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Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor: Open Source Devs

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Re: Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor: Open Source Devs

#51

Post by syn0byte »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #19
EGreg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use AGPL and suddenly the big boys won’t touch you! They can negotiate a special license just for them.

Dual licenses kind of defeat the one of the purposes of open source which is getting outside developers to contribute to your product. Why should I as an outside developer submit pull requests and be required to assign copyright to you so you can make money selling a proprietary license?

Because everyone using the OSS license still benefits from your contribution? Why contribute to any of these projects now if Amazon is just going to integrate it into AWS for their own profit anyway?

Re: Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor: Open Source Devs

#52

Post by jessaustin »

dralley wrote: post #27
zelon88 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon, the third most valuable company on Earth and controlled by Earth's most wealthy human being, cloned an open-source project and then sold access to it. Of course that's allowed under the Apache license, but I'm sure Elastic never saw that one coming. So they tried to correct their mistake. Surely Amazon could afford to figure out a financial arrangement to continue using Elasticsearch, and surely that arrangem…

>> This is why I like the GPLv3 license. Sure it excludes my work from ever being considered in a large corporate project but I'll never have to worry about being beaten over the head with my own product by one of them either. Not true. Even GPL code is able to have proprietary modifications so long as the code stays in-house. As a cloud provider, Amazon can do an end run around the license by simply providing access…

That's the purpose of AGPLv3, the Affero variant that was written to close the "ASP loophole". This has been out a long time. Unfortunately the anti-copyleft zealots have discouraged creators from adopting it.

[EDIT:] I thought the "MongoDB debacle" was the wide-open default auth thing? I don't see how that connects...

Re: Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor: Open Source Devs

#53

Post by askafriend »

gonehome wrote: post #38
burtonator wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find most sad is that most of the people on HN will rail against how evil Google is (or any other company) yet happily use their Open Source code and not complain that they're benefiting from what they claim to despise. It's really a tragedy of the commons. Users on average refuse to pay for software/web apps directly so companies have to find other alternative ways to get funding and make money. People compla…

I wish they offered that option. I'd sign up for ad free FB for $2-$3 a month if it made it easy to set retention periods on my data and opt out of the collection.

Facebook made $118 per user in North America in 2018.

So you're offering to pay far less than they make off you right now.

Re: Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor: Open Source Devs

#54

Post by talkingtab »

Amazon is anti-competitive. Microsoft used the same pattern of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish- and MS was judged by a US court to have engaged in illegal anti-competitive behavior. Arguing that this is about "founders" or that "offering it to your customers for free" is okay just ignores the context of the situation. MS offered lots of things for free or at reduced prices because it could afford to. Amazon is exploiting the work of many people and using its dominance to interfere with healthy competition.

This is not to say that Elasticsearch is great or had the right response, but it is to say that the effects of Amazon will be and are harmful to the open source movement. I do not see easy answers to how fix this, but I think recognizing this as a threat is important.

Re: Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor: Open Source Devs

#55

Post by webmobdev »

burtonator wrote: post #36
capkutay wrote: post #10

Step 1: Launch company to monetize open source hoping to get rich in IPO. Step 2: Be shocked when Amazon uses your open licenses exactly how they're allowed to Step 3: Write angry letter about Amazon monetizing the project you were trying to monetize. Open source isn't meant to be a get-rich quick scheme for founders to generate cheap buzz off their 'free' project. It's literally designed to be forked and used in wha…

What I find most sad is that most of the people on HN will rail against how evil Google is (or any other company) yet happily use their Open Source code and not complain that they're benefiting from what they claim to despise. It's really a tragedy of the commons. Users on average refuse to pay for software/web apps directly so companies have to find other alternative ways to get funding and make money. People compla…

> What I find most sad is that most of the people on HN will rail against how evil Google is (or any other company) yet happily use their Open Source code and not complain that they're benefiting from what they claim to despise.

