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AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source

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Re: AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source

#61

Post by zaat »

jsiepkes wrote: post #15
Xylakant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still suffer from the same problem: AWS is selling it's own elasticsearch service. It comes with a set of severe restrictions and is way less capable than elastics own offering, but it's improving and I see it used more and more often.

If Amazon doesn't want to pay for your product they are not going to. They will just (re)implement it themselves with a compatible API. Even if MongoDB was a proprietary product with an Oracle-style pricelist Amazon still would have done the same: Reimplement it with compatible API. Then again the reverse is also true. Just look at all the software providing an S3 compatible API.

Well, Google (or rather, the original Android) did that to Oracle with the Java API, and Oracle, being Oracle, sued.

Re: AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source

#62

Post by talkingtab »

It is a good read, with good insights. The conclusion - "This tradeoff is inescapable" is true only to the extent that a new model for open source does not arise. Stepping back a couple thousand feet, open source is an amazing thing - a bunch of people alone or in collaboration, building great things which other people then use to build other ... etc. If we can find a way to sustain this it would be great.

It is to me absolutely clear to me that Amazon is benefiting from the work MongoDB has done, and without commensurate compensation. (Is anyone proposing Amazon does not benefit?) And having watched Microsoft embrace, extend and extinguish way too successfully, it is at least a concern that the effect of Amazon's action will be to the long term detriment of MongoDB.

This to me is the problem that must be solved. One possibility is to modify the OSS model and licenses by creating a distinction between the members of the community and non-members like Amazon and Apple. If you want to use any OSS software (with the new license) then you must become a contibuting member of the community. If you don't want to be a member, then NO OSS software is available to you. In other words, Amazon could not pick and choose which OSS to use, but only to be a member of the community with all the benefits or not.

I'm not saying this is the answer, but I am saying this is the problem we need to solve.

OSS is an ecosystem - one that should and must protect itself from predators.

Re: AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source

#63

Post by geggam »

sokoloff wrote: post #47
geggam wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At scale you need to move out of the cloud. Once you hit a certain point there is no economic gain.

That is almost surely true at extreme scale. The interesting question is whether that's true for 0.1%, 1%, or 5% of companies. (I think it's on the lower end of that range somewhere, provided the 5% scale cases are willing to be smart about their hybrid strategy.)

Was at a startup around 2k nodes in AWS. Bill was over 400K on average a month.

When purchasing RI I saw 800K a month.

Re: AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source

#64

Post by opencl »

javajosh wrote: post #31

Is it possible to let people use software freely, but if they make money from a service that uses it, you have to pay for it? This seems to me to be the fairest approach, particularly in a hosted environment. Think of something like codepen.io but instead of premium pricing they only charge you when you process payments. In a way, this is what the App Store and Play Store are already doing, no?

Unreal engine charges 5% royalty for projects using it (waived for the first $3k/quarter).

Re: AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source

#65

Post by zozbot123 »

matwood wrote: post #24
avar wrote: post #20

> It is hard to imagine [AWS, Microsoft, and Google] ever paying for open source software. It's surprising that someone setting out to write about the changing economies of open source ends up missing the point so thoroughly. These companies are some of the biggest contributors to open source. What they aren't likely to want to pay for is a site license from some company trying to sell them a MongoDB under terms prac…

I agree. It's important to point out specifically that many companies are paying for OSS with developer time instead of money. IMO, that is better than money and fits the OSS ethos.

> IMO, that is better than money

IMO, it's not. SF developer time is hella expensive, and OSS projects can hire developers on their own, somewhere cheaper. Where a software company can help OSS cheaply and effectively is by providing support for interoperability with their own business area, and by relicensing their existing, non-core-business IP under favorable terms.

Re: AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source

#66

Post by dest »

talkingtab wrote: post #62

It is a good read, with good insights. The conclusion - "This tradeoff is inescapable" is true only to the extent that a new model for open source does not arise. Stepping back a couple thousand feet, open source is an amazing thing - a bunch of people alone or in collaboration, building great things which other people then use to build other ... etc. If we can find a way to sustain this it would be great. It is to m…

Isn't it what GPL is about? Forcing users to follow the rules of the club?

Re: AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source

#67

Post by pweissbrod »

reacweb wrote: post #32

When you give money to redhat, you buy insurance that if you encounter a problem, they will support you. It is expencive, but there is clearly a lot of work involved in producing new release. IMHO redhat deserves its money. When you give money to Oracle, you are financing lawyers who try to find the best way to make you pay more without improving the software.

"IMHO redhat deserves its money". I agree. But the vast majority of people employ CentOS which is redhats derivative.

Oracle engineers work hard on java and deserve their money but the vast majority of people employ OpenJDK which is OracleJDKs derivative.

Re: AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source

#68

Post by pjc50 »

pweissbrod wrote: post #67
reacweb wrote: post #32

When you give money to redhat, you buy insurance that if you encounter a problem, they will support you. It is expencive, but there is clearly a lot of work involved in producing new release. IMHO redhat deserves its money. When you give money to Oracle, you are financing lawyers who try to find the best way to make you pay more without improving the software.

"IMHO redhat deserves its money". I agree. But the vast majority of people employ CentOS which is redhats derivative. Oracle engineers work hard on java and deserve their money but the vast majority of people employ OpenJDK which is OracleJDKs derivative.

For a long period of time I regarded Oracle as absolutely undeserving owners of the JDK; they didn't write it, it was bought from Sun, they shipped adware in the installer, tried to sue Android out of existence, and were poor stewards of the language.

Re: AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source

#69

Post by lwf »

BrentOzar wrote: post #30
avar wrote: post #20

> It is hard to imagine [AWS, Microsoft, and Google] ever paying for open source software. It's surprising that someone setting out to write about the changing economies of open source ends up missing the point so thoroughly. These companies are some of the biggest contributors to open source. What they aren't likely to want to pay for is a site license from some company trying to sell them a MongoDB under terms prac…

> These companies are some of the biggest contributors to open source. I wouldn't expect AWS to make a lot of code contributions to MongoDB when they've built something else that's 3.6 compatible, though. It's not like they're going to make contributions to a new, incompatible version of MongoDB. They've already made the call to fork. I agree with what you're saying about other products, but not this particular case.

It isn't a fork, it's an entirely new database that implements the same API.

c.f. https://twitter.com/nathankpeck/status/1083385031207387136 from someone at AWS DevRel.

There's nothing about Mongo's license that's super relevant here -- it's a similar situation to other cloud providers offering "S3"- or "EC2"-compatible APIs.

(IANAL, but AIUI API copyright/fair-use isn't entirely settled in the US, Oracle v. Google nonwithstanding, since 9th Cir. isn't per se controlling precedent nationwide in copyright matters)

Re: AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source

#70

Post by richardknop »

BossingAround wrote: post #6
dhh2106 wrote: post #2

I work on an open core business model, and we spend a fair amount of time thinking about ways to prevent third parties from stealing our lunch. CockroachDB has an interesting model, where they've tried to closely couple their open source and premium products. This coupling makes it harder for third parties to build against the open source and even easier for enterprises to use it. Do people here have examples of comp…

But why did Red Hat succeed then? (this is a genuine question, I'd have guessed IBM would re-package RH's products, and Oracle failed with their Unbreakable Linux)

Because they are basically a consulting firm just like Accenture or IBM. They sell their expertise / charge big rates for having their experts work on projects.
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