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Ask HN: How much does Amazon contribute to the open source community?

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Re: Ask HN: How much does Amazon contribute to the open source community?

#21

Post by _delirium »

raverbashing wrote: post #13
hackercurious wrote: post #11

Richard Stallman's personal site has lots of information about Amazon. https://stallman.org/amazon.html

Richard Stallman's website (which is ironic, because he doesn't use a web browser) is full of extremist opinion about lots of things, most of which are irrelevant to this discussion

Stallman does use a web browser, just locally. His workflow is that he works offline, but when he runs across mentions of webpages that he might find useful, he queues them up to be wgetted via a proxy, then later points his browser at them. So it doesn't seem too ironic to me that he might put up web pages that others can retrieve (and indeed he's been doing so since the early days of the web). If he had some kind of crazy AJAXy webapp that can't be viewed offline, that might be inconsistent, but he doesn't.

However, I agree that page doesn't much have to do with whether Amazon contributes to free software.

Re: Ask HN: How much does Amazon contribute to the open source community?

#22

Post by LamaOfRuin »

dudleydoright wrote: post #15
vertoc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there's a weird internal thing where Amazon employees are not supposed to publicly contribute to open source projects but I don't know the reasoning behind that...

Former Amazonian here. When I was employed: To do ANY FOSS work as an individual unrelated to the company (And I mean ANY: private projects that may be on Github, projects with nothing to do with Amazon) required a one-off application for permission. To actually contribute something to some FOSS project that is in use at Amazon (For example, to fix a bug) requires even more special permissions (I think it is once per…

Is this in your contract / some IP agreement you sign? I wonder if they would drop this as fast as they dropped the warehouse employee anti-compete agreement if it was publicized.

It would also be interesting to hear from a lawyer with relevant expertise if that is actually enforceable for most employees.

Re: Ask HN: How much does Amazon contribute to the open source community?

#23

Post by LamaOfRuin »

through-a-weigh wrote: post #16
vertoc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there's a weird internal thing where Amazon employees are not supposed to publicly contribute to open source projects but I don't know the reasoning behind that...

This mostly begins and ends with fear of liability. Amazon has lots of assets, tiny margins, and a lot of deep-pocketed competitors more than happy to fund legal battles by proxy, to say nothing of smaller trolls. (What other company is going head-to-head with Walmart, Microsoft, Google, Bertelsmann, and Apple in different market sectors at the same time?) Restricting "official" contributions is really about limiting…

That seems like a pretty empty justification.

- Amazon already has immense attack surface

- software is generally distributed without warranty and includes liability disclaimers

- They wouldn't even be distributing any of the software. Any lawsuits based on contributions like that should be thrown out at the nuisance level, and they must already have an army or lawyers dealing with those.

(I only play a lawyer on the internet)

Re: Ask HN: How much does Amazon contribute to the open source community?

#25

Post by GeneralMayhem »

LamaOfRuin wrote: post #22
dudleydoright wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former Amazonian here. When I was employed: To do ANY FOSS work as an individual unrelated to the company (And I mean ANY: private projects that may be on Github, projects with nothing to do with Amazon) required a one-off application for permission. To actually contribute something to some FOSS project that is in use at Amazon (For example, to fix a bug) requires even more special permissions (I think it is once per…

Is this in your contract / some IP agreement you sign? I wonder if they would drop this as fast as they dropped the warehouse employee anti-compete agreement if it was publicized. It would also be interesting to hear from a lawyer with relevant expertise if that is actually enforceable for most employees.

IANAL.

It's in pretty much every employment contract in the software industry. Washington has code 49.44.140 which makes such terms unenforceable unless:

>(a) the invention relates

> (i) directly to the business of the employer, or

> (ii) to the employer's actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development,

>or (b) the invention results from any work performed by the employee for the employer

California has section 2870, which is almost identical.

The problem is that those terms are vague enough that they can be construed to apply to pretty much any software. The big companies have varied enough business that (a) is hard to get away from, especially if it's Web based and you work for Amazon/Google/Facebook, and software techniques are generalizable that they could probably claim (b) as well. As a result, all of those companies have various internal processes to request that the company either release IP for side projects or allow it to be open sourced with the company as the copyright holder but the employee listed as the author.

Re: Ask HN: How much does Amazon contribute to the open source community?

#26

Post by oneoffoneoff »

dudleydoright wrote: post #15
vertoc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there's a weird internal thing where Amazon employees are not supposed to publicly contribute to open source projects but I don't know the reasoning behind that...

Former Amazonian here. When I was employed: To do ANY FOSS work as an individual unrelated to the company (And I mean ANY: private projects that may be on Github, projects with nothing to do with Amazon) required a one-off application for permission. To actually contribute something to some FOSS project that is in use at Amazon (For example, to fix a bug) requires even more special permissions (I think it is once per…

I'm a prolific open source contributor, and I found it strange when Amazon tried to recruit me.

Let me get this straight: you're scouting me because of all this open source stuff which you will now insist I abandon.

Re: Ask HN: How much does Amazon contribute to the open source community?

#28

Post by mgkimsal »

LamaOfRuin wrote: post #23
through-a-weigh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mostly begins and ends with fear of liability. Amazon has lots of assets, tiny margins, and a lot of deep-pocketed competitors more than happy to fund legal battles by proxy, to say nothing of smaller trolls. (What other company is going head-to-head with Walmart, Microsoft, Google, Bertelsmann, and Apple in different market sectors at the same time?) Restricting "official" contributions is really about limiting…

That seems like a pretty empty justification. - Amazon already has immense attack surface - software is generally distributed without warranty and includes liability disclaimers - They wouldn't even be distributing any of the software. Any lawsuits based on contributions like that should be thrown out at the nuisance level, and they must already have an army or lawyers dealing with those. (I only play a lawyer on the…

You put it better than I could.

Now, one might argue that many of the other attack surfaces are necessary byproducts of markets they want to operate in, and software development isn't a market they're profiting from, therefore they shouldn't unnecessarily open themselves up to potential litigation.

However, given how much so many other large companies already contribute, publicly, sometimes to the very systems Amazon may be using, it does seem a pretty hollow claim.

If some of Amazon's system failed because of some patch that Google contributed to project X, would Amazon's first reaction be to sue Google?

Re: Ask HN: How much does Amazon contribute to the open source community?

#30

Post by andrewstuart »

cperciva wrote: post #5

It's really hard to guess at Amazon's code contributions; I don't know what weird corporate anti-pattern causes this, but I've received patches from Amazon in emails which say "here's a bug fix but don't tell anyone that this came from Amazon", and I know other people who have received similar contributions. In a more financial sense, they have been generous in supporting my work on FreeBSD/EC2 -- not with cash, but…

Generous is easy when it's providing computing resources which effectively costs them nothing. It's disgraceful that Amazon haven't offered you significant financial support.

They get the benefit of your hard work and you don't see a cent of the bajillions Amazon is making.

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