Why the switch to Elastic license?

CogStack
1

It looks like the license for CogStack and MedCAT was changed from Apache 2.0 to Elastic 2.0 in August (PR).

Is the motivation for this change documented anywhere? Its not mentioned in the news or release notes that I could find.

This is a pretty significant change. As you no doubt know this is not an OSI approved license (Licenses & Standards | Open Source Initiative and FAQ on 2021 License Change | Elastic).

Was this change necessitated by CogStack’s use of Elastic or were there other reasons?

2

Welcome @jlewi!

The main motivation for the change was to stop 3rd party companies from selling this tools directly as a service without contributing back to the project. This was a rushed move so apologies for the lack of mention in the news section. Thank you for pointing that out I will rectify that.

For Open Source projects, and especially for use in research we are happy to support your project.

Let me know if there are any further questions. If there is anything that you wish to discuss but not over the open forum please reach out to us at contact@cogstack.org. Thanks.