorial, aggressive and exploitative as the men."
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One result is tech products that objectify women and reinforce gender stereotypes, at least in the way they are marketed and used. Didi Chuxing is helmed by a woman — company president Jean Liu — and Didi's staff was <a href="https://www.yicai.com/news/5260027.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">40%</a> female in 2017, the most recent year for which statistics are available. However, it encountered scandal with Hitch, a carpooling service launched in 2015 that suggested hookups between drivers and passengers in its 2018 <a href="https://new.qq.com/omn/20180828/20180828A08PZK.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ads</a>. Two female Hitch passengers were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/business/didi-chuxing-murder-rape-women.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimesworld" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">raped and killed</a> that same year. The general manager at Hitch was a woman named Huang Jieli.
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Even relatively "woke" Chinese companies demand a lot of their employees. A major culprit is Chinese tech's infamous 996 work schedule — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days per week — which can wear workers down. I spoke with most interviewees after 10 p.m. in China, after they had finished a long day's work. Message alerts from colleagues often interrupted our conversations.
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This work culture further disadvantages women because of the larger milieu in which they live. Women still shoulder most of the childcare and housework burden in Chinese households. A 2019 National Bureau of Statistics <a href="https://cnlgbtdata.com/files/uploads/2020/01/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E7%A4%BE%E4%BC%9A%E4%B8%AD%E7%9A%84%E5%A5%B3%E4%BA%BA%E5%92%8C%E7%94%B7%E4%BA%BA2019EN-final.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">report</a> showed that women spent more than twice as much time as men on unpaid household work. "The lack of reliable childcare service becomes a structural barrier for women to advance their career," said Chen, "especially in sectors like the tech industry."
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Although a large number of young Chinese women have joined tech, they are more likely to concentrate at the lower end of the skill and productivity spectrum, such as human resources, public relations and business operations. Programming, often the power center, remains a male-dominated division, with female programmers comprising only 10.4% of its ranks in 2020, according to a<a href="https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/109185515" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> report by Chinese digital working platform Proginn</a>. (In the U.S., figures range between <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1126823/worldwide-developer-gender/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">8%</a> and <a href="https://www.frgconsulting.com/blog/female-developers-workforce/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">11%</a>.)
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Of course, China has its share of relatively egalitarian companies. Take ByteDance. While it spent last year at the center of U.S. controversy over data-sharing with Beijing, it's seen at home as valuing diversity and inclusion. Dong, who works in the ByteDance HR department, told Protocol she chose the company for its relatively egalitarian culture. It was the only prospective employer that did not inquire about her marital status when she was job-hunting in 2018, and the supervisor of the department she was interviewing for was a woman in her late 30s.
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But Dong thinks ByteDance is swimming against the tide. She says several senior female colleagues in her team still had to quit because they couldn't juggle work and childcare demands. It's not a problem unique to China, but female workers there are getting less help than in other countries. "Tech companies in other countries are trying to create a better environment for female workers who face similar social expectations," Dong said. "But in China, they won't specifically create supportive policies for you. The baseline is lower. It's like, 'I'm already doing well by not treating you badly.'"
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Shen Lu is a Reporter with Protocol | China. She has spent six years covering China from inside and outside its borders. Previously, she was a fellow at Asia Society's ChinaFile and a Beijing-based producer for CNN. Her writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, The New York Times and POLITICO, among other publications. Shen Lu is a founding member of Chinese Storytellers, a community serving and elevating Chinese professionals in the global media industry.
About Protocol | Enterprise
‘It’s not OK’: Elastic takes aim at AWS, at the risk of major collateral damage
Elastic's long-running dispute with AWS entered a new chapter last week with big changes to two of its open-source projects. AWS now plans to take those projects under its wing.
"I don't know why this is surprising to people," Elastic CEO Shay Banon said in an interview with Protocol.
Photo: Michael Nagle/Getty Images
January 22, 2021
Tom Krazit ( @tomkrazit) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering cloud computing and enterprise technology out of the Pacific Northwest. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET, paidContent, and GeekWire. He served as executive editor of Gigaom and Structure, and most recently produced a leading cloud computing newsletter called Mostly Cloudy.
January 21, 2021
Fed up with what he sees as unfair competition from AWS, Elastic CEO Shay Banon felt he had no choice but to restrict the way third parties can use two important open-source projects developed by his company. Yet much of enterprise tech thinks he just threw the baby out with the bathwater.
Last Thursday, Elastic published a blog post — curiously titled "Doubling down on open, Part II" — announcing that Elasticsearch and Kibana, two widely used open-source projects in enterprise tech, would no longer be available under the permissive Apache 2.0 license. Instead, all subsequent releases to those projects will only be available under either a controversial new license known as the SSPL, or the Elastic License, both of which were designed to make it difficult for cloud companies to sell managed versions of the open-source projects they're applied to.
