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AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

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Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#131

Post by [deleted] »

duckerude wrote: post #127
code4tee wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read further down the Twitter thread you’ll see others point out that AWS actually DID acknowledge him in the release and thus his original rant isn’t accurate. He acknowledges that later in the thread. Of course the, now inaccurate, headline Tweet remains the thing getting attention.

They did the legal bare minimum in terms of attribution, but you're very unlikely to find it unless you're looking for it. I don't usually read through files like ~/.config/chromium/Default/Extensions/bhdnlmmgiplmbcdmkkdfplenecpegfno/0.0.1_0/NOTICE.txt (though perhaps I should).

[deleted]

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#132

Post by cdnsteve »

Congrats, your work was good enough to turn into a commercial project by a major top 3 cloud provider. That would make me feel like I would stand a little taller! You basically created a new AWS service, as v1, that's pretty cool to add to a CV ;) Just be patient, and make sure you figure out the colour of your Lambo now.

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#133

Post by joseluisq »

dak1 wrote: post #62

I'm extremely disappointed to see how many comments on here focus on the very narrow legal questions and amount to: "Your license didn't say they couldn't." Open source software is more than a license and code. It is a community and the digital public square. And the Tragedy of the Commons is just as applicable to our public square as it is to William Forster Lloyd's common land. Either we as a community hold ourselv…

It's very disappointing, not the laws called "facts" but this disjunction of the community arguing or even joking around simple people stuff credits. Which costs nothing to do it.

For me this never ending OSS disagreement is just an excuse to take just benefits of the community but with zero retribution (there is no progress on that).

Someday, people will understand that Software is crafted by humans but not by a bunch of companies or self-thought computers.

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#134

Post by josalhor »

frabert wrote: post #80
dak1 wrote: post #62

I'm extremely disappointed to see how many comments on here focus on the very narrow legal questions and amount to: "Your license didn't say they couldn't." Open source software is more than a license and code. It is a community and the digital public square. And the Tragedy of the Commons is just as applicable to our public square as it is to William Forster Lloyd's common land. Either we as a community hold ourselv…

Honestly, this point is kind of nonsense to me. If people acted as if they were held to the higher standard, we would not need licenses. People (especially when they're not acting alone, e.g. corporations) act in their monetary interest, most of the time. Hence, stick to the license that's least restrictive that still ticks all the boxes you feel are important. If you feel attribution is important, choose a license t…

If I suggest an idea from a coworker in a meeting as if it was mine, that move would be seen, at the very least, as somewhat rude. If I got that idea from examining the competition, that would be seen as a smart move.

Sure, if attribution is a requirement then the natural thing to do is to turn it into a legal requirement. But I don't think that is the discussion here.

It comes down to how we want to treat open source. In order to encourage open source, I believe giving credit, even if not required, is courteous. Corporations are not monolithic entities that are perfectly defined. People work on these corporations.

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#135

Post by appleflaxen »

dak1 wrote: post #62

I'm extremely disappointed to see how many comments on here focus on the very narrow legal questions and amount to: "Your license didn't say they couldn't." Open source software is more than a license and code. It is a community and the digital public square. And the Tragedy of the Commons is just as applicable to our public square as it is to William Forster Lloyd's common land. Either we as a community hold ourselv…

If you choose a license which explicitly lets them, and they do, then appealing to community is simply silly. If community and reciprocity is important to you, you simply must choose a GPL-like license that requires it.

If you don't want it, simply say so! But if you say you don't care... don't complain when people do.

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#136

Post by thomasahle »

tinus_hn wrote: post #122
lwh wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original BSD license had this "advertising clause" and it was removed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#4-clause_license_... Personally I'd rather have their source be released like AGPL, as that would credit the authors and let me see their changes.

Because it’s a great idea but for instance the Linux kernel would have to come with documentation that mentions the tens of thousands of authors. A massive undertaking that doesn’t help anyone, really.

> for instance the Linux kernel would have to come with documentation that mentions the tens of thousands of authors

It wouldn't be too hard to maintain though. Could probably mostly pull it out of git even.

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#137

Post by thatguyagain »

code4tee wrote: post #97
jasode wrote: post #42

There are some replies in this thread that misunderstood the content of Tim Nolet's twitter post. (Probably because the short headline has pitchfork raising overtones.) - He's not complaining that Amazon forked his code with Apache license. He admits he also uses other open source with permissive licenses - He just thought it would be nice/courteous/polite/etc if Amazon acknowledge/recognized/credited/mentioned/thank…

If you read further down the Twitter thread you’ll see others point out that AWS actually DID acknowledge him in the release and thus his original rant isn’t accurate. He acknowledges that later in the thread. Of course the, now inaccurate, headline Tweet remains the thing getting attention.

Are people really expecting the devs at AWS to give a "thank you" to every third party developer out there who's code they use? This is just ridiculous. When does this become an obligation? Is there an unwritten rule of how large/successful a team has to be before they need to give thank's like this?

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#138

Post by steerablesafe »

thatguyagain wrote: post #137
code4tee wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read further down the Twitter thread you’ll see others point out that AWS actually DID acknowledge him in the release and thus his original rant isn’t accurate. He acknowledges that later in the thread. Of course the, now inaccurate, headline Tweet remains the thing getting attention.

Are people really expecting the devs at AWS to give a "thank you" to every third party developer out there who's code they use? This is just ridiculous. When does this become an obligation? Is there an unwritten rule of how large/successful a team has to be before they need to give thank's like this?

"thank you" is a pretty low price for software.

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#139

Post by bogwog »

Situations like this make me wonder why no one has created an open source license with a clause excluding multi billion dollar companies. If your company makes more than, say, $50 billion in revenue per year or something crazy like that, then you need to pay for a license. Everyone else can use the free license.

Amazon in particular is well known to be aggressively anti-competitive, as we saw with the Diapers.com fiasco. So logically, if you allow them to use your open source project for free, you run the risk of supporting the company that is going to run you out of business if they ever decide to compete with you. Might as well grab a piece of the pie on your way out!

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