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Local Stack Archived their GitHub repo and requires an account to run

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Re: Local Stack Archived their GitHub repo and requires an account to run

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you’re trying to build a system of ethics around being annoyed by OSS maintainers not working for free in perpetuity. Having access to Apache licensed code that you can build off of is better than never having access to any code at all. Anything else about values or respect has to be inferred or imagined and has no bearing on the software itself. Edit: Like who cares if they “wanted” to contribute to th…

The ethical problem is the bait-and-switch. A project that begins open and remains open is no problem; a project that begins closed and remains closed is no problem (ethically); a project that begins closed and becomes open is no ethical problem either. But a project that begins open, advertises their openness to the world, uses their openness to attract lots of community interest and then suddenly becomes closed is…

> a project that begins open, advertises their openness to the world, uses their openness to attract lots of community interest and then suddenly becomes closed

Do you have any examples of that happening? When I click on the link at the top of this thread it takes me to a GitHub repo with a bunch of Apache licensed code that is open to anyone that wants to use or modify or build off of however they want. Heck, with permissive licensing like that you or I could fork it and put any part/all of that code into a proprietary product and make money off of it if we wanted to, and that would be entirely in keeping with the spirit and practice of FOSS.

This project seems perfectly open from what I can see, looks like the original devs stopped working on it though

Re: Local Stack Archived their GitHub repo and requires an account to run

#112
post #42
post #32

First minio and then localstack, as an open source maintainer I find that abandoning their community is bad faith. I totally get wanting to monetize but removing the free product entirely feels like such a betrayel. Luckily, I've been vibing with Devin since this started having it build a cleanbox emulator on top of real s3 tuned for my specific use case. It's a lot less general but it's much faster and easy to add t…

It does feel like a betrayal. We live in a world where money is the main thing that matters and it's increasingly hard to come by and you need increasingly more of it (these are all designed policies, not emergent behavior). It makes sense that people don't want to do things for free unless they already have enough money. Engineers who remained apolitical are now surprised the politics is bad.

Personally I think we should at least discuss changing this system into something that is more sustainable. Money is main thing, because it was decided that private property is more important than people. People like Joseph Stiglitz show that there's no such a thing as an invisible hand, even though he still believes in free market.

Re: Local Stack Archived their GitHub repo and requires an account to run

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the comment on corpos is good, but calling the naive people fools might be unnecessary - it’s probably not their fault nobody told them about this sort of thing before and learning that lesson is probably disappointing enough already. It’s unfortunate that this keeps happening to projects like MinIO and others too.

We should return to the HN guidelines, and read it as charitably as possible. I'm interpreting it as closer to pity, rather than genuine criticism =)

Sure! Slightly edited the tone, but I’m noticing that often people have idealistic attitudes about FOSS until they get burnt by bad faith actors or even just indifferent corps that have to keep the lights on. Quite unfortunate, definitely not their fault. Pity is correct.

Re: Local Stack Archived their GitHub repo and requires an account to run

#114
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ethical problem is the bait-and-switch. A project that begins open and remains open is no problem; a project that begins closed and remains closed is no problem (ethically); a project that begins closed and becomes open is no ethical problem either. But a project that begins open, advertises their openness to the world, uses their openness to attract lots of community interest and then suddenly becomes closed is…

Precisely. It's remarkable that people think releasing a project as OSS is a license to disrespect users. This isn't even related to OSS. Software authors should have basic decency and respect for the users of their software. This relationship starts with that. Publishing a project as OSS doesn't relinquish you from this responsibility. It doesn't give you the right to be an asshole. And yet we fall for this trap tim…

Wow.

"Software authors should have basic decency and respect for the users of their software." Why? Not at all.

"Publishing a project as OSS doesn't relinquish you from this responsibility. It doesn't give you the right to be an asshole." You are free to be asshole and it's nobody's business.

Actually it's exactly opposite. Such feeling of superiority and privilege, that just because you use some software, you have any right to command its author is the very definition of being an asshole.

"I'm demanding that people work for free for my benefit! Unbelievable." Yes, that's unbelievable.

Re: Local Stack Archived their GitHub repo and requires an account to run

#115
I never understood why AWS doesn't provide something like LocalStack out of the box. Any team building serious software on AWS needs to mock AWS services in their CI/CD pipelines. What exactly are they expecting developers to do? They would probably argue something like "spin up real infrastructure so you are as close to production as possible" because this way they could make even more money while also avoiding the implementation / maintenance cost of the mocks.

