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

#611

Post by petercooper » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 12:17 AM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #560

petercooper wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but this is a situation about social norms rather than passive aggressive employer behavior. Typically when a product or service is released, if it's built significantly upon something else, you at least throw out a quick acknowledgement. Sure, it's not the law, it's just polite/kind/whatever nice word you prefer to use. All sorts of communities have various 'norms' of this nature which you are totally entitled…

> Sure, but this is a situation about social norms rather than passive aggressive employer behavior. Every time I come across a thread - on any forum - where people are educating others that something is a social norm, it is because it is not. They merely want it to be. If you have a good number of people disagreeing on it, take it as a humble suggestion that norms differ across geos, industries, culture, etc. Don't…

Every time I come across a thread - on any forum - where people are educating others that something is a social norm, it is because it is not.

Crediting the work of a project you directly forked to create your own is a social norm in the open source world. Happily, Amazon has now edited the post to include such a credit: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/10/amazon-cl...

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

#612

Post by didibus » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 12:19 AM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #606

didibus wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there are rules around defamation, libel and slander. But you're right, there's no laws saying one cannot guilt trip someone else or shame them for their behavior even if they are acting legally. I think this is me criticizing those same "social norms". In my opinion, it is unfair to guilt trip someone or have hidden expectations when someone does a good deed for you. Especially when you decided to do the deed…

> But it isn't nice when someone complains they're not getting a thank you for something they choose to do willingly and weren't asked to do. If you benefit from something someone else does, you owe them a debt of gratitude. It's not a legal debt, and it's not denominated in dollars and cents... but you shouldn't be surprised that there are norms of repaying this debt in various ways and that people/entities that exc…

> If you benefit from something someone else does, you owe them a debt of gratitude. It's not a legal debt, and it's not denominated in dollars and cents... but you shouldn't be surprised that there are norms of repaying this debt in various ways

Yes and this is what I'm criticizing. If I am in dept, then say so and make it explicit to me before I take the dept unknowingly, otherwise I'm sorry, but I will in turn shame you for being a cry baby and I won't abide by these norms, because I disagree with them.

To me, social norm is just another form of force to impose ones will on others. And thus an attack on liberty. And the idea of a social contract is that I consent to give away some liberties for being able to participate in a functioning society. But when the social contract isn't explicit, and expectations arn't stated, I find that unfair, no matter if the force is physical or psychological. The act of coming back after the deed, and saying that accepting the deed bound me to X,Y,Z where none of those was stipulated, ya I find that crooked. At this point anything can be stipulated. For example, what is Amazon supposed to do here? Should they offer a job? Pay up some amount of money? Cancel their project? Put a banner on amazon.com thanking the contributor? How long should the banner stay up? Etc. They're just at the mercy of the wims of others, and they might start to regret having taken this "dept" which they didn't know came with all these strings attached. And by the way, it's not just that they didn't know, on fact, the author had written down in details as part of the attached license what all the expectations were, but now claims that more was implicitly expected based on some loosely defined social norms. Had the work been unlicensed, Amazon would not have used it.

P.S.: But again, just to be clear, I'm talking about the principles at play here, in this particular scenario, I acknowledge this isn't like a massive issue and a crazy demand or attack on Amazon's liberty. And I'd be really amazed and impressed and would think highly of Amazon if they went above and beyond the license here.

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

#613

Post by BeetleB » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 12:21 AM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #608

BeetleB wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, but this is a situation about social norms rather than passive aggressive employer behavior. Every time I come across a thread - on any forum - where people are educating others that something is a social norm, it is because it is not. They merely want it to be. If you have a good number of people disagreeing on it, take it as a humble suggestion that norms differ across geos, industries, culture, etc. Don't…

> Every time I come across a thread - on any forum - where people are educating others that something is a social norm, it is because it is not. They merely want it to be. Saying "thank you" and giving credit to someone who did you a solid is pretty universally a norm. > If you have a good number of people disagreeing on it, take it as a humble suggestion that norms differ across geos, industries, culture, etc. Or, t…

> Saying "thank you" and giving credit to someone who did you a solid is pretty universally a norm.

How much time have you spent looking for counterexamples in the society where you live? Where people do something for the common good and most consumers do not say "Thank you". Have you done this exercise?

> Or, there's just the fraction of people who disregard and push back on norms

This is a convenient, self-fulfilling narrative. It is also pitting you into an adversarial position with someone. It's highly risky to insist on a norm and accuse others of not honoring it - and then be viewed as someone who is inflexible. It's your choice, though.

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

#614

Post by mekal » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 12:25 AM UTC

serguzest wrote: post #284

mekal wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think recognition by AWS would have been nice (win-win for both parties) but lack of it does not warrant public shaming. If someone doesn't thank you for your "free" services, then keep your head down, plow ahead and take comfort in knowing you're doing a good enough job for a company like Amazon to use your stuff. And if that's not enough, send them a private message and let them know how you feel. Given that ever…

You are talking about a trillion dollar company. I am sure their feeling wasn't hurt from "public shaming" Please save your empathy for the independent open source developer who spent his valuable hours on the project.

