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

#561

Post by melenaboija » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 8:38 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.

When someone publishes code with permissive licenses has to expect that all kind of users will take advantage of it in different ways.

That does not mean that is probably doing it for the ones that will be graceful of it. Opensource is not just about licenses but a way of creating.

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

#562

Post by mettamage » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 8:38 PM UTC

momokoko wrote: post #509

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #429

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. 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…

I would disagree in the specific case of AWS. We have not seen such an egregious abuse of open source software with any other company. Most companies that make use of a large amount of opensource actually contribute a fair amount back. Like hiring on the core developers or making a large amount of code fixes and feature development contributions. Amazon does neither of these things. Take a look at any highly successf…

What about Intel using Minix and not giving attribution to Tanenbaum?

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

#563

Post by BeetleB » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 8:40 PM UTC

IggleSniggle wrote: post #168

sushicalculus wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think thatguyagain is making a good point about infinite regress. Should we all add a thank you to our github pages, thanking every dependency, library, framework, to Stroustrup, to Stallman, to Linus, and to John von Neumann?

I’m with you on that one, but if you are literally just forking a package, rather than depending on a package, and rebranding it into your ecosystem, then a big “thank you for making this and making it open source” is appropriate.

> then a big “thank you for making this and making it open source” is appropriate.

As is not doing it.

Perhaps you did not mean to use the word "appropriate"?

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

#564

Post by suyash » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

timonovici wrote: post #547

suyash wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet AWS wouldn’t even touch it if it was under GPL, most companies have made it forbidden to use because of reasons you stated.

Don't they already use MySQL for example? I don't think it would stop them in any way, unless some lawyers had some really antiquated views, coming straight from the 90's

MySQL has dual license and one of them if friendly to companies who can pay the fees.

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

#565

Post by ddalex » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #557

fractionalhare wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have not seen such an egregious abuse of open source software with any other company. Most companies that make use of a large amount of opensource actually contribute a fair amount back. I don't think your claim about Amazon is true. But even if it is, it's not relevant. None of the OSI licenses require improvements to be contributed back to the original project. The most restrictive of them simply requires impr…

> The intention of open source licenses was never to force those who redistribute the software to improve on it. It was to provide end users with the freedom to be able to do that themselves, by distributing the improvements as well. Perhaps that was the intentions of the license creators, but famously Linus for example chose the GPL license precisely as a quid pro quo - I give you code for free, you give me back cod…

And this projects doesn't use GPL, uses Apache. So why do the authors expect something back !?

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

#566

Post by suyash » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 8:46 PM UTC

arminiusreturns wrote: post #559

munk-a wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had several discussions with fellow students in Uni about GPL vs. BSD licensing and BSD licensed code is, IMO, more free and more accessible - it really depends on what you want out of your code. Is your goal to provide a useful tool as a one-off that anyone can pick up and use? Then BSD is for you - otherwise, if you have expectations around self-maintenance of the code by consumers then you want to lean more towa…

GPL is about freedom for the user, BSD/MIT is about freedom for the devs. Not all users are devs, but all devs are users. GPL is the better license for net freedom. It baffles me how many people fail to understand this.

"GPL is about freedom for the user" - define what do you mean by freedom, it's different for different people.

GPL is the better license for net freedom. - it's not, because of it's virality, it pollutes other code and then demands everything fall into it's license, which is ethically wrong.

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

#567

Post by kortilla » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 8:46 PM UTC

ketzo wrote: post #551

kortilla wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s open source, if you’re mad a company used the software in a way you don’t like, you’re not really getting it.

There's a difference between what is legally required and the greater good. Obviously, no one involved in this post is guilty of any literal crime. As you're suggesting, the license is the license. But OSS is a fragile and wonderful thing, and an entity with the resources and clout of AWS would (at least in my opinion) do well to tend that garden rather than strip it bare.

This isn’t “stripping it bare”. Nothing is being taken away from the author nor is anything preventing the author or original contributors from continuing to work.

That’s the whole point of the license. You’re putting code out there for others to use however they want.

This isn’t even about legal requirement vs intent. If you put up a super permissive license, you are making the intent very clear that people can do whatever they want with it.

The lack of obligation, both legal and societal, of using open source software is what makes it so useful and lets the whole ecosystem flourish.

If your in open source for glory and getting monetary or promotional credit for your work, you’re doing it for the wrong reason.

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

#568

Post by heavyset_go » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 8:49 PM UTC

suyash wrote: post #566

arminiusreturns wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL is about freedom for the user, BSD/MIT is about freedom for the devs. Not all users are devs, but all devs are users. GPL is the better license for net freedom. It baffles me how many people fail to understand this.

"GPL is about freedom for the user" - define what do you mean by freedom, it's different for different people. GPL is the better license for net freedom. - it's not, because of it's virality, it pollutes other code and then demands everything fall into it's license, which is ethically wrong.

> GPL is the better license for net freedom. - it's not, because of it's virality, it pollutes other code and then demands everything fall into it's license, which is ethically wrong.

Nobody has a gun held to their head and are forced to use GPL code in their code.

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

#569

Post by burtonator » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 8:50 PM UTC

I'm going to get downvoted to hell but Open Source is broken.

The initial egalitarian view of OSS never came to fruition.

OSS is just companies like Google and Facebook throwing things on the other side of the fence to help their own business monopolies.

There aren't actually ANY OSS models where independent developers can make money to support their own code.

It's all support and services for some of the intermediate companies or you have to be FANG.

We need "free as in $19.95" for OSS where the code is open but licensing/payments are compelled.

A way to look at it is "less freedom is more freedom".

For example, if we had infinite freedom and no laws the world wouldn't work. So we compromise and accept the right amount of laws.

I think it's the same thing with OSS ... we could all public domain our code but most people don't because putting your code under a license has value. It's LESS free than public domain but more free because you're giving a license to the user but they can't sue you because they're no implied warranty.

If we had an a source code license that forced someone like Amazon to license the code we wouldn't be in this position.

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

#570

Post by kortilla » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 8:50 PM UTC

brainless wrote: post #511

kortilla wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s open source, if you’re mad a company used the software in a way you don’t like, you’re not really getting it.

You are either the one who was in the open source movement, in which case I will hold my silence. Else I will say you do not know that open source was started when on-premise was a thing. How do you know how open source would have started now in the era of cloud?

I have worked on lots of open source software with the full intent of just putting the code out there to allow others to use as they see fit. Even if one person uses it to save them or their business time, it’s achieved its goal.

If other people contribute back, great. If I get credit, great. But those are not the motivations when you put up something like a BSD license. Licenses mean things so you need to choose a restrictive license if you get your feelings hurt when people use your software in a way you don’t like.