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I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

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671–680 of 684 posts

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

#671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should someone use? Selfhost? Cheap VPS? Genuinely curious to hear your thoughts.

Same thing we did before aws was invented... cloud is just a managed server half the time, not really anything new. And what kind of IT professional is daunted by bread and butter shit like running a server? That's like an accountant that outsources the accounting to someone else cos "it's too complex"

> And what kind of IT professional is daunted by bread and butter shit like running a server?

You’re serious and not acting in jest? Because people focus on their core competencies. Self hosting server infrastructure, or even self-administration via VPS or whatever, is orthogonal to the service being delivered to users.

Calling it “bread and butter” is some form of irony as those jobs are mostly gone now, it’s a data center monkeys job that maintains 10,000 servers across countless unknown clients.

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

#672
I have no idea why people dont use GCP more. Its made by and for devs unlike the hideous complexity and stupid UI in every layer of AWS.

AWS has much bigger mindshare, thats it. Google has a well deserved reputation killing products, but their actual products/APIs are so much nicer.

Haven't used Azure but I bet its much better integrated as well.

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

#673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing we did before aws was invented... cloud is just a managed server half the time, not really anything new. And what kind of IT professional is daunted by bread and butter shit like running a server? That's like an accountant that outsources the accounting to someone else cos "it's too complex"

> And what kind of IT professional is daunted by bread and butter shit like running a server? You’re serious and not acting in jest? Because people focus on their core competencies. Self hosting server infrastructure, or even self-administration via VPS or whatever, is orthogonal to the service being delivered to users. Calling it “bread and butter” is some form of irony as those jobs are mostly gone now, it’s a data…

> is orthogonal to the service being delivered to users.

Not if they need a server. I think you might be imagining this from an MSP perspective.

> Because people focus on their core competencies

The IT department handles the computers, it's always been that way. There is no group more competent at it than the IT guys.

> those jobs are mostly gone now, it’s a data center monkeys job

Onprem is still very much a thing, especially since AWS and VMware became expensive in the last couple of years.

The local/cloud thing is cyclical (started with mainframes, went to the pc, then back to the cloud) and I reckon with the cost of ai tokens the push back to local will be led by people running their own ai farms

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

#674

Anyone considering leaving AWS and thinking they'll transfer all their data for free [1], I've got news for you: It's a lie. AWS takes as long as possible (for me it was a month) to respond to the initial DTO request, then require you to submit a multi-page form answering a barrage of questions about why you're leaving, where you're going to, what services you used, and estimated data egress. A week or so later, if t…

> A week or so later, if they approve the request, you're not allowed to begin DTO until 60 days after the approval. Do you have proof of this? That is not disclosed in their policy.

I know it's not disclosed. That's why I left this as a warning to others. I can show screenshots of the conversations with AWS support?

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

#675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A week or so later, if they approve the request, you're not allowed to begin DTO until 60 days after the approval. Do you have proof of this? That is not disclosed in their policy.

I know it's not disclosed. That's why I left this as a warning to others. I can show screenshots of the conversations with AWS support?

I’d love to see them if you’ve got them. So would some lawyers, I think.

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

#676
post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a field of strawberries, and I put up a sign, "free to pick by yourself, or pay 10$ for a pre-picked basket". Then Amazon comes in, starts sending their workers to pick my strawberries, and sell them for 5$ a basket. Was I then lying when I advertised the strawberries as free in my original sign, if I now want to change it to stop them from doing that?

I'm sorry, but "or pay $10 for a pre-picked basket" is not an open source product, because "free to pick" was the other option for an open source product. "free to pick by yourself" is the equivalent a proprietary freeware product, not an open-source product, because it excludes the idea of others picking strawberries. If that's your thing then by all means license it as such. But call it proprietary rather than open…

You're really torturing the analogy in a way that isn't comprehensible at all.

But if your point is that "open source" is a bad license that most people who use it come to regret later, then yes, I agree, and they probably shouldn't have advertised as open source from the beginning.

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

#677
post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Now that makes sense, so its legal because the contributors can still access their code

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

#678
post #13

> AWS stomped on open source projects - despite the clear desire of projects like Elasticsearch, Redis, and MongoDB not to be cloned and monetized, AWS pushed ahead with OpenSearch, Valkey, and DocumentDB anyway, capturing the hosted-service money after those communities and companies had built the markets; the result was a wave of defensive licenses like SSPL, Elastic License, RSAL, and other source-available models…

While I'm a big fan of open source, I don't understand what the alternative is for this dilemma...

Is it supposed to be illegal for me to create my own homegrown database with the same API as MongoDB? If not, then when people start using it, can I offer a hosting solution?

I feel like that should be allowed. It's just not always a happy outcome for everyone...

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

#679
post #168
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you deal with the few minutes of downtime when you do kernel/OS/software upgrades?

How is this an issue in a world where load balancers exist? I was part of a Unicorn that ran prod on 8 boxes and literally never had customer facing outages due to infrastructure updates.

What was the most stressful part of that job?

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

#680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to be different when AWS started properly 20 years ago with S3 and EC2. But yes they went from catering to startups to SMBs to enterprise. Unfortunately a lot of developers still believe the AWS / GCP / Azure propaganda (tech evangelism, cloud advocacy, or whatever else you're calling it). Nowadays you shouldn't use them at all when starting up.

What should someone use? Selfhost? Cheap VPS? Genuinely curious to hear your thoughts.

Smaller, cheaper providers like OVH or Hetzner.
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