Thread by @QuinnyPig

Let's go back in time and put on my Analyst / Marketing pants. It's years ago, I'm advising @elastic, and @awscloud has just come out with "Amazon Elasticsearch." This feels bad, since (as attested in court) they didn't give a heads up, and there's the danger of brand confusion.

First, I've gotta admit that I'm fighting a rearguard action in some ways. "Elastic Compute" predates the founding of the company and its trademark by a lot, and there are a bunch of other "Elastic" terms people equate with AWS.

In effect, the odds are basically zero that people already aren't equating our stuff as being an Amazon offering. I'm only half kidding when I suggest "Stretchy-Go-Findy" as an alternate name.

First, I'd immediately try out the newly launched AESS. I'm heartened to discover that is is Really Bad. I can't depend on this remaining true, but I can definitely make a marketing splash by offering prospects a free month of AWS's offering to reinforce that ours is better.

In the mid-term I'd call an Elastic Contributor Summit. These folks didn't just donate code; they in many ways view "Elastic" as composing part of their own identities. They want to help!

I don't presume to speak for the community, but it'd let me lay my cards on the table. They're a diverse and smart bunch!

The key difference here is that regardless of what actions we take, the community would feel consulted and "bought in" on what came next.

More to the point, I'd have ~1500 people now acutely aware of the issues facing us. That's one hell of a street team; they're embedded at @awscloud customers everywhere. That's definitely enough of a voice to move whatever 2-pizza team at AWS built their monstrosity.

Open Source isn't a business model, and you don't want to confuse it with one. Community is a strategy, and one that offers unique strengths. If you're not going to leverage those strengths, what was the point? Free dev work?

Further, AWS absolutely sucks at messaging. It doesn't exactly take a giant PR budget to turn this into "anyone defending AWS is clearly a shill" while strengthening your own brand instead of torching it.

But I'm not a 2015 marketing consultant / analyst to @elastic. It's 2021, and here we are. And the opportunity lost is a damned shame for everyone involved.