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AWS gives open source the middle finger?

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Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#251

Post by harrumph »

benologist wrote: post #223

Bezos gives everyone the middle finger. Doesn't matter if you're part of the massive open source stack they profit from or one of their workers unfairly paid trying to meet unfair workload demands or one of the 100s of countries, states and cities they relentlessly conspire to steal taxes from. What's really funny about their not-mongodb as a service is they will inevitably roll over any piece of software third parti…

>is they will inevitably roll over any piece of software

Can you please clarify? I'm researching AWS and am interested in the historical practices of the company, but I'm not sure what "roll over" means in the context you used it.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#252

Post by klez »

toyg wrote: post #123

A lot of people are focusing on the bitchiness, but to me this is actually interesting from the perspective of (F)OSS evolution. This scenario is one of the many where (F)OSS explicitly protects downstream users: company reduces availability, user forks. It just so happens that the traditional players (the small, indie user va the big, bad corp) are actually mirrored (big, bad user vs small, indie corp). This has bee…

It is different in this day and age, though, with respect to the time when the FOSS philosophy was born.

The difference is that now a lot of software is run as a service, which wasn't the case back than.

So, imagine MongoDB was used some 20 years ago (and it was GPL, as AGPL wouldn't make as much sense back then). A big company comes along, makes some modifications to the base product and tries to sell it. Guess what? They have to give the source code (including their additions) to whoever buys their version (including, potentially, Mongo inc.) so they would still be on a somewhat level playing field.

Enter software as a service. Since the GPL says nothing about software served via network, MongoDB goes under AGPL, which has provisions for this scenario. Amazon is not selling software copies, they're selling a service (hosting, integration, etc). So, even if they make additions to the source code and give them back upstream, they're on a completely different level from the small player (Mongo inc. or whoever else) and, since they're not differentiating on the code alone, win in the long run.

This all to say, it's not the promise/premise of FOSS that is flawed, it's just that the playing field changed.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#253

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

toyg wrote: post #214
rjf72 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all hard to have a license where something is free for noncommercial or limited commercial usage, and premium otherwise. This is an extremely typical model for many products today whose licenses you could use as inspiration. See for instance things like Microsoft's Visual Studio. And the nice thing is that contract law is really quite powerful and very much on your side when it comes to enforcement. You d…

It's not unreasonable to wish for a middle ground where small actors don't have to pay and big actors do. > a license where something is free for noncommercial or limited commercial usage, and premium otherwise. That's basically what Mongo have switched to. Unfortunately, this broke other bits of community, because playing with licenses is actually not that easy. My point is that, maybe, we need a new license that ca…

> Maybe it's time for interested companies and expert stakeholders (FSF etc) to come together and try to agree on something that could move us all forward.

Expecting the FSF and RMS in particular to negotiate away the core freedoms (just so that businesses can make profits, no less!) strikes me as the height of futility.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#254

Post by benologist »

harrumph wrote: post #251
benologist wrote: post #223

Bezos gives everyone the middle finger. Doesn't matter if you're part of the massive open source stack they profit from or one of their workers unfairly paid trying to meet unfair workload demands or one of the 100s of countries, states and cities they relentlessly conspire to steal taxes from. What's really funny about their not-mongodb as a service is they will inevitably roll over any piece of software third parti…

>is they will inevitably roll over any piece of software Can you please clarify? I'm researching AWS and am interested in the historical practices of the company, but I'm not sure what "roll over" means in the context you used it.

I mean they will inevitably go through the websites people are hosting on AWS looking for profitable software to copy, because that's what Amazon has always done to people making money on Amazon.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#256

Post by harrumph »

benologist wrote: post #254
harrumph wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>is they will inevitably roll over any piece of software Can you please clarify? I'm researching AWS and am interested in the historical practices of the company, but I'm not sure what "roll over" means in the context you used it.

I mean they will inevitably go through the websites people are hosting on AWS looking for profitable software to copy, because that's what Amazon has always done to people making money on Amazon.

Thanks - I suspected you were saying as much. MongoDB aside, can you share examples of this process?

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#257

Post by StreamBright »

camtarn wrote: post #170
StreamBright wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, right? You can't do such a thing in the EU.

I worked for Amazon in the EU, and the rule was certainly in force. Whether or not it could be enforced is a different question, but none of us wanted to go up against Amazon's lawyers!

Amazon EU companies tend to follow blindly what is coming from the HQ. I personally experienced this. After warned the management about getting the ministry of employment involved they immediately backed down and let us implement something according to the EU law. It is the matter of knowing your position and the law.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#258

Post by benologist »

harrumph wrote: post #256
benologist wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean they will inevitably go through the websites people are hosting on AWS looking for profitable software to copy, because that's what Amazon has always done to people making money on Amazon.

Thanks - I suspected you were saying as much. MongoDB aside, can you share examples of this process?

Some of the physical merchandise they've copied, they have many more brands:

https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics/b?node=10112675011

They have been copying SaaS straight from their partners for years already too:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/08/amazon_copies_partn...

I think you can add Heroku (AWS Beanstalk) even before that.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#259

Post by clairity »

saagarjha wrote: post #111
clairity wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that kind of restriction is generally not enforceable in states like california unless you explicitly get some kind of consideration (e.g., compensation) for it.

> unless you explicitly get some kind of consideration (e.g., compensation) for it Is this in addition to the regular salary you are paid, or…

since it’s above and beyond customary work duties, you’d expect extra compensation of some kind to have you refrain from projects unrelated to the job. there are some exceptions of course. security-related government workers could be subject to extra restrictions without extra compensation, for example.
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