<p>Elastic has never tried to hide its disdain for AWS, a feud that dates back to the <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-elasticsearch-service/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">2015 launch of Amazon Elasticsearch Service</a>. The introduction of that AWS service, a managed version of the Elasticsearch open-source project, was arguably the low point in <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2018/open-source-companies-considering-closed-approach/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the strained history</a> between enterprise tech companies based around open-source projects and AWS.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>It is, <a href="https://mostlycloudy.substack.com/p/for-the-new-york-times-a-swing-and" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">of course</a>, completely legal for AWS — or any company — to build its own service around any permissively licensed open-source project. In fact, <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/stepping-up-for-a-truly-open-source-elasticsearch/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">AWS reacted to Elastic's decision Thursday afternoon</a> by announcing plans to <a href="https://opensource.com/article/18/7/forks-vs-distributions" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">fork</a> the two projects, or to take them in a new AWS-led direction, under the same permissive Apache 2.0 license.</p><p>But a generation of open-source enterprise companies (and their venture capitalist backers) see AWS as an anticompetitive gorilla stomping on their opportunity to monetize innovative software, and Elastic took particular offense to AWS' use of the Elasticsearch trademark.</p><p>"I don't know why this is surprising to people," Banon said in an interview with Protocol. "I'm making a stand here. I'm drawing a line and saying this is not OK."</p><p>However, critics argued Banon's decision paved the way for Amazon to turn its open-source distribution of the Elasticsearch project, the <a href="https://opendistro.github.io/for-elasticsearch/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Open Distro for Elasticsearch</a>, into a proper fork. The move had enormous potential to disappoint contributors to the Elasticsearch and Kibana projects who expected their work would be freely available to the community, only for that promise to be discarded once it was no longer economically comfortable for its corporate backer.</p><p>"Choosing to fork a project is not a decision to be taken lightly, but it can be the right path forward when the needs of a community diverge — as they have here. An important benefit of open-source software is that when something like this happens, developers already have all the rights they need to pick up the work themselves, if they are sufficiently motivated," AWS said in the post announcing its decision.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>After AWS published its decision, Banon issued an additional statement: "<em></em>When we announced the change, we sadly expected this. This what made it so hard. But I am also relieved. Relieved we are free to focus on products vs. battle abuse. Relieved that I can trust our community will see through this misinformation & confusion.<em>"</em><br></p><p>While legal experts believe Banon has a solid trademark case against AWS, the licensing changes clearly did not deter AWS, and they have no effect on companies like Microsoft and Google Cloud, which have signed deals with Elastic.</p><p>"They are aiming to hit Amazon, but what they are doing is throwing a boulder at Amazon floating peacefully in a pond of an ecosystem," said <a href="https://www.vmbrasseur.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">VM (Vicky) Brasseur</a>, a corporate strategist and former vice president of the <a href="https://opensource.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Open Source Initiative</a>. "I don't think it's worth it. They are going to destroy their ecosystem."</p><h3>Quite a stretch</h3><p><a href="https://www.elastic.co/enterprise-search" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Elasticsearch</a> is an open-source search engine first released in 2010 by Banon, who would go on to co-found Elastic in 2012. It is often used alongside two other Elastic open-source projects, Logstash and Kibana, to form the "<a href="https://www.elastic.co/what-is/elk-stack" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ELK stack</a>," which is well known in enterprise tech circles among companies that want to build search capabilities for their websites while also using those search capabilities to pursue their system logs for events such as errors.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Customers can buy a managed version of this stack <a href="https://www.elastic.co/pricing/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">called Elastic Cloud</a>, which runs on all three major U.S. cloud providers, or manage it themselves on either their own hardware or clouds. But there are also some companies and individual users that are happy to take on the burden of managing <a href="https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the open-source version</a>.</p><p>The new licensing changes, however, mean that companies using this open-source version must now agree that they won't use Elasticsearch and Kibana as part of their own cloud service, and that has raised questions. The changes are directed at big cloud providers, but there are many small and medium businesses that could be using the open-source projects as part of their own software stack in a way that may or may not be infringing on the new licenses, depending on the quality of the lawyers involved in any dispute.</p><p>"If you're using them, please look at how they fit into your software supply chain, look at how this is going to impact your product and your projects. Don't just overlook it and assume it's nothing," Brasseur said.</p><p>Banon said "the vast majority" of Elasticsearch and Kibana users will not be affected by these licensing changes, but he acknowledged there will be valid concerns felt inside the Elasticsearch community.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>"I'm very worried about [alienating community members]; this is why we didn't make this change lightly," Banon said. "Regardless of how much we try to relax our user base, some people will end up being alienated, and others, which I'm more worried about, might be fed by FUD," the tried-and-true "fear, uncertainty and doubt" campaigns that have been part of enterprise tech marketing for decades.