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AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

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Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#601

Post by ccktlmazeltov »

unreal37 wrote: post #325
mjasay wrote: post #297

I run the open source strategy and marketing team at AWS. As I told Tim privately and publicly ( https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/1317084448119169024 ), I hadn't been aware of this but am talking with the relevant product team to see how we can improve in his regard. AWS uses a lot of open source, and we contribute a lot, both in terms of code (first-party projects like Firecracker and Bottlerocket, but also third-p…

Good job taking responsibility, Matt. Handling this the right way. I do think there's a larger discussion about trillion dollar companies just forking a project and announcing it as a new feature for their platform without even talking to the original creator. If there's anything to improve, "reach out first" will be a start. It's open source. You don't have to reach out. There's nothing legally or morally wrong with…

> I do think there's a larger discussion about trillion dollar companies just forking a project and announcing it as a new feature for their platform without even talking to the original creator.

I always find these messages weird, because in the end it's one engineer like you and I who looked at some open sourced stuff and decided to use it, and perhaps it didn't really do what they wanted so they forked it, and it ended up being used in whatever product they were working on, and in the grand scheme of things it was not about a big trillion dollar company being evil, it was about how engineers do their work nowadays.

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#602

Post by kazinator »

cacois wrote: post #336
unreal37 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good job taking responsibility, Matt. Handling this the right way. I do think there's a larger discussion about trillion dollar companies just forking a project and announcing it as a new feature for their platform without even talking to the original creator. If there's anything to improve, "reach out first" will be a start. It's open source. You don't have to reach out. There's nothing legally or morally wrong with…

I honestly think there's room for more than gratitude with, as you said, a trillion dollar company. I know its hard to find a balance when we want free and open tools, developed in a spirit of sharing and enabling innovation. But something feels slimy about an enormous company deriving a huge amount of revenue from a FOSS project, when they could easily compensate developer(s) with barely an impact to their bottom li…

When you put a certain license on your freely redistributed code, the assumption is that you're doing it it with your eyes open, and agree with all the ramifications.

Free software which requires a copyright notice to be retained in the source, but has no restrictions on run-time can be used in exactly that way: someone builds it, modifies it to taste and puts it into operation in such a way that your name does not appear anywhere.

You don't necessarily want that. Do you want some AWS customers contacting you about issues with it because they found your name?

What is legal coincides with what is right, because the developers had every opportunity to choose a license which exactly reflects what they think is right. It's a reasonable assumption is that they did exactly that.

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#603

Post by branweb »

ncmncm wrote: post #581
benjaminjosephw wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source culture is so much more than the licenses. A license dictates what is legally permissible but it doesn't mean that there aren't other cultural expectations that go with that. Eric Raymond famously wrote about the customs of open source in Homesteading the Noosphere: "I have observed these customs in action for 20 years, going back to the pre-FSF ancient history of open-source software. They have several v…

Eric Raymond is probably the least reliable narrator of a Free Software ethos that one could pick.

Not trying to troll you, just wanna know: why is that?

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#604

Post by nitrogen »

duckerude wrote: post #317
nitrogen wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC the GPL, for example, is itself covered by copyright and doesn't permit modification of its own text.

You're allowed to modify it as long as you make it very clear that the new license is distinct from the old one: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL

Ah, cool. It sounds like they have a specific way they want you to avoid modifying the text at the end of the paragraph about modifying it (for version 3):

> Rather than modifying the GPL, please use the exception mechanism offered by GPL version 3.

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#605

Post by h0l0cube »

Xylakant wrote: post #89
h0l0cube wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AWS could have really helped the maintainer with a single sentence and they didn't. It's not befitting a large enterprise like AWS to tell their prospective customers that they are just wrapping their infra around free software in their marketing copy. If that single sentence even slightly impresses upon .1% of their potential customers that they ought to spin it up on their own infrastructure, obviating their need…

That’s not as clear cut as your post may make it seem. Some users (me, for example) are more inclined to use a hosted service of some open source software than of some proprietary piece. Because that gives me a migration option if the providers service no longer fits my needs. For example, I’m paying four digits a month for some hosted Postgres database.

Misses the point. The marketing copy there is to bamboozle the uninformed into opening their wallets. If you are better informed, you already know that AWS plagiars pretty much all it's services from open-source. A smaller player catering to a tech audience might add open source to its bullet points as some sort of virtue signalling, but that's no benefit to the established megalith that is AWS.

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#606

Post by mlyle »

didibus wrote: post #599
mlyle wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything that isn't well understood or known in advance of someone engaging in an activity, and then later faces unfair retribution because apparently they didn't do what wasn't told to them that needed be done, or did something that wasn't told to them shouldn't be done. Your argument self-contradicts. You assert, broadly, if it's legal it's OK. The "unfair retribution" of people getting annoyed about it and compl…

Well, there are rules around defamation, libel and slander. But you're right, there's no laws saying one cannot guilt trip someone else or shame them for their behavior even if they are acting legally. I think this is me criticizing those same "social norms". In my opinion, it is unfair to guilt trip someone or have hidden expectations when someone does a good deed for you. Especially when you decided to do the deed…

> But it isn't nice when someone complains they're not getting a thank you for something they choose to do willingly and weren't asked to do.

