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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

#411

Post by funkaster »

EpicEng wrote: post #393
masukomi wrote: post #346

I really wish, that when COs like Amazon decided to productize a thing they either offered the core developer(s) enough $ to work on it full time (if they wanted) or a job to do that with a guarantee that as long as it was a product, and they wanted to work on it, they'd be allowed to continue. Problem with offering job is the likelyhood of getting redirected to some other unrelated work. instead of forking they coul…

>this big co strategy of "mine. I profit now. everyone who built up this useful thing can suck eggs" really sucks and sucks for the humans and sucks for Open Source. Then use a different license. Hoping that a company like Amazon finds it in their hearts to always do what _you_ consider "the right thing" is just a loser of a strategy. You seem to want all of the good of open source, with none of the downsides. Good l…

This is what people don't get when arguing against GPL: "oh, it's such a restrictive license! so viral, blah blah blah". In this case, it would've probable not changed the outcome, but could give the author some leverage for either compensation or mention. IANAL, but my understanding is that GPL would require you to keep the same terms and mention explicitly the original source.

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

#412

Post by filoleg »

chemeng wrote: post #378
masukomi wrote: post #346

I really wish, that when COs like Amazon decided to productize a thing they either offered the core developer(s) enough $ to work on it full time (if they wanted) or a job to do that with a guarantee that as long as it was a product, and they wanted to work on it, they'd be allowed to continue. Problem with offering job is the likelyhood of getting redirected to some other unrelated work. instead of forking they coul…

If core developers are bought up by a single company, I'd be wary of the future control, direction and progress of the project. The open source version would likely stagnate as the commercial version gains features. It'd be hard not to align with company goals and plans when your paycheck depends on it. Better would be to use mechanisms that already exist to sponsor the core developers for a length of time (Patreon,…

I agree, there is a certain potential danger associated with it, however, it seems like there are quite a few cases where it worked out great.

A specific example that comes to mind, one of the main core developers of Webpack (Sean) got hired by Microsoft to essentially just work on Webpack on MSFT paycheck (I think now he branched out a tiny bit into other adjacent areas as well, but he is still one of the main Webpack contributors). I think it worked out great partially because he was not the sole creator, but just one of the few, and he was the only one who went to MSFT, so the other core devs still had some level of control they could exercise on their own without anyone being able to tell them otherwise.

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

#413

Post by cacois »

masukomi wrote: post #346

I really wish, that when COs like Amazon decided to productize a thing they either offered the core developer(s) enough $ to work on it full time (if they wanted) or a job to do that with a guarantee that as long as it was a product, and they wanted to work on it, they'd be allowed to continue. Problem with offering job is the likelyhood of getting redirected to some other unrelated work. instead of forking they coul…

I think you have expressed my sentiments better than I did.

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

#414

Post by sequoia »

A note to the "I'm seeing a lot of comments here" crowd, i.e. people saying "shame on you!" to commenters who point out that the author's expectations of how consumers should use his code are at variance with the license terms he released the code under:

I'm seeing a lot of comments here that are attempting to brow beat or bully people for having a view you disagree with. "The author should have used a different license." This is an opinion, we can disagree about it. There's no need to tell people to be ashamed for disagreeing with you, or to make baseless ad hominem attacks such as 'I bet none of you have ever written anything substantial.'

This is a discussion forum. FS/OSS licensing is an extremely contentious subject as everyone in the OS community probably already knows. People are going to disagree. Let's keep this a clean fight where we discuss the merits of different arguments and attack arguments rather than attacking people, shall we?

Trying to "shame" people who disagree with you or talk about how "disappointed" you are in them or maligning their professional work is not argumentation, it's bullying.

EDIT: while writing this comment, someone called me "autistic" in another sub-thread here. Gave me a chuckle... anyway add that to the ad-hom pile.

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

#415

Post by bawolff »

Meh, if you're not ok with someone forking your project, don't release it under a license that allows forking.

Yes, a nod back is nice, but its not a requirement and we shouldn't use public opinion to try to put extra obligations on the reusers beyond what the license requires. Especially if its beyond what would probably be considered a valid osi approved license.

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

#416

Post by elwell »

unethical_ban wrote: post #408
EpicEng wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this big co strategy of "mine. I profit now. everyone who built up this useful thing can suck eggs" really sucks and sucks for the humans and sucks for Open Source. Then use a different license. Hoping that a company like Amazon finds it in their hearts to always do what _you_ consider "the right thing" is just a loser of a strategy. You seem to want all of the good of open source, with none of the downsides. Good l…

"Don't like how shitty people can be? I don't care" - that is how this kind of comment reads. But let's move on. Interesting idea for a license. Everyone can use and modify it, but if a large company with a market cap above $100m or a company wholly funded or owned by such company decides to utilize this project as a for-profit service, then said large company must hire me at for no less than $175,000 in 2020 value.

> or a company wholly funded or owned by such company

^^ Written as if you've been burnt before...

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

#417

Post by robocat »

pokemapper wrote: post #58

Here's another example of AWS interactions with OSS: instead of contributing a perfectly good and non-AWS dependant feature to an upstream project (PGBouncer, for a strictly PostgreSQL-level useful feature) they decided to rather stretch it and publish their changes as a _patch_ to the upstream project instead, with a different, restrictive license that only allows its usage on AWS services, together with examples on…

Interesting:

“3.3 Use Limitation. The Work and any derivative works thereof only may be used or intended for use with the web services, computing platforms or applications provided by Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, including Amazon Web Services, Inc.” from https://github.com/awslabs/pgbouncer-rr-patch/blob/master/LI...

Is this a one off activity, or does Amazon do this regularly as part of their moat?

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

#418

Post by Zenbit_UX »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #234
minerjoe wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could we write a license so that if a big company uses my software they have to send me a pony? A real live pony?

You could. No big company would use your software.

Idk, a pony sounds cheaper than a single day of work for one dev at a FAANG company. I'd have to at least consider the pony option.

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

#419

Post by [deleted] »

mjasay wrote: post #297

I run the open source strategy and marketing team at AWS. As I told Tim privately and publicly ( https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/1317084448119169024 ), I hadn't been aware of this but am talking with the relevant product team to see how we can improve in his regard. AWS uses a lot of open source, and we contribute a lot, both in terms of code (first-party projects like Firecracker and Bottlerocket, but also third-p…

[deleted]

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

#420

Post by dingaling »

tnolet wrote: post #331
mjasay wrote: post #297

I run the open source strategy and marketing team at AWS. As I told Tim privately and publicly ( https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/1317084448119169024 ), I hadn't been aware of this but am talking with the relevant product team to see how we can improve in his regard. AWS uses a lot of open source, and we contribute a lot, both in terms of code (first-party projects like Firecracker and Bottlerocket, but also third-p…

OP here. Matt and I are chatting about this. We will work it out. As per my tweet, it's not about the letter of the licensing, it's about the spirit.

> it's not about the letter of the licensing, it's about the spirit

If it's not in black and white then it's not part of the license. Spirit isn't defined.

To paraphrase Theo de Raadt, if you're not happy for your code to be used in a puppy mulching machine then don't license it under a permissive license.

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