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I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

fourlightyears.blogspot.com

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

#611

Post by kaydub »

gchamonlive wrote: post #428

> AWS Lambda - yeah I really bought the sell on this - "its scalable!!!!", and I ignored the slow startup times, the MASSIVE development complexity. I don't know... Maybe I spent too much time studying how to tame AWS using IaC and gitops reproducible deployments, but AWS lambda seemed to me the most impressively simple and inexpensive product. Once I did an complete project, from end to end, designing the architectu…

Lambda IS super simple.

These people are professional amateurs. They don't know what they don't know so they post stupid posts like this and all the other know-nothings upvote it and comment likewise.

Seriously, there's nowhere online for good software engineering discussion.

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

#612

Post by [deleted] »

gcr wrote: post #578
alexey-salmin wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They both sell it for profit, but Amazon doesn’t contribute changes upstream, so the public + rest of the industry won’t benefit from their work. It’s not an equivalence.

[deleted]

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

#613

Post by dmantis »

gcr wrote: post #578
alexey-salmin wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They both sell it for profit, but Amazon doesn’t contribute changes upstream, so the public + rest of the industry won’t benefit from their work. It’s not an equivalence.

> Amazon doesn’t contribute changes upstream

Are you sure that's the case with AGPL? Cause they can sue them and enforce the contribution. I doubt that's the case. And those who went with MIT/BSD openly allow distribution without contribution.

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

#614

Post by dmantis »

Orygin wrote: post #594
dns_snek wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why isn't this a problem for other databases then? It is? - MongoDB went from AGPL to SSPL - Redis went from BSD to SSPL - Elasticsearch went from AGPL to SSPL - CockroachDB went from Apache to BSL - TimescaleDB went from Apache to Apache + TLS - Graylog went from GPL to SSPL > 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 g…

Yes and the result is these databases got forked, and the community got rightfully mad. But other databases don't need it, and stayed truly open source, because their business model doesn't rely on being the only hosting provider. > You didn't incur any costs in producing the thing you're selling, duh! Indeed, you gave it away for free, saying I could sell it... It doesn't take a business genius to know AWS can under…

> don't really care about open source.

Exactly. You can sell the products of your work all the way you want.

But pretending to share with the world and then push back when the world actually use it under these same open terms is a hypocrisy.

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

#615

Post by kaydub »

faangguyindia wrote: post #8

Why do people even bother with cloud? I’ve a couple of apps doing a few million a day. I am using Hetzner and before that used DigitalOcean. Mind you, for close to a decade. People are unnecessarily complicating stuff, and these clouds can go very expensive very quickly. Recently, I came across a company and they were spending $20k a month on GCP. I am like, are you kidding me, $20K for the kind of stuff you do??? It…

So you think your bespoke solution is less complex?

Custom scalers? Running prometheus, grafana, etc?

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

#616

Post by dmantis »

jlokier wrote: post #269
andrepd wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lesson there then, isn't there? Use GPL

The GPL has no effect on this issue. For service providers like AWS, who provide the service not the software, the GPL doesn't require them to do anything differently than with more permissive licenses.

AGPLv3 does.

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

#617

Post by [deleted] »

pocksuppet wrote: post #586
somenameforme wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

++ I think the GPL has become somewhat obsolete because of this causing it create to completely nonsensical scenarios. For instance I can't comply with the GPL and add vanilla Stockfish (the currently strongest chess engine, licensed under GPL) to a chess app released on the Apple store, yet somebody can slightly modify the engine, keep all those modifications proprietary, and sell access to the engine on the same Ap…

Some courts [which?] have read things into open source licenses that aren't actually there, usually on the side of the user because that's obviously what the people who wrote the licenses intended. It's not impossible that GPL could force Amazon to give out their software.

[deleted]

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

#618

Post by dijit »

jph00 wrote: post #489
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…

There's always someone making this claim when negative comments about AWS come up. They almost always come from people that don't have experience running substantive infra at scale without AWS, so they can't make an informed comparison. The complexity of doing so, for a lot of infra, turns out to be lower than using AWS. Also, you end up with transferable skills and a deeper understanding of the foundational protocol…

Fully agreed.

It's super difficult on a psuedo-anonymous forum to discern if a comment comes from a neutral place or a heavily biased one.

This is made even worse when there's a financial or reputational incentive for people to parrot something. If I had invested the bulk of my professional career in Microsoft: I would be genuinely uncomfortable with criticism. I would subconsciously feel threatened and would work to convince myself and others that it's not so bad, or that criticisms are overblown.

This is even more true if the company actively spends (your companies) money to make you feel good. You neither feel the actual pinch of the financials and you feel good about the company.

It's really clever, and we're emotional animals: so we don't always make the most pragmatic choices.

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

#619

Post by hazmazlaz »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #575
AJRF wrote: post #572

AWS / GCP / Azure aren't for individuals or small businesses. They won't tell you this anywhere, and they won't stop you from signing up - but they simply do not care one iota about users with anything less than $100k billing per month. They treat big account owners like kings, they fly them out to Formula 1 events, they get 3 day workshops in swanky retreats, because a few k spent on this equals maybe millions of do…

All good points. What do you recommend for the "small potatoes"?

I built a small project on Cloudflare and it just works. I've had only one issue where I ended up contacting support and they were very prompt in addressing it.

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

#620

Post by dabinat »

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…

AWS isn’t the best fit for everyone. But sometimes you don’t realize that until later down the line (or your business or the industry changes), at which point you’re locked in due to the many customer-hostile tactics they use to lock you in, such as high egress fees.
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