Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does AWS have a policy of directly funding existing upstream developers/maintainers of projects you are using?
Given the massive amount of revenue they're making off Linux, they should be at list platinum tier Linux Foundation members, but their logo is nowhere to be seen here... https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/
AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service
631–640 of 673 posts
Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service
#632It seems to me they did exactly what you expected them to by the terms of your public api, and are bitter the leapordsateyourface
Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service
#633Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the legal aspect of the licensing determines what is "right", otherwise the definition of "right" can be interpreted different ways. Don't be fooled, both parties entered into a contract. One when they published the software, and one when they used the software. Any expectations outside of that are left undocumented.
A license is not a contract. Using and distributing Free Software is not entering into a contract. You certainly can have a contract around a license, but that is a whole other topic.
Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service
#634Earlier 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…
If someone did inadvertently choose a more permissive license than intended, I'm not sure what to say. "Blaming" them has too negative a connotation, but there is some responsibility on their part for the mistake, though I can sympathize with them given that licensing choice can be complex.
There's a catch 22 with choosing a restrictive license though. On the one hand it may help you monetize a product if it becomes popular, but on the other hand it becomes a lot harder to gain users and achieve that level of popularity.
However I acknowledge that the open source ecosystem and incentives have deep seated problems on this. The rise of networked society is in many ways built on such work, so there is a public good achieved that might never have been possible otherwise. On the other hand, maintaining a project can be thankless and exhausting. There's been plenty of discussions on how to help this situation, with no clear answer that I'm aware of. I certainly don't have one.
Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service
#635I 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…
The only reason I was ever given was "we use it and think it is great therefore we won't release it." The implication was "If what you wrote was junk we'd let you release it."
Needless to say I never tried to get Amazon to release any of my software during my time there after that, because the response was so poor.
Edit: If Amazon releases my code, I'll be happy to add a tiny credit to Amazon in Notices.Txt and in no other way be thankful to Amazon.
Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service
#636Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service
#637Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service
#638Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service
#639Earlier 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?
Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service
#640I 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…