In 6.3, telemetry (‘phone home’) is an opt-in only feature for both the free and paid components of X-Pack. We won’t be tracking any identification, so even if users opt-in to telemetry, there is no way to turn that into a sales strategy.
Suing users is a pretty terrible business practice and not, at all, a funnel creation opportunity.
Re. License, there are a few FAQs on https://www.elastic.co/products/x-pack/open#faq that may help clear up any misunderstandings. Free features are free and governed by the Elastic EULA but are enabled by default. Paid features are available through an opt-in trial and, if they help solve a problem, can be purchased.
<disclaimer: I work at Elastic in Developer Relations>
and this trial can't be disabled (to use them for an unlimited amount of time) by someone by modifying your source because your license prohibits that? Am I correct in that assumption?
Based on a previous experience being in their sales funnel and speaking to their reps at re:Invent.
They have an incredible product that I can't live without, it's just incredibly painful trying to actually pay them money for something.
Honestly, I think their real play here is getting community contributions to fix stuff that's very broken and also to edge out Siren Solutions. SearchGuard, Kibi and Sentinl are all _very_ good tools.
Not OP. One reason i find it is hard to pay you is because there is no way to buy your product without talking to someone. The pricing is not listed anywhere on your website.
That changed Jan 1 while were in the middle of figuring out what we were going to pay them -- then some X-Pack features disappeared from the "Gold" plan and the cost they quoted us was _way up_ from what we were evaluating.
There actually still is a pricing page somewhere on the site, but you have to dig for it, and I don't think it's correct anymore.
Nor would I put it past them to consider legal demand letters as part of their sales funnel.