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AWS gives open source the middle finger?

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Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#71

Post by robbyt »

bradrydzewski wrote: post #44

mongodb announced the Server Side Public License change less than 12 weeks ago. When you account for end of year and holidays, building a new product line and rolling it out in such a short period of time seems unlikely. I would guess this has been in the works for a while (although admittedly I could be overestimating engineering effort and underestimating amazon engineering talent).

Lawyers move slower than software engineers. There could have been years of exchanges between the company prior to this.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#72

Post by maximilianburke »

bradrydzewski wrote: post #44

mongodb announced the Server Side Public License change less than 12 weeks ago. When you account for end of year and holidays, building a new product line and rolling it out in such a short period of time seems unlikely. I would guess this has been in the works for a while (although admittedly I could be overestimating engineering effort and underestimating amazon engineering talent).

MongoDB could have been having conversations with Amazon prior, trying to negotiate a licensing agreement. These negotiations take a lot of time at corporations, I could easily see someone saying "hey, MongoDB's starting to squeeze us, let's get some people working on Plan B before they cut us off".

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#73

Post by plandis »

ilovecaching wrote: post #31

> "To be fair, AWS has become more active in open source lately" What are they referring to? From my perspective, Amazon rarely open sources their work. It's one of the reasons I would never want to work at Amazon. It's very clear they have no love for technology outside of making a business out of it.

https://amzn.github.io has all of the various open source projects Amazon has created

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#74

Post by athrun »

bradrydzewski wrote: post #44

mongodb announced the Server Side Public License change less than 12 weeks ago. When you account for end of year and holidays, building a new product line and rolling it out in such a short period of time seems unlikely. I would guess this has been in the works for a while (although admittedly I could be overestimating engineering effort and underestimating amazon engineering talent).

Difficult to know for sure, but it's probable that MongoDB made Amazon aware that they would introduce such a licensing change, in a bid to put pressure on AWS and get them to contract with MongoDB.

It didn't work.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#75

Post by cryptonector »

int_19h wrote: post #29

Amazon was using MongoDB without paying for it. MongoDB found that objectionable, and changed the license such that Amazon would either have to pay, or stop using it. Amazon stopped using it, and started using its own in-house implementation instead (presumably because it was cheaper to develop it than to pay MongoDB). So, MongoDB got exactly what they asked for. It's just that, when they forced Amazon to make a choi…

It might not have been cheaper to make their own version than to pay MongoDB, but it might still have been worth it to Amazon in that case for a variety of reasons.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#76

Post by pritambaral »

nemothekid wrote: post #24

> However, developers are technically savvy enough to distinguish between the real thing and a poor imitation. MongoDB will continue to outperform any impersonations in the market This feels like a MongoDB sponsored post. How badly would you have to fuck up to be considered a poor imitation of MongoDB? In any case I don't see how having their own hosted version of MongoDB is a middle finger to open source, but Aurora…

> In any case I don't see how having their own hosted version of MongoDB is a middle finger to open source

Especially when MongoDB is itself no-longer open source.

In fact, AWS is providing a service compatible with MongoDB 3.6, which is open source. In a way, AWS "forked" MongoDB 3.6 after the creator of MongoDB made the software proprietary. Isn't that what Open Source is supposed to provide?

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#77

Post by flukus »

Pfhreak wrote: post #3

I left AWS after six years of working there wholly because of their restrictive policies about developing software in your spare time -- especially if you were thinking about working on a game. I recognize this article is about a product offering of AWS, and not their internal policies towards contributing to open source, but the two are linked in my mind and I'm not all surprised to see a headline like this.

> especially if you were thinking about working on a game

Why games especially? That seems to be the one area the would be absolutely free of any conflict of interest with amazon.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#78

Post by cryptonector »

spectre256 wrote: post #10
Pfhreak wrote: post #3

I left AWS after six years of working there wholly because of their restrictive policies about developing software in your spare time -- especially if you were thinking about working on a game. I recognize this article is about a product offering of AWS, and not their internal policies towards contributing to open source, but the two are linked in my mind and I'm not all surprised to see a headline like this.

I "accidentally" worked at amazon for a few weeks when a company I had just joined was acquired by them. I knew it was time to start looking when I was informed that I had to get prior permission to do ANY open source contributions even on my own hardware on my own time. That's just not feasible logistically and above and beyond the general "don't write open source that competes with us or on our our time/hardware wi…

If the approvals issue in all cases where the project clearly is unrelated to the employer's business, then what's the problem? To some degree review of external work is just the sort of thing a corporate legal department is going to push for, and it's not exactly unreasonable provided that approvals issue except where there is clearly a conflict.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#79

Post by pritambaral »

threeseed wrote: post #60
exabrial wrote: post #53

It's mongodb though... It's well documented at this point you shouldn't be using mongo on anything that matters

And yet many of us are using it in Production. Including companies like Adobe, eBay, Expedia, Sony etc.

The fact that some are okay with and would use an unreliable tool is not inconsistent with the fact that it is documented that the tool is unreliable. Popularity among users has little to do with the tool being reliable, and this particular one is already popular for being unreliable.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#80

Post by dcreemer »

nemothekid wrote: post #24

> However, developers are technically savvy enough to distinguish between the real thing and a poor imitation. MongoDB will continue to outperform any impersonations in the market This feels like a MongoDB sponsored post. How badly would you have to fuck up to be considered a poor imitation of MongoDB? In any case I don't see how having their own hosted version of MongoDB is a middle finger to open source, but Aurora…

> How badly would you have to fuck up to be considered a poor imitation of MongoDB?

I literally laughed out loud at this. Thanks for the humor.

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