Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 673 posts

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

#581

Post by ncmncm »

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…

Eric Raymond is probably the least reliable narrator of a Free Software ethos that one could pick.

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

#582

Post by ghostwriter »

tunesmith wrote: post #390
branon wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legally no, morally no, ethically yes?

Interesting, how would you define ethically different than morally?

Morality is a code of values a person may hold, whereas ethics is a philosophic (scientific) approach to discovering and defining such codes, and an attempt to answer two specific questions - whether a human being needs a code of values, and if so, what code of values they should choose to flourish as a human being (and not as any other "being").

So, a person may be clear morally, based on a code of values that puts an emphasis on a legal aspect of interactions between people, but from the perspective of ethics we can observe that such a code may not be sufficient to fully realise their potential of flourishing as a human being.

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

#583

Post by a1369209993 »

inopinatus wrote: post #375
arbitrage wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a professor, once, who chewed me out for submitting work at the deadline. I told them that if they wanted me to submit it on Thursday, they shouldn't've set the boundary for Friday at midnight. That didn't go over too well.

As a range or interval specifier, many (most?) non-programmers will assume the interpretation of “midnight” that favours them in any subsequent dispute. In practice this often means that “from midnight on Monday to midnight on Tuesday” is a 48-hour interval so far as consumers are concerned. I recommend advertising things like cut-off times as “11:59pm” and friends, when possible. Also, my time formatter turns “12:00…

> In practice this often means that "from midnight on Monday to midnight on Tuesday" is a 48-hour interval so far as consumers are concerned.

I generally insist on midnight being 0:00 or 24:00 for much the same reasons.

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

#584

Post by cacois »

lscotte wrote: post #528
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.

Exactly. Don't use an open ended license and then complain about it. If you want to restrict use, then license it appropriately. Very simple and obvious.

Exactly. Don't complain about someone being a jerk to you if you didn't get a restraining order against them. If you want to restrict them interacting with you, get a restraining order. Very simple and obvious.

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

#585

Post by orangechairs »

cacois wrote: post #336
unreal37 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good job taking responsibility, Matt. Handling this the right way. I do think there's a larger discussion about trillion dollar companies just forking a project and announcing it as a new feature for their platform without even talking to the original creator. If there's anything to improve, "reach out first" will be a start. It's open source. You don't have to reach out. There's nothing legally or morally wrong with…

I honestly think there's room for more than gratitude with, as you said, a trillion dollar company. I know its hard to find a balance when we want free and open tools, developed in a spirit of sharing and enabling innovation. But something feels slimy about an enormous company deriving a huge amount of revenue from a FOSS project, when they could easily compensate developer(s) with barely an impact to their bottom li…

Amazon stealing OSS products and repackaging them for profit is a behavior they are replicating over and over. Big and small projects alike are neither protected nor immune (see Mongo, Elastic, Redis,...)

To see so much of the developer community respond by placing blame on the developers is heartbreaking and at the root of the tragedy of open source. It's either: your fault for using a permissive license OR shame on you for not using a permissive license. Where is the outrage at the predatory companies cannibalizing open source?

We need to remember who the real enemy of open source is. The only company that benefits from open source shaming is Amazon.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/09/aws-gives-open-source-the-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19364534 [3] https://thenewstack.io/redis-pulls-back-on-open-source-licen...

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

#586

Post by mkl »

garmaine wrote: post #447
nitrogen wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC the GPL, for example, is itself covered by copyright and doesn't permit modification of its own text.

You cannot copyright a license.

A license is a written document, so like any other document, it is protected by copyright law. See e.g. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/55720/is-it-legal-to... and https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4543/is-the-m...

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

#587

Post by OmarShehata »

varispeed wrote: post #167
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…

Big companies use OSS to avoid hiring employees and paying their wages plus taxes. It is a loophole that should be regulated.

In what world does any company use open source software to save money??

What is the alternative? Develop everything yourself in-house? That's not just expensive, it's dumb, because you'll get worse/less reliable software in general.

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

#588

Post by pfdietz »

varispeed wrote: post #159
pfdietz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The model where company makes money off of someone else's work without paying them should be illegal. So, once an author is dead, it should be illegal to sell anything they created? Or should ownership rights in content for the estate last forever? Your idea is terrible when examined in detail.

This is an edge case, but for sure they would have family members who would inherit the titles and in an event of absence of such people then the state should take ownership.

Wait, I should be forced to give the state control over my creation, instead of being able to make it free to everyone, forever? Monstrous.

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

#589

Post by travisjungroth »

lscotte wrote: post #528
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.

Exactly. Don't use an open ended license and then complain about it. If you want to restrict use, then license it appropriately. Very simple and obvious.

You’re saying that people should lean entirely on the law. It’s pretty reasonable to have some set of behaviors that you’re willing to legally allow but also will complain about. It’s not like you can carve these things out perfectly. You’re going to either be over-permissive and have some stuff you don’t want happen, or be under-permissive and restrict behaviors you’re fine with.

To say “if you want to restrict use, then license appropriately” is to push heavily towards everyone using more restrictive licenses.

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

#590

Post by barumi »

orangechairs wrote: post #585
cacois wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think there's room for more than gratitude with, as you said, a trillion dollar company. I know its hard to find a balance when we want free and open tools, developed in a spirit of sharing and enabling innovation. But something feels slimy about an enormous company deriving a huge amount of revenue from a FOSS project, when they could easily compensate developer(s) with barely an impact to their bottom li…

Amazon stealing OSS products and repackaging them for profit is a behavior they are replicating over and over. Big and small projects alike are neither protected nor immune (see Mongo, Elastic, Redis,...) To see so much of the developer community respond by placing blame on the developers is heartbreaking and at the root of the tragedy of open source. It's either: your fault for using a permissive license OR shame on…

> Amazon stealing OSS products and repackaging them (...)

Since when does providing managed services started to pass off as "stealing"?

Am I stealing FLOSS projects as well if I install them on a production environment?

It makes zero sense to try to pull this sort of bait-and-switch scam with FLOSS. If you release a project into the world while explicitly stating that everyone in the whole world is free to use it as they see fit then don't complain that someone was free to use it as they saw fit.

Post reply on HN