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AWS gives open source the middle finger?

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Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#151

Post by swift532 »

sah2ed wrote: post #149
amelius wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that is legally enforceable if they pay you only for 8 hours/day as opposed to 24 hours/day.

Not that I agree with Amazon's policy for no open source contributions, but imagine that an employee decides to spend the 6-8hrs out of the remaining 24hrs meant for sleep on something other than sleep, what do you think will happen? That employee's productivity during those critical 8hrs of the day that is being paid for by the employer would drop like a rock, because whether we like it or not, we need time to recha…

If someone is badly underperforming, then they can fire them. It's simply ridiculous for a company to own a second of your time outside work hours, excepting things like people on call, of course, but I count that under work hours.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#152

Post by depr »

peterwwillis wrote: post #40

From the movie "Revolution OS" [1], Richard Stallman explaining Copyleft: "If we put the software in the public domain, somebody else would be able to make a little bit of changes and turn that into a proprietary software package, which means that the users would be running our software, but they wouldn't have freedom to cooperate and share." "And what we do is, we say, this software is copyrighted and we, the author…

>Linus is asked at the end if he's bothered that he's not cashing out on billions of dollars of use

Linus has an annual salary of $10 million, https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celebrity-business/...

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#153

Post by cmsj »

klez wrote: post #147
JohannesH wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with what you said it is important to note that the OSI isn't the defining authority on what is to be considered open source.

I keep seeing this sentence (or variations thereof) on every thread about this topic. It sounds weird to me that people think a foundation created by Perens and Raymond (et al.), the people who defined Open Source, and wrote the Open Source Definition is not the defining authority on what open source is. What gives?

I think the idea there is that one body shouldn't have a proprietary lock on what counts as Open Source and what doesn't. OSI/OSD as the loudest voices of what is OSS, is helpful, but they shouldn't be the only voices.

(As much as I get annoyed by things claiming to be open source, that really aren't proper open source, I have to accept that this is a movement brought about by a rag-tag bunch of hackers who don't much care for single entities telling them what to do, so they should also be measured by that)

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#154

Post by pferde »

sah2ed wrote: post #149
amelius wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that is legally enforceable if they pay you only for 8 hours/day as opposed to 24 hours/day.

Not that I agree with Amazon's policy for no open source contributions, but imagine that an employee decides to spend the 6-8hrs out of the remaining 24hrs meant for sleep on something other than sleep, what do you think will happen? That employee's productivity during those critical 8hrs of the day that is being paid for by the employer would drop like a rock, because whether we like it or not, we need time to recha…

That's... wow. Are you saying that the employers could (or even should) demand that employees do nothing else during their free time except rest, so that they are well rested for their on-the-clock time? No late night TV for you, no early morning pool swimming session, and don't even think about taking up that physically demanding hobby, because we need you 100% focused on the job!

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#155

Post by icelancer »

depr wrote: post #152
peterwwillis wrote: post #40

From the movie "Revolution OS" [1], Richard Stallman explaining Copyleft: "If we put the software in the public domain, somebody else would be able to make a little bit of changes and turn that into a proprietary software package, which means that the users would be running our software, but they wouldn't have freedom to cooperate and share." "And what we do is, we say, this software is copyrighted and we, the author…

>Linus is asked at the end if he's bothered that he's not cashing out on billions of dollars of use Linus has an annual salary of $10 million, https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celebrity-business/...

That is a hilariously low salary given the impact of Linux on the world today.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#156

Post by gaius »

fogetti wrote: post #56
int_19h wrote: post #29

Amazon was using MongoDB without paying for it. MongoDB found that objectionable, and changed the license such that Amazon would either have to pay, or stop using it. Amazon stopped using it, and started using its own in-house implementation instead (presumably because it was cheaper to develop it than to pay MongoDB). So, MongoDB got exactly what they asked for. It's just that, when they forced Amazon to make a choi…

Yeah, I don't understand it either. There is a company which puts 300 M$ effort into developing something and then another company is using the first company's brand recognition to get a competitive edge while offering zero added value (And no, hosting mongodb in AWS not a new thing, only uninformed people would assume so. When I look around I find services like Scalegrid or MDB Atlas itself which is exactly the thin…

300 M$ effort into developing something

If only they had! But MongoDB is 1% technology and 99% marketing, they had no technological moat to speak of.

See also: Docker.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#157

Post by [deleted] »

StreamBright wrote: post #128
int_19h wrote: post #29

Amazon was using MongoDB without paying for it. MongoDB found that objectionable, and changed the license such that Amazon would either have to pay, or stop using it. Amazon stopped using it, and started using its own in-house implementation instead (presumably because it was cheaper to develop it than to pay MongoDB). So, MongoDB got exactly what they asked for. It's just that, when they forced Amazon to make a choi…

Any company bets on Amazon not being able to rewrite their software loses the bet. They even have their own CPUs because one of the CPU vendors failed to meet with their demands.

[deleted]

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#158

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

cryptonector wrote: post #78
spectre256 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I "accidentally" worked at amazon for a few weeks when a company I had just joined was acquired by them. I knew it was time to start looking when I was informed that I had to get prior permission to do ANY open source contributions even on my own hardware on my own time. That's just not feasible logistically and above and beyond the general "don't write open source that competes with us or on our our time/hardware wi…

If the approvals issue in all cases where the project clearly is unrelated to the employer's business, then what's the problem? To some degree review of external work is just the sort of thing a corporate legal department is going to push for, and it's not exactly unreasonable provided that approvals issue except where there is clearly a conflict.

The problem is that you need permission. Whether the approval is usually given is irrelevant, what matters is whether they have the option to refuse.

Think about it like this: What would be the problem with the employment contract saying that salary can be decided by the company at will if they usually paid a certain acceptable sum every month?

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#159

Post by askmike »

int_19h wrote: post #29

Amazon was using MongoDB without paying for it. MongoDB found that objectionable, and changed the license such that Amazon would either have to pay, or stop using it. Amazon stopped using it, and started using its own in-house implementation instead (presumably because it was cheaper to develop it than to pay MongoDB). So, MongoDB got exactly what they asked for. It's just that, when they forced Amazon to make a choi…

> They are not advertising their replacement as MongoDB, either.

I don't really agree there. The service is called documentDB and this is how they describe it [1]:

> Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility)

> Fast, scalable, highly available MongoDB-compatible database

And the first 2 sentences:

> Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) is a fast, scalable, highly available, and fully managed document database service that supports MongoDB workloads.

> Customers use MongoDB as a document database to store, retrieve ...

You have to read all of that pretty carefully to understand that it's NOT MongoDB (a term they mention 5 times in the first 4 sentences). And if you read it carefully it seems to say it's compatible with MongoDB, whereas the Techcrunch article states it's only compatible with the MongoDB API from 2 years ago.

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/documentdb/

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#160

Post by hannob »

holografix wrote: post #130

Is there a license category that says something like: "Anyone can use our tech to build stuff with for free however you may not re-sell our tech wrapped in maintenance or hosting services"? If you're a small open source company with a services business model, how do you stop someone like AWS forking your code, making a few changes they don't share with you and basically becoming the de-facto supplier of maintenance a…

> Is there a license category that says something like: "Anyone can use our tech to build stuff with for free however you may not re-sell our tech wrapped in maintenance or hosting services"?

Yes, there is. It's what MongoDB did. It's not Open Source.

> If you're a small open source company with a services business model, how do you stop someone like AWS forking your code, making a few changes they don't share with you and basically becoming the de-facto supplier of maintenance and services for your tech?

You have a business model that does not work. You've been lying to your investors claiming that you have one. That's exactly the MongoDB story.

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