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I'm testing ODFE (version 0.9 at the moment), and I find the lack of xpack features annoying. Would it be possible to activate some of them (the free ones of course) on ODFE ? I really appreciate the monitoring section for example, or the ILM API. Kibana feels kind of empty with ODFE :(

I've searched a bit around, but since many versions xpack is no longer a plugin but is built-in, however I find no trace of xpack in ODFE.

Is there any good replacements, or ways to install it ?

Cheers,

zarak
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    If you need the free XPack features, you'll need to install the official ES version, there's no way around it. – Val May 07 '19 at 06:03
  • Yeah I thought so, but I'd really like to combine those two. Maybe someone found a way to add odfe to free ES or the opposite? I musn't not be the only one looking for this, but I'm not skilled enough (and don't have the time) to do the analysis, reverse and coding part unfortunately – zarak May 07 '19 at 10:28

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As stated in their initial announcement, Open Distro For Elasticsearch is based on the open-source version of Elasticsearch and is not a fork, even though they do include a few other open-source plugins for security, alerting, SQL and more.

You need to know that XPack features are commercial features (some free, some you have to pay for) that Elastic is only including into their official releases, but not in the open-source code base.

Now since ODFE is based on the open-source ES distribution (without XPack by definition) and since XPack (under Elastic licensing) is now bundled as a module into the official ES release, there's no way that you can install XPack as a plugin into ODFE, as that would violate the Elastic license.

Even the free XPack features will never be included in the open source version. The only way that free XPack features will one day be included in ODFE is if Amazon redevelops them from scratch in their own code base. So you need to decide up front what kind of features you need and then take the appropriate ES release that fit your needs.

Also worth reading: Shay Banon (Elastic CEO) on "Open" Distros, Open Source, and Building a Company

UPDATE (May 20th, 2019):

Since version 6.8.0 and 7.1.0, some features of XPack Security are now included into the BASIC license, and are thus free.

Val
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  • Yeah, I thought so but I was kinda hopping that there would be a way around :( Thanks for your answer and clarifications on the difference between open-source ES and free ES anyway ! – zarak May 07 '19 at 13:05
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    You can't have your cake and eat it (too) :-) – Val May 07 '19 at 13:06
  • Well, they annouced that xpack was going open-source recently, and since some parts of it are free AND open source, I imagined that they would be somehow a way to make it work, but I forgot about the licensing part, which really a pain. I really appreciate elastic.co products, but their licensing models and fees are a real turn off. – zarak May 07 '19 at 13:09
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    Well, not exactly, they said they would [open up the XPack code](https://www.elastic.co/blog/doubling-down-on-open) for everyone to see, but they didn't say they would open-source it. There's a fine line here. I made the same mistake here: https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-stack-and-gdpr-reloaded/121121/2?u=val – Val May 07 '19 at 13:29
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    Yes, open / visible code isn't OSS per the OSI definition (4 freedoms) – xeraa May 07 '19 at 22:30