It's a lame argument that just because an evil company like Google or Facebook or Microsoft made an open source product that you are using, you need to shut up and stop criticising them!

The fact that someone uses their open source product is an endorsement to the open source movement, not of the company.

The fact that a public for-profit corporate made a product open source doesn't mean that they have suddenly become altruistic - it just means that it made business sense for them to make it so.

The fact that it is open source means that the company doesn't own the product nor can it control you. And the fact that it is open source means that the product is being made by contributions from the general public too, and not just the company.

Re: Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor: Open Source Devs

#56

Post by Reedx »

thinkingkong wrote: post #13
Reedx wrote: post #12

> Redis, maker of a popular database management tool, changed its licensing terms to prevent AWS from offering Redis functions ... When someone subscribes to the original Redis via the AWS cloud, Redis gets the fees. When someone uses AWS’s own “Redis service,” AWS gets the money. Naive question: Why not change the license so cloud providers have to cut a % of those fees with Redis?

Because then AWS would fork from a version of redis with a more permissive license and only support a subset of functionality moving forward.

They could, but would they? That would mean their offering is less competitive vs anyone providing fully featured Redis.

Re: Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor: Open Source Devs

#57

Post by clhodapp »

It seems like the problem here is that these companies are voluntarily put out their code under terms that gives rise to use by competitors in a space they they want to be the sole vendors in. If they want people to be able to self-host these components for free but have no big competitors for managed services, they could easily set up the licensing terms to create that situation.

Re: Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor: Open Source Devs

#58

Post by webmobdev »

burtonator wrote: post #36
capkutay wrote: post #10

Step 1: Launch company to monetize open source hoping to get rich in IPO. Step 2: Be shocked when Amazon uses your open licenses exactly how they're allowed to Step 3: Write angry letter about Amazon monetizing the project you were trying to monetize. Open source isn't meant to be a get-rich quick scheme for founders to generate cheap buzz off their 'free' project. It's literally designed to be forked and used in wha…

What I find most sad is that most of the people on HN will rail against how evil Google is (or any other company) yet happily use their Open Source code and not complain that they're benefiting from what they claim to despise. It's really a tragedy of the commons. Users on average refuse to pay for software/web apps directly so companies have to find other alternative ways to get funding and make money. People compla…

> Users on average refuse to pay for software / web apps

Yes. And it is the western corporates that have deliberately created this anti-competitive business model. This "free to use for your personal data" model ensures that any potential competitor has a very high bar to entry, and it ensures that their product will always be inferior because of the lack of data that can make it better.

Re: Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor: Open Source Devs

#59

Post by potta_coffee »

burtonator wrote: post #36
capkutay wrote: post #10

Step 1: Launch company to monetize open source hoping to get rich in IPO. Step 2: Be shocked when Amazon uses your open licenses exactly how they're allowed to Step 3: Write angry letter about Amazon monetizing the project you were trying to monetize. Open source isn't meant to be a get-rich quick scheme for founders to generate cheap buzz off their 'free' project. It's literally designed to be forked and used in wha…

What I find most sad is that most of the people on HN will rail against how evil Google is (or any other company) yet happily use their Open Source code and not complain that they're benefiting from what they claim to despise. It's really a tragedy of the commons. Users on average refuse to pay for software/web apps directly so companies have to find other alternative ways to get funding and make money. People compla…

I wouldn't pay for Facebook and I don't use their free product either. I've used the React library so I suppose I'm benefiting from Facebook. If React weren't available, I'd use Vue.

Re: Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor: Open Source Devs

#60

Post by onion2k »

askafriend wrote: post #53
gonehome wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish they offered that option. I'd sign up for ad free FB for $2-$3 a month if it made it easy to set retention periods on my data and opt out of the collection.

Facebook made $118 per user in North America in 2018. So you're offering to pay far less than they make off you right now.

That's the average. They definitely didn't make that much from my account that I log in to 5 or 6 times a year.
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