I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left • Hacker News Board

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#561

Post by voidUpdate » Mon, May 11, 2026, 9:09 AM UTC

senko wrote: post #345

Galanwe wrote: post #324

These arguments against AWS are boring. 99% of the negative comments are along the line of "so i have a dead simple product, I dont know anything about AWS, I logged in and it was super complicated and it seemed pricey". Well guess what, if you have a CRUD website and 100 users you're just not the target. Move on. Some days ago I wanted to sketch a 3D model of my TV remote. I opened blender and what a mess of complic…

If you want to design TV remotes, you better learn Blender. If you want to host something complex enough to warrant AWS, you should also understand how to run it yourself. These arguments for AWS are boring and sound like uninspired regurgitation of their sales pitch. I recall hearing the same about IIS and Windows a few decades back. Turns out, they both have pretty good marketing departments!

If you want to do actual design, I'd recommend a parametric modeller. Blender really just doesn't cut it for that kind of thing, even with addons

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#562

Post by Orygin » Mon, May 11, 2026, 9:15 AM UTC

dns_snek wrote: post #544

alexey-salmin wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't? I mean, if Amazon does commercial version of Elastic better than Elastic themselves then so be it. I don't see how one company is entitled to turn an open source project into business and the other is not. I do see issues with monopolies pushing inferior products onto users. But that would be a completely different issue, nothing to do with open source.

> I don't see how one company is entitled to turn an open source project into business and the other is not. According to the original license they are both entitled to do that, that's the problem. Do you think it's sustainable for one company to make the software for free and another one to sell it for profit?

Why isn't this a problem for other databases then? I'm sure most cloud sell some MariaDB services. Why would they be able to profit from it?

It's because the business model for ES is direct competition with AWS and others, and they got out competed. So they had to play licenses games to try and level the field.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#563

Post by mschild » Mon, May 11, 2026, 9:34 AM UTC

skinfaxi wrote: post #120

ipaddr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition would mean Amazon creating their own software. Taking software others made and using your monopoly eco-system and scale to drive the original creator out of the game kills the product. Many support breaking up Amazon so others could compete not killing small entities and growing Amazon.

> Taking software others made and using your monopoly eco-system and scale to drive the original creator out of the game kills the product They took software that others gave away for free without restriction and did what they wanted with it. It took time but the community figured out this exploit path and patched it in subsequent license versions.

Form a legal standpoint, you're correct.

From a moral/ethic one, its still shit.

You're legally allowed to do a whole lot of things. You can still be called an asshole for doing them.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#564

Post by continueops_com » Mon, May 11, 2026, 9:51 AM UTC

Had a similar one. They switched off Lambda and SNS because of a potential credential leak — none had actually leaked — and I was without service for 48 hours. Same flavour as the post: the provider's heuristic was probably right to fire, but you only find out which of your things were load-bearing once they're gone.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#565

Post by pabs3 » Mon, May 11, 2026, 9:53 AM UTC

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #551

pabs3 wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free Software licenses don't restrict profit making, even the AGPL wouldn't stop Amazon from using the same strategy to beat those OSS companies in the market.

Yes, but at the very least, Amazon would need to contribute their code back, so it's not a complete loss.

That is incorrect, the FSF licenses would require Amazon contribute code forward to their users, not back to the project.

Also, Amazon were already contributing code back when these companies changed their licenses, the companies don't care about code contributions, just money.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#566

Post by simonebrunozzi » Mon, May 11, 2026, 9:53 AM UTC

Hmm... I was very early AWS, and it might even be "the guy from the US" that spoke at the first AWS Melbourne event was me, back in 2010.

I agree with few of the things that have annoyed Andrew Stuart, and brought him to leave. I disagree with a few. Let's pick one: DynamoDB was brilliant. I even knew one of the key engineers behind it, Stefano Stefani, as brilliant as he was hilariously funny as a person. It solved large scale problems beautifully, much better than SimpleDB or a combination of that and S3 would be able to do.

But I really disagree with one thing:

> And recently I went back to AWS. WHAT?!?!? WHY? You might ask. To get some research done. Do a few tests, get in and out.

I would never trust a person doing this, and would never hire him/her ever.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#567

Post by wvh » Mon, May 11, 2026, 9:56 AM UTC

skinfaxi wrote: post #120

ipaddr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition would mean Amazon creating their own software. Taking software others made and using your monopoly eco-system and scale to drive the original creator out of the game kills the product. Many support breaking up Amazon so others could compete not killing small entities and growing Amazon.

> Taking software others made and using your monopoly eco-system and scale to drive the original creator out of the game kills the product They took software that others gave away for free without restriction and did what they wanted with it. It took time but the community figured out this exploit path and patched it in subsequent license versions.

One could argue it was not given away for free, but with a silent expectation of reciprocity. Using open-source is a gentleman's agreement to be respectful towards the project, a good citizen, not to abuse and potentially contribute.

But you're right communities are now having to concoct a wild-growing collection of semi open-source licenses to protect themselves from abuse by a few big players.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#568

Post by jen20 » Mon, May 11, 2026, 9:56 AM UTC

cylemons wrote: post #509

tedivm wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS literally did that. They paid for full time developers to contribute back to the redis code base, including core redis developers. If you actually look at the redis code base the majority of it was written by people who never worked for redis.

> If you actually look at the redis code base the majority of it was written by people who never worked for redis. Thats a really big deal, how did they legally managed to do the license change? I was under the impression that only works if the original owner is the doing most work

> Thats a really big deal, how did they legally managed to do the license change? I was under the impression that only works if the original owner is the doing most work

Almost all of these license changes just change the terms under which _new_ work is contributed - which is why many of them have forks from the last OSI-licensed commit.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#569

Post by jen20 » Mon, May 11, 2026, 10:02 AM UTC

stavros wrote: post #446

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no bad guy. The OSS license meant that AWS was perfectly free to do as they did. If the companies who licensed their software as OSS didn't want that, then they shouldn't have used an OSS license.

Ok, then fine, the companies who licensed their software as OSS did that for as long as they wanted to, and then they moved away. What's the issue here?

There isn't one? Either with the change or with the ensuing forks, in principle.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#570

Post by alexey-salmin » Mon, May 11, 2026, 10:06 AM UTC

dns_snek wrote: post #544

alexey-salmin wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't? I mean, if Amazon does commercial version of Elastic better than Elastic themselves then so be it. I don't see how one company is entitled to turn an open source project into business and the other is not. I do see issues with monopolies pushing inferior products onto users. But that would be a completely different issue, nothing to do with open source.

> I don't see how one company is entitled to turn an open source project into business and the other is not. According to the original license they are both entitled to do that, that's the problem. Do you think it's sustainable for one company to make the software for free and another one to sell it for profit?

> According to the original license they are both entitled to do that, that's the problem.

I really don't see how Amazon is to blame for this problem, they weren't the ones who picked the license.

> Do you think it's sustainable for one company to make the software for free and another one to sell it for profit?

They both sell it for profit, let the most profitable one win.