Free, open, and here’s why
Openness, transparency, and collaboration are at the heart of all that we do.
But first, what do we mean by free and open?
From roots in open source
Founded as an open source project, Elasticsearch didn’t become what it is today by hiding away until the code was perfect. Building on top of Apache Lucene, an open source search engine library, Elasticsearch made it easy for developers to quickly build search functionality into their applications and to take search technology in new directions.
Since day one, our community and customers have been able to
- view our open code
- make pull requests to update our code
- modify the code for their own use case(s) and to make sure it fits perfectly into their own environment(s)
To building a free and open model
Open code not only ensures that Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack evolve to best suit the needs of our community and customers, but also ensures that our community and customers can innovate, evolve, and optimize their own solutions.
And, we haven’t had to imagine what would happen if several thousand people innovated on top of one codebase — we’ve experienced it. New features and new functionality have emerged as a community of users with a diverse set of use cases evolved our code to meet their unique needs. Security gets hardened as more (and more) users scrutinize the code. Reliability and resiliency become more established with rigorous testing across various architectures and environments.
And delivering value for everyone
Whether it’s a developer building out their first search-powered solution or an executive seeking to transform data into actionable insights, Elastic’s free and open model delivers value.
Developers try our products and quickly transform a proof-of-concept into a large-scale deployment powering mission-critical systems.
Decision makers and executives take notice of what their developers are doing and turn to Elastic to help connect people with content that matters, solve for increasingly complex IT environments, and protect their digital ecosystems.
No matter who you are or what you’re working on, Elastic believes free and open can deliver amazing results where value is the common denominator.
"It was easy to get started using the Elastic Stack for testing purposes. Not only that, the Elastic Stack also proved to be easy to use and scale once in production, and was also within cost constraints — ensuring efficiency and value for money."
Department of Work & Pensions
We believe in free and open
Even though we know that the free and open path isn’t always easy, it’s the best way to develop software and ensure ongoing success for our products, our company, and our community.
We make our code available in public repositories. We contribute to open source projects like Apache Lucene. We engage with and accept pull requests from you, our users. And we’re committed to supporting and catalyzing your growth.
And we believe that community is more than code
Our community is part of Elastic’s identity. When our community interacts on forums, organizes meetups, and gives feedback, it fosters collaboration that goes beyond the exchange of code.
Free and open solutions — only from Elastic
Enterprise Search
Observability
Security