AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by zby » Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #160

zby wrote: post #129

How would it be different if whole of MongoDB had a proprietary license? Amazon would do the same thing with the same effect. Open Source is a red herring here - the problem is with selling software when AWS sells “performance, scalability, and availability.”

It's unlikely that the product would have as much usage in the first place to get any attention, nor would the protocol be open-source for AWS to host or build its own version. That's a critical difference compared to proprietary software, in which case AWS would be a customer and the vendor would be just fine.

Why would AWS be a customer if Mongo was entirely proprietary and not when it is mostly Open Source?

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

#172

Post by rahilb » Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

Everybody follows

Speedy bits exchange

Stars await to gl@ow"

The preceding key is copyrighted by Oracle Corporation.

Dupl@ication of this key is not allowed without permission from Oracl1e Corporation.

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

#173

Post by db48x » Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 9:11 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #151

kgwxd wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So every discussion involving relativity has to mention Einstein even when it's not germane?

Everyone keeps linking to the Gwem.net website instead of using the primary source. If Albert Einstein had a blog post about relativity, I would rather read that than someone’s interpretation....

He wrote books about it, have you read them?

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

#174

Post by techslave » Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 9:14 PM UTC

tfolbrecht wrote: post #134

MongoDB is choosing a dinosaurs business model, and it's going to hurt them and their ecology. Mongo the org should play MongoDB like Google does Kubernetes, Golang, Chromium, etc. Have your people in there, funded, steering the project as 'FOSS' while you release actual products. Mongo dropped the ball by having no on-ramp product like GCPs Firebase. Their Cloud provider hate is just a flailing reaction to bad busin…

Agreed, and I was downvoted to oblivion a couple weeks back for saying as much.

> Stop being a crybaby when someone makes a few forms and buttons that spins up a vm with your DB software running

Sure, but that's not what Amazon did. They implemented the API. It's not MDB behind it. (A few HN comments from awhile ago seem to think it's some flavor of PGSQL.)

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

#175

Post by techslave » Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

nwhatt wrote: post #36

Why can't MongoDB can't compete with AWS? Aside from cloud vendor lock-in, and economies of scale that AWS has. Curious if anyone here has experience with hosting using Mongo's enterprise offering. The article makes the point that Amazon is targeting a lower version of the API, can't the enterprise version compete on features?

> Why can't MongoDB can't compete with AWS?

IMHO, it's the need for single pane of glass management, coupled with single throat to choke accountability. Buyers are often willing to give up on best-of-breed features/performance/cost in exchange for simplification of process and workflow.

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

#176

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

db48x wrote: post #173

scarface74 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone keeps linking to the Gwem.net website instead of using the primary source. If Albert Einstein had a blog post about relativity, I would rather read that than someone’s interpretation....

He wrote books about it, have you read them?

Well actually....

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

#177

Post by privateSFacct » Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

My question - how badly did Amazon get burnt by using Oracle?

In databases in particular Amazon seems to be on a huge kick to not have to pay anyone else. Even if they end up with a bunch of quasi-overlapping products (SimpleDB, DynamoDB, MongoDB) they just seem very aggressive here. At this rate they are going to have 10+ database offerings in the future.

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

#178

Post by callumjones » Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

privateSFacct wrote: post #177

My question - how badly did Amazon get burnt by using Oracle? In databases in particular Amazon seems to be on a huge kick to not have to pay anyone else. Even if they end up with a bunch of quasi-overlapping products (SimpleDB, DynamoDB, MongoDB) they just seem very aggressive here. At this rate they are going to have 10+ database offerings in the future.

It's easier for AWS for accommodate all their customer's needs (MySQL, MongoDB, Postgres) and reduce the cost of switching than it is to convince them to rewrite an application or legacy application to leverage say DynamoDB. The benefit of DynamoDB is great, but it's just one slice of the computing pie.

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

#179

Post by laurentl » Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

alittletooraph wrote: post #107

pjc50 wrote: post #14

Two comments: Firstly, the discussion at the front about the music industry is quite insightful, but I'd go further - they didn't want to sell convenience at first. Used to the physical embodiment of recordings rather than the de-materialized reality of digital music, they spent years working on mandated inconvenience through DRM and other legal actions. Always remember that if the music industry had won unopposed yo…

> It's just that there's no intrinsic reason that the same company that gives away labour as OSS should also make the best complements to that OSS. AWS's version will likely always lag on features, whether it's their Elasticsearch service or this new DocumentDB thing. So to continue the music industry analogy from the original article, sure Taylor Swift may or may not be able run the most reliable streaming service b…

A closer analogy would be “Spotify/Pandora cannot stream new albums for a period of X months” since AWS has the option to develop the missing features, and will if they’re requested by enough customers (AWS is extremely pragmatic when it comes to product roadmap). So, to strain the music analogy further: if you’re happy with the back catalog and you can wait a little bit to listen to the latest songs (say, while others test if they’re any good) then you don’t have to put up with the unreliable streaming service.

IIRC this strategy was tested by Jay-Z with little success. Taylor Swift also came back to Spotify...

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

#180

Post by manigandham » Mon, Jan 14, 2019, 9:49 PM UTC

zby wrote: post #171

manigandham wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unlikely that the product would have as much usage in the first place to get any attention, nor would the protocol be open-source for AWS to host or build its own version. That's a critical difference compared to proprietary software, in which case AWS would be a customer and the vendor would be just fine.

Why would AWS be a customer if Mongo was entirely proprietary and not when it is mostly Open Source?

Because open-source is free, that's the big difference. Why would they pay for something they don't have to? There's barely anything in the enterprise edition that's worth paying for, especially when most of it is operations tools that AWS doesn't need.