AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by semi-extrinsic » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

darkengine wrote: post #449

funkaster wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To my understanding, the GPL does not require acknowledging the original author's contributions any more publicly than the Apache license (used by the project). The Apache license already requires preserving the copyright notice, which AWS did. I think the issue is the author wanted a more public acknowledgement of his work, which is a very fair ask. As far as I know, no license requires this (and, I believe such a l…

AFAIK, the related question of whether an OSS license for a scientific software can require that people using the software cite the paper(s) describing the software, has been answered in the negative. You can ask nicely, but you cannot demand it under any of the existing OSS licenses.

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

#472

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #456

dingaling wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Open source culture is so much more than the licenses. A license dictates what is legally permissible but it doesn't mean that there aren't other cultural expectations that go with that. Eric Raymond famously wrote about the customs of open source in Homesteading the Noosphere: "I have observed these customs in action for 20 years, going back to the pre-FSF ancient history of open-source software. They have several v…

[deleted]

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

#473

Post by pvorb » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

darkengine wrote: post #449

funkaster wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To my understanding, the GPL does not require acknowledging the original author's contributions any more publicly than the Apache license (used by the project). The Apache license already requires preserving the copyright notice, which AWS did. I think the issue is the author wanted a more public acknowledgement of his work, which is a very fair ask. As far as I know, no license requires this (and, I believe such a l…

> On the flipside, good citizen vendors frequently contribute upstream even when they don't have to.

I once discussed that with my employer and they agreed: it's almost never a good idea to fork a product in order to fix bugs, since you will have to continouiusly maintain the fork. If you get the fix upstream, you'll get the maintenance for free. So this often is not out of generosity, but rather in their own interests.

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

#474

Post by systemvoltage » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

jmholla wrote: post #466

systemvoltage wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's not complaining How is he not complaining. He totally is.

That's completely out of context. The full quote is > He's not complaining that Amazon forked his code with Apache license. The poster was indicating what part of Amazon's behavior he wasn't complaining about, not asserting that he wasn't complaining at all.

I see the distinction, thanks.

I find this entire thread absurd though...if the person wanted to get fair credit, they should have used a different license. It's like saying "Hey, totally ok to have a beer from my fridge. But I'd really really plead you to drop in a buck... but only if you wish though. But I highly recommend it. It would be shame if you don't. Most people don't want to be shamed do they?"

Just be straight forward and put that in the license. Otherwise, it is truly optional and should be treated as such.

As much as I dislike having trillion dollar corporation not give a credit, that's why we have licenses.

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

#475

Post by SolarNet » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

sequoia wrote: post #352

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…

The issue is wanting to have it both ways. - I don't want to use restrictive (GPL) license like those business-hating FSF folks–I want people to use my software _freely_ - Hey! A big business used my software in a way that rubs me the wrong way (in this case, without giving prominent enough attribution)! Not nice! What's not nice about it? You use a permissive license but you're going to get upset if people follow th…

I mean this point exactly (though I come at from the other side). If one wishes a big business to respect their commons then bite the bullet and use the "restrictive" (they are in fact freedom guaranteeing) commons protecting licenses (like AGPL) be radical. If one takes issue with the business practices of big business don't gently shove back with social expectations and a sound bite here and there, draw the hard line in the sand.

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

#476

Post by sabujp » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

this is what you get for licensing under APL

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

#477

Post by GordonS » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

dingaling wrote: post #420

tnolet wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In theory, yes.

But Amazon is a member of the OSS community, and AWS relies heavily on developers, many of whom care a great deal about the spirit of OSS and being a good and responsible member of the community.

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

#478

Post by strangemonad » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

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…

Honestly, even putting aside the social and community aspects. When I’m evaluating a technical offering I’m often very willing to pay for “hosted xyz”. I feel like I’m reading through the tea leaves to understand which AWS product offering is more or less a hosted offering of an open source product and what additions AWS has made that might change performance characteristics. Even without upstreaming changes, if the offering were pitched as “hosted X with these additions unique to aws” I would likely choose the hosted option over operating it myself.

It goes without saying though that supporting the open source core (and the core developers) would also go a long way.

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

#479

Post by greensoap » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #455

unethical_ban wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Like CC-BY-NC (Creative Combine, Attribution, Non-commercial). If you want to use the work commercially (ie for business purposes, commercial doesn't require selling) then you must negotiate licensing terms (or infringe copyright [Fair Use / Fair Dealing aside].

Please don't encourage or suggest the use of CC anything for code. It just wasn't designed for code and creates huge ambiguities on the rights you intended.

https://creativecommons.org/faq/#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Common...

As stated on the Creative Commons website (licensed under CC-BY):

Can I apply a Creative Commons license to software? We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses listed as free by the Free Software Foundation and listed as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative.

Unlike software-specific licenses, CC licenses do not contain specific terms about the distribution of source code, which is often important to ensuring the free reuse and modifiability of software. Many software licenses also address patent rights, which are important to software but may not be applicable to other copyrightable works. Additionally, our licenses are currently not compatible with the major software licenses, so it would be difficult to integrate CC-licensed work with other free software. Existing software licenses were designed specifically for use with software and offer a similar set of rights to the Creative Commons licenses.

Version 4.0 of CC’s Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) license is one-way compatible with the GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3). This compatibility mechanism is designed for situations in which content is integrated into software code in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to distinguish the two. There are special considerations required before using this compatibility mechanism. Read more about it here.

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

#480

Post by ketzo » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #429

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. I think the software community is having an "I never thought the leopards would eat my face" moment. The community pushed for a long time for licenses that donated labor to corporations because the licenses sounded more "free", and that flattered their…

Open source software is something that has no meaningfully similar parallel in any other industry, and that has created untold billions (trillions?) of value across the world while also allowing literally anyone to carve out a piece of that value.

That is special. That is wonderful. It is a place for idealism. And honestly, it's worth getting angry about when people (and companies) don't respect it and improve upon it.