</p><p>Brasseur agreed that the licensing move comes with significant risks to Elastic's goodwill inside its community of contributors.</p><p>"They're now taking these contributions, which were given by external contributors freely and openly with the assumption that their contributions would be freely and openly available, and now they're locking them up behind a non-open license," she said. "It's perfectly fine to do that. But you better be talking to your community up front and telling them how and why, and then I think it's probably wise for you to be then compensating people for the value that they have provided to your company. Otherwise, you're just using them."</p><h3>Off the mark</h3><p>The root cause of the dispute between Elastic and AWS mostly centers on the trademark issue, which prompted <a href="https://searchaws.techtarget.com/news/252471650/AWS-faces-Elasticsearch-lawsuit-for-trademark-infringement" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a lawsuit from Elastic in 2019</a> that continues to work its way through the court system.</p><p>The use of that trademark caused a great deal of confusion among Elastic's customers, according to Banon, who believed that the AWS service was the result of collaboration between the two companies when it was really just a repackaging of the open-source Elasticsearch project. <a href="https://twitter.com/Werner/status/649738362086027265?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">A tweet from Amazon CTO Werner Vogels</a> calling the new service a "partnership" certainly did not help.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>"To modify Elastic's product and call it Amazon Elasticsearch is, in my view, a pretty clear trademark infringement," said Pamela Chestek, <a href="https://chesteklegal.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a trademark attorney</a> and former intellectual property attorney at IBM's Red Hat.</p><p>But when <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2019/elasticsearch-distribution-amazon-web-services-sends-shockwaves-open-source-software/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">AWS launched the Open Distro for Elasticsearch in 2019</a>, the trademark dispute also turned into a dispute over code.</p><p>AWS charged that Elastic was co-mingling open-source code with proprietary code, making it hard for users to know if they required a paid subscription or not to use certain features. The Open Distro was pitched as a way to get the benefits of open-source Elasticsearch with the features needed to make it work properly, and it was released under the Apache 2.0 license.</p><p>Elastic denied that it was trying to confuse its users, and alleged that AWS was using third-party code in that distribution that was a copy of its own work.</p><p>"Recently, we found more examples of what we consider to be ethically challenged behavior. We have differentiated with proprietary features, and now we see these feature designs serving as 'inspiration' for Amazon, telling us their behavior continues and is more brazen," <a href="https://www.elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-AWS" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Banon said in a blog post Tuesday</a>.</p><h3>License to print money</h3><p>As with all disputes in enterprise software, this one really comes down to money. Elastic doesn't make money when people use the open-source versions of its software, and all things considered, would prefer they pay for the licensed versions.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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</div></p><p>From the outside it's hard to pinpoint exactly how much money AWS has made from its Elasticsearch services, but it's a non-zero amount: AWS likely recorded more than $12 billion in overall cloud revenue during the fourth quarter of 2020. At the same time, Elastic's own cloud services are growing quite strongly as the world shifts to cloud-based software.</p><p><a href="https://s2.q4cdn.com/265747582/files/doc_financials/2021/q2/Q2-FY21-Earnings-Press-Release.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Elastic revenue rose 43% in its most recent quarter</a>, with SaaS subscription revenue for Elastic Cloud driving much of that growth. Over the course of 2020, Banon wasn't worried enough about the competitive threat from AWS to mention it during the quarterly conversations with the financial community.</p><p>In fact, in answering a question about competition with the cloud providers from a financial analyst during Elastic's December earnings conference, Banon said: "We feel like we're ahead of the pack on all three when it comes to the maturity and the future readiness of our products, and that's reflected, I think, by the usage of it." Elastic's stock has more than doubled in the last 12 months.</p><p>"We're doing well as a business, and I'm not going to sit here and apologize for it," Banon said. "It's not about doing well or not doing well as a business, it's about doing what's right."</p><p>In the aftermath of the licensing changes, however, what's "right" for Elasticsearch users, open-source contributors, and Elastic shareholders takes on different meanings, depending on where you sit.</p><p>"I would have been a lot more sympathetic to Elastic if they said, 'look, these choices we made when we were very young, they aren't working out for us anymore. They aren't working out with our business plan,'" Chestek said. "A lot of people would be unhappy with that, but it would be honest."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="7">
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</div></p><p><strong><em>Update:</em></strong><em> This article was updated at 3:45 p.m. PT to include a statement from Elastic following the release of AWS' blog post.</em></p>
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Tom Krazit ( @tomkrazit) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering cloud computing and enterprise technology out of the Pacific Northwest. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET, paidContent, and GeekWire. He served as executive editor of Gigaom and Structure, and most recently produced a leading cloud computing newsletter called Mostly Cloudy.
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January 27, 2021 17:22 EST
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