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

#651

Post by barumi » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:41 AM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #621

barumi wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If developers expected to get compensated for the work they explicitly and voluntarily released for anyone and everyone in the world for absolutely free, wouldn't they have released it under different terms? I mean, it sounds awfully dishonest to do a 180 on the expectations once a user with a deep enough wallet happens to be singled out.

It doesn’t seem dishonest. Companies do it (market segmentation).

No, they really don't. You don't see companies giving away their products under a permissive license to, afterwards, stating that we should not pay attention to the license because they now want a chunk of our paycheck. That would be as dishonest as it gets, and the dishonesty in that doesn't change if we replace a company with a single-person company.

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

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Post by TimJRobinson » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 11:33 AM UTC

pabs3 wrote: post #627

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…

Does AWS have a policy of directly funding existing upstream developers/maintainers of projects you are using?

On my old team, AWS RoboMaker they do. Contributed a lot of money and developers to ROS2 to make it a solid robotics platform.

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

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Post by gozzoo » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 12:44 PM UTC

SpelingBeeChamp wrote: post #644

gozzoo wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound exactly like taking responsibility to me. It's more an acknowledgment of the fact and damage control. Taking responsibility would suggest admitting fault and taking action to make things right. His statement doesn't have any of these. 'I am looking into it' is too vague and doesn't mean much. Probably Amazon's legal department doesn't let him say much more, but then his statement sounds unconvincing…

Fault for what? Using code in accordance with the license selected by its developer?

By admitting fault I mean if you have done something wrong to speak up. Legally there is no fault as far as I can judge, but there is a moral fault. Not giving credit, not trying to involve the developer in their effort and not offering any kind of reward for his effort is definitely a fault in my dictionary.

These kinds of actions damage the community much more than some people realize. Open source developers lose trust in the idea of sharing their work when seeing how huge companies with limitless resources take advantage of their effort. This happens little by little but in the end we become cynical and when we see good intended initiatives from these companies we don't trust them and simply refuse to participate.

I tought Microsoft has abandoned its evil demeanor and has become a good open source citizen until this happened:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331287

I think what they did is much worse than this, because they intentionally misled the developer by giving an impression that they were going to hire him and when he came for an interview they tricked him to share his ideas about the future of his product. What's similar is the reaction of both companies - half-heartedly acknowledging something that has already become public knowledge and giving some vague promise for fixing things.

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

#654

Post by wpietri » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 1:25 PM UTC

frabert wrote: post #288

wpietri wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of sense to it. Every contract, every law states what we see as the bare minimum required not to be actively harmful. They're society's skeleton. But bodies are more than bone, and societies are more than people doing the bare legal minimum. Look at what the law requires of parents, for example. Food, shelter, clothing, school attendance, a lack of physical abuse. But parents who do the legal minimum a…

I'd call this wishful thinking and something that's been proven time and time again to be not working as well as it should, in practice.

It's not perfect, but it works very well. None of my contributions to open source projects happened because they were required by license. On my own projects I've had people give generously of their time and expertise out of community spirit. Are some people jerks anyhow? Sure. But a different license wouldn't have changed that.

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

#655

Post by wpietri » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

warkdarrior wrote: post #338

wpietri wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hardly call that a rant. And I would hardly call a deeply buried source reference the kind of collegial social acknowledgement he was hoping for. So perhaps, as somebody very concerned about inaccuracy, you could correct your errors here?

> collegial social acknowledgement Business offering a software service and open-source developer are not colleagues. One is selling a service, the other is writing code, there is simply no comparison.

Businesses aren't actors, they're fictions. Humans at businesses demonstrably do act as community members.

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

#656

Post by whoknew1122 » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

branweb wrote: post #598

barumi wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think you have a point. But there does seem to be a difference between say using FLOSS project X as a dependency in my app vs AWS tweaking it, introducing it as a direct competitor to X, and leveraging their huge marketshare to sell it. Seems like not illegal, not even sure if it's ethically shaky, but there does seem to be a difference right?

Or, a situation about which you might want to ruminate:

A customer is doing a full migration to the cloud. They're already using FLOSS project X on-prem and asks 'Hey, , project X is a super important part of our environment? We can't move forward unless you support it. Also, can you manage this for me? I'd really prefer not to roll my own servers.'

What would YOU, as the cloud vendor, do? Give up the on the business (both upfront migration costs and down line usage and maintenance costs), or legally exercise the license that project X's creator CHOSE?

Also, consider that, at your scale (you being the cloud vendor), if 1 customer is having this issue, it's impacting tens if not hundreds of others.

As someone who works for AWS and fields feature requests from customers constantly, the above situation very common.

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

#657

Post by mihaic » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

barumi wrote: post #610

branweb wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a point. But there does seem to be a difference between say using FLOSS project X as a dependency in my app vs AWS tweaking it, introducing it as a direct competitor to X, and leveraging their huge marketshare to sell it. Seems like not illegal, not even sure if it's ethically shaky, but there does seem to be a difference right?

> But there does seem to be a difference between say using FLOSS project X as a dependency in my app vs AWS tweaking it, introducing it as a direct competitor to X, and leveraging their huge marketshare to sell it. Is there really a difference at all? You're complaining that a managed service is somehow "a direct competitor". Compete in what? I mean, am I really competing with the project if I get a few instances up…

A managed service is "a direct competitor" in usage of the original software. And usage is the one that mostly drives development back into the service.

There isn't a legal difference in AWS repackaging an OSS project, and a company using it internally, but there is a difference in terms of the end result of how the project develops.

That's why I've seen that most comments is support of AWS are either ideologues or their livelyhood depends on a large company that's doing this.

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

#658

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 4:17 PM 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…

[deleted]

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

#659

Post by shi314 » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

whoknew1122 wrote: post #656

branweb wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a point. But there does seem to be a difference between say using FLOSS project X as a dependency in my app vs AWS tweaking it, introducing it as a direct competitor to X, and leveraging their huge marketshare to sell it. Seems like not illegal, not even sure if it's ethically shaky, but there does seem to be a difference right?

Or, a situation about which you might want to ruminate: A customer is doing a full migration to the cloud. They're already using FLOSS project X on-prem and asks 'Hey, , project X is a super important part of our environment? We can't move forward unless you support it. Also, can you manage this for me? I'd really prefer not to roll my own servers.' What would YOU, as the cloud vendor, do? Give up the on the business…

As a trillion dollar company, it can acquire open source project that is vital for it's customer base rather than leeching of that project. You shouldn't make unethical practices of companies as necessary evil.

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

#660

Post by mlyle » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #625

mlyle wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 refu…

> 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. Then I hope you've noticed that there are instances in society where "Saying thank you and giving credit to someone who did you a solid" is not the norm. > So is refusing to acknowledge the existence of norms because…

> > > It's highly risky to insist on a norm and accuse others of not honoring it

> This sounds precisely what people are doing: Whining that Amazon seemed ungrateful and thinking less of people who do likewise.

Yup, and while there's variation in the hivemind, all in all I don't think a very large fraction of it is snapping back and thinking of the author as inflexible. So p'raps it's not so highly risky.