If you benefit from something someone else does, you owe them a debt of gratitude. It's not a legal debt, and it's not denominated in dollars and cents... but you shouldn't be surprised that there are norms of repaying this debt in various ways and that people/entities that excessively "take" from the commons incur reputational damage.

> I just wanted to say that in general, yes those social norms are often against what I'd consider a free society, since they are just another axis of power to force you into behaviors you might not have agreed to participate in.

This just feels like hyperbole to me. Expecting acknowledgment from someone when they've benefitted from something you've done is not an unreasonable ask. Getting shamed when you don't do this isn't a significant curtailment of liberty.

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#607

Post by j1elo »

calcifer wrote: post #593
orangechairs wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon stealing OSS products and repackaging them for profit is a behavior they are replicating over and over. Big and small projects alike are neither protected nor immune (see Mongo, Elastic, Redis,...) To see so much of the developer community respond by placing blame on the developers is heartbreaking and at the root of the tragedy of open source. It's either: your fault for using a permissive license OR shame on…

Of course the blame is on the developers. If you don't want commercial enterprises to repackage your project and exclude you, choose a license that says that! How is this even controversial?

Because then everybody will jump at you and shout "OMG you don't allow for repackaging, don't ever dare to imply that your code is Open Source with all the permissions and liberties that your free labor should grant, so we don't have interest in your shitty proprietary stuff and will never check it out".

As seen on HN multiple times.

Which is what the parent refers to with the more politely put "either your fault for using a permissive license OR shame on you for not using a permissive license"

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#608

Post by mlyle »

BeetleB wrote: post #560
petercooper wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but this is a situation about social norms rather than passive aggressive employer behavior. Typically when a product or service is released, if it's built significantly upon something else, you at least throw out a quick acknowledgement. Sure, it's not the law, it's just polite/kind/whatever nice word you prefer to use. All sorts of communities have various 'norms' of this nature which you are totally entitled…

> Sure, but this is a situation about social norms rather than passive aggressive employer behavior. Every time I come across a thread - on any forum - where people are educating others that something is a social norm, it is because it is not. They merely want it to be. If you have a good number of people disagreeing on it, take it as a humble suggestion that norms differ across geos, industries, culture, etc. Don't…

> Every time I come across a thread - on any forum - where people are educating others that something is a social norm, it is because it is not. They merely want it to be.

Saying "thank you" and giving credit to someone who did you a solid is pretty universally a norm.

> If you have a good number of people disagreeing on it, take it as a humble suggestion that norms differ across geos, industries, culture, etc.

Or, there's just the fraction of people who disregard and push back on norms.

> We don't find a need to credit Claude Shannon, John Von Neumann, Tony Hoare, etc in all our products. I find this to be OK.

It's a bit different here, in that the people you cite are titans who developed ideas that might be a portion of a work... which is a bit different from using the work wholesale. I don't think anyone would expect Amazon to thank/cite/acknowledge something they used that comprised 1% of a product... but when it reaches a very high proportion it's time to mention it.

Further, these were academics. We do have a norm of citing them when we're deeply using and building upon their work academically.

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#609

Post by no_wizard »

mjasay wrote: post #297

I run the open source strategy and marketing team at AWS. As I told Tim privately and publicly ( https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/1317084448119169024 ), I hadn't been aware of this but am talking with the relevant product team to see how we can improve in his regard. AWS uses a lot of open source, and we contribute a lot, both in terms of code (first-party projects like Firecracker and Bottlerocket, but also third-p…

I hope you write an update to this. I'd love to know how this went.

Re: AWS forked my project and launched it as its own service

#610

Post by barumi »

branweb wrote: post #598
barumi wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon stealing OSS products and repackaging them (...) Since when does providing managed services started to pass off as "stealing"? Am I stealing FLOSS projects as well if I install them on a production environment? It makes zero sense to try to pull this sort of bait-and-switch scam with FLOSS. If you release a project into the world while explicitly stating that everyone in the whole world is free to use it as…

I think you have a point. But there does seem to be a difference between say using FLOSS project X as a dependency in my app vs AWS tweaking it, introducing it as a direct competitor to X, and leveraging their huge marketshare to sell it. Seems like not illegal, not even sure if it's ethically shaky, but there does seem to be a difference right?

> But there does seem to be a difference between say using FLOSS project X as a dependency in my app vs AWS tweaking it, introducing it as a direct competitor to X, and leveraging their huge marketshare to sell it.

Is there really a difference at all? You're complaining that a managed service is somehow "a direct competitor". Compete in what? I mean, am I really competing with the project if I get a few instances up and running?

By your line of reasoning, they are actually helping the project grow and establish itself as relevant piece of infrastructure. Somehow I don't see this being used as a justification to demand a share of the revenue the other way around.

In the end, all I see is people complaining that someone who uses a project that was always freely distributed happens to have deep wallets, and somehow hey feel entitled to some cash just because a third party is rich. Where does this make any sense?

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