CrafterCMS is Moving to OpenSearch

A Message from our CTO:

Elasticsearch decided to use a non-OSI-approved license with legal language that can threaten any open source project and its users. While we still love Elasticsearch’s technology and innovation, the legal questions and abandonment of an OSI-approved license have raised concerns here at CrafterCMS, and within our community.

We now find ourselves at a crossroads. We can continue with Elasticsearch and benefit from its continued investment in innovation and great technology but risk severe legal consequences and/or costs for us or our community and users. Or we switch to OpenSearch, which is a fork of Elasticsearch as of 7.10, eliminate the legal concerns, and remain true to our open source commitment.

After much deliberation, we've decided to switch to OpenSearch and we were welcomed warmly by their team and community. OpenSearch will replace Elasticsearch starting in the CrafterCMS version 4.1 release.

So far, we've conducted a number of experiments to understand what it takes to:

  • Upgrade Crafter Search, Crafter Engine, Crafter Deployer, Crafter Studio
  • Upgrade CrafterCMS projects from 3.1 to 4.1 
  • Upgrade of CrafterCMS projects from 4.0 to 4.1


All indications thus far have been very positive. It is our intention to make CrafterCMS project upgrades (i.e., for your sites and apps) as easy as possible for our community and users. We will automate what can be automated, alias the code where applicable, and document any manual steps to make them easy and straightforward.