Re: Local Stack Archived their GitHub repo and requires an account to run

#116
post #115

I never understood why AWS doesn't provide something like LocalStack out of the box. Any team building serious software on AWS needs to mock AWS services in their CI/CD pipelines. What exactly are they expecting developers to do? They would probably argue something like "spin up real infrastructure so you are as close to production as possible" because this way they could make even more money while also avoiding the…

My general principle has been “don’t build what you can’t test locally”. It seems so obvious but PaaS does challenge it.

It also has the benefit of steering clear of exotic proprietary features that are hard to migrate between providers.

Local stack formed a big part of making that principle realistic.

(EDIT - but I can see how that's counter to AWS' interests! It's desirable that they provide it, but not surprising that they don't.)

Re: Local Stack Archived their GitHub repo and requires an account to run

#117
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. It's remarkable that people think releasing a project as OSS is a license to disrespect users. This isn't even related to OSS. Software authors should have basic decency and respect for the users of their software. This relationship starts with that. Publishing a project as OSS doesn't relinquish you from this responsibility. It doesn't give you the right to be an asshole. And yet we fall for this trap tim…

Wow. "Software authors should have basic decency and respect for the users of their software." Why? Not at all. "Publishing a project as OSS doesn't relinquish you from this responsibility. It doesn't give you the right to be an asshole." You are free to be asshole and it's nobody's business. Actually it's exactly opposite. Such feeling of superiority and privilege, that just because you use some software, you have a…

> "Software authors should have basic decency and respect for the users of their software." Why? Not at all.

Because that's the core reason why we build software in the first place. We solve problems for people. Software doesn't exist in a void. There's an inherent relationship created between software authors and its users. This exists for any good software, at least. If you think software accomplishes its purpose by just being published, regardless of its license, you've failed at the most fundamental principle of software development.

> you have any right to command its author is the very definition of being an asshole.

Hah. I'm not "commanding" anyone anything. I'm simply calling out asshole behavior. The fact is that software from authors who behave like this rarely amounts to anything. It either dies in obscurity, or is picked up by someone who does care about their users.

> "I'm demanding that people work for free for my benefit! Unbelievable." Yes, that's unbelievable.

Clearly sarcasm goes over your head, since I'm mimicking what you and others think I'm saying. But feel free to continue to think I'm coming from a place of moral superiority and privilege.

Re: Local Stack Archived their GitHub repo and requires an account to run

#119
post #6

I evangelized localstack at my company a while back, but as we integrated it deeper into our CI test runs we started running into more and more things they don't support, and it feels impossible to get any attention from their support/devs despite being paying customers. Their Cloud Pod and ephemeral instance features in particular feel pretty half-baked and not very useful at the moment. Fun tangent: it's pretty eas…

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Re: Local Stack Archived their GitHub repo and requires an account to run

#120
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so a company shared their work with the public for however long, then decided to leave what was shared up ... but stop sharing ... and you're upset?!? They did everything properly by the rules of OSS, decided it wasn't in their best interest to keep doing OSS, and left all their code available, as required by OSS. They were a textbook good participant. Meanwhile, 99% of companies never open source anything: why…

How can people still not understand that OSS can be abused? It doesn't matter that the previous code is still available. Nobody can technically delete it from the internet, so that's hardly something they did "right". The original maintainers are gone, and users will have to rely on someone else to pick up the work, or maintain it themselves. All of this creates friction, and fragments the community. And are you not…

> The original maintainers are gone, and users will have to rely on someone else to pick up the work,

That’s a risk that no license, open source or not, can protect against. Priorities may change, causing maintainers to stop maintaining, or maintainers (companies or people) may cease to exist.

OSS licenses also do not promise that development will continue forever, will continue in a direction you like or anything like that.

The only thing open source licenses say is “here’s a specific set of source code that you can use under these limitations”. The expectation that there will be maintenance is a matter of trust that you may or may not have in the developers.

> or maintain it themselves.

With open source, at least you have that option.

> And are you not familiar with the concept of OSS rugpulls? It's when a company uses OSS as a marketing tool, and when they deem it's not profitable enough, they start cutting corners, prioritizing their commercial product, or, as in this case, shut down the OSS project altogether.

Companies have to live. It’s not nice if something like that happen to you for a tool you depend on, but you can’t deny companies to stop doing development altogether.

In this case, you have something better, as, in addition to picking up maintenance on the existing open source version, you have the choice to pay for a version maintained by the original developers.

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