Fair point.

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

#615

Post by neltnerb » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 12:33 AM UTC

calcifer wrote: post #593

orangechairs wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course the blame is on the developers. If you don't want commercial enterprises to repackage your project and exclude you, choose a license that says that! How is this even controversial?

You can both want a project to be usable commercially and still feel bad about being iced out by people who are vastly better off financially than you are. I had a big project for my Ph.D. thesis that was good enough to get spun out into a startup. They didn't even offer me a job.

They were under no obligation to, but it set my career back five years and I'm still angry about missing out on the obvious route from graduating to being really awesome at what I wanted to be really awesome at.

It's not controversial that they did this, I was a junior employee and they didn't have a ton of money. It still significantly damaged my career to be forced to start all over on a totally new thing despite literally inventing what they were doing without me.

Blame? There doesn't have to be blame for that to suck for the little guy.

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

#616

Post by jpetso » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 12:35 AM UTC

j1elo wrote: post #607

calcifer wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the blame is on the developers. If you don't want commercial enterprises to repackage your project and exclude you, choose a license that says that! How is this even controversial?

Because then everybody will jump at you and shout "OMG you don't allow for repackaging, don't ever dare to imply that your code is Open Source with all the permissions and liberties that your free labor should grant, so we don't have interest in your shitty proprietary stuff and will never check it out". As seen on HN multiple times. Which is what the parent refers to with the more politely put "either your fault for…

We know that building a business is hard. There is no silver bullet that provides both the adoption rates of OSS and the monetizability of proprietary software. So you pick one, and live with the consequences.

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

#617

Post by mlyle » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 12:42 AM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #613

mlyle wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time I come across a thread - on any forum - where people are educating others that something is a social norm, it is because it is not. They merely want it to be. Saying "thank you" and giving credit to someone who did you a solid is pretty universally a norm. > If you have a good number of people disagreeing on it, take it as a humble suggestion that norms differ across geos, industries, culture, etc. Or, t…

> Saying "thank you" and giving credit to someone who did you a solid is pretty universally a norm. How much time have you spent looking for counterexamples in the society where you live? Where people do something for the common good and most consumers do not say "Thank you". Have you done this exercise? > Or, there's just the fraction of people who disregard and push back on norms This is a convenient, self-fulfilli…

> How much time have you spent looking for counterexamples in the society where you live?

I've spent a whole lot of time thinking about norms and observing their observance, enforcement, and what kinds of circumstances they tend to be disregarded. I've read a lot of the lit, too, thank you.

> This is a convenient, self-fulfilling narrative.

So is refusing to acknowledge the existence of norms because some people refuse to acknowledge them. Ultimately, our social reality is something we pretend into existence together.

> It is also pitting you into an adversarial position with someone. It's highly risky to insist on a norm and accuse others of not honoring it - and then be viewed as someone who is inflexible. It's your choice, though.

Whinging that someone broke norm A [e.g. seemed ungrateful] and thinking less of people/entities that you've heard have done the same is pretty cheap and isn't likely to earn you value judgments yourself.

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

#618

Post by branon » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 12:45 AM UTC

barumi wrote: post #594

branon wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was my impression that morality regards the beliefs of one person/entity (here, Amazon) while ethics refers to a different/opposing group. So clearly Amazon has no moral scruples about doing what they did, but to us (or others) it's ethically ambiguous.

> So clearly Amazon has no moral scruples about doing what they did Dude, they picked a software project that was released to the world under a license that explicitly allows anyone and everyone to use it as they see fit, and they proceeded to use the software. Please do explain exactly wheredo you see any breech in morality.

The point of my comment(s) is expressly that this _isn't_ a breach of morality...

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

#619

Post by Riverheart » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 12:49 AM UTC

karolist wrote: post #548

jaywalk wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone wants to get paid by people who profit off their software, they should license it in a way that requires that. Otherwise, tough luck.

Am I crazy for wanting a license that prohibits the free use of a project by mega-corps? "If you're a company valued > $XXX usage of this code is prohibited". I guess I can see OSS as a "free food" stall. Almost everyone can have a bite but I'm not fine with billionaires coming in to steal the recipes. They already have the means to increase their wealth efficiently, society would have much benefit if these mechanism…

It's the same issue as taxes. They make buckets of money, use public infrastructure to do it, give pennies back. Apologists say why expect them to act different if the law let's them get away with it? How unreasonable of us.

Unity's license is what we're aiming for yeah? Use it freely but at a certain dollar threshold, contribute back monetarily?

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

#620

Post by barumi » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 12:49 AM UTC

branon wrote: post #618

barumi wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So clearly Amazon has no moral scruples about doing what they did Dude, they picked a software project that was released to the world under a license that explicitly allows anyone and everyone to use it as they see fit, and they proceeded to use the software. Please do explain exactly wheredo you see any breech in morality.

The point of my comment(s) is expressly that this _isn't_ a breach of morality...

It seems to me that it's not a breach of morality, ethics, or even goodwill. It is a FLOSS project being used in compliance with the author's will.