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AWS gives open source the middle finger?

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Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#91

Post by eclipxe »

Pfhreak wrote: post #17
notyourwork wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please name one, they all have the same non-compete language in their job offers and they are at-will positions. It may be allowed by your manager but company policy isn't such.

Other companies have exemption policies, or mechanisms to get approvals. Amazon does not. Your choices were work privately on your own project or leave (or risk being fired for violating the policy.) Amazon was more aggressive (in my opinion) and much stricter than any other company I've ever worked at. Edit: I researched a lot of the other tech companies. Here's Google's documentation, for example, which outlines an…

Amazon has an exemption policy.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#92

Post by threeseed »

pritambaral wrote: post #79
threeseed wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What you are saying doesn't really make any sense.

A systemically unreliable database would never be popular as its not a piece of your architecture that you can tolerate having constant outages with. And there is no evidence of MongoDB being systemically unreliable.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#93

Post by donavanm »

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…

Amazon was using MongoDB without paying for it.

Do you have a citation for that? AGPL is usually not considered business friendly or a corporate "allowed by default" license, even for internal use.

Contrary to the headline and articles inference I havent seen any indication that MongoDB source or IP is or was actually being used. As you note this all comes down to API compatibility and tangled notions of "proprietary" slash copyright.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#95

Post by ipsum2 »

notyourwork wrote: post #13
ipsum2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most big tech companies that I'm familiar with allow you to program on your free time, as long as you give them a heads up and it doesn't conflict with the company's products. E.g. working on a video game or contributing to open source.

Please name one, they all have the same non-compete language in their job offers and they are at-will positions. It may be allowed by your manager but company policy isn't such.

Off the top of my head, there's company policies for employees to work on their own projects at Google, Facebook, and Github.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#96

Post by MereInterest »

skybrian wrote: post #51
MereInterest wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is entirely possible, but not at all a problem. If something is being done in secret, so that the employee doesn't know that the other division is working on it, then there are no trade secrets that would be divulged by working on something similar. That companies require you to get approval to work on something on your own time is fundamentally absurd. If I were a carpenter, I would not need permission to make…

People outside a company will not believe that employees of the company keep secrets from each other, at least when it suits them to believe otherwise. So like it or not, if it looks like there're a conflict of interest (even if there isn't), people will blame it on the company. So I don't really think it's so bad that they want to know what you're working on, provided that approval is usually granted.

Asking for approval, even if that approval is typically granted, still implies that they have the authority to refuse permission. The farthest that the employer's moral authority extends is to ask politely to be informed. Not to require to be informed, and certainly not to require approval.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#97

Post by whazor »

cryptonector wrote: post #75
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.

My guess on these reasons is that Amazon wanted to integrate MongoDB with their own proprietary algorithms, storage, infrastructure, and/or other solutions they already created. In my experience, databases (even with different structures) use a lot of similar components like transactions, caching, I/O pages, concurrency etcetera. If they rewrite the whole project, they could potentially use many parts that they already used in different projects.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#99

Post by jhanschoo »

denisvlr wrote: post #30
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…

It’s clearly presented as a quote from mongoDB’s CEO.

The quote tickles me because in earlier days MongoDB's choice of defaults gave it a reputation as a poor imitation of a reliable document store.

Re: AWS gives open source the middle finger?

#100

Post by macintux »

threeseed wrote: post #92
pritambaral wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What you are saying doesn't really make any sense. A systemically unreliable database would never be popular as its not a piece of your architecture that you can tolerate having constant outages with. And there is no evidence of MongoDB being systemically unreliable.

There are use cases where losing data is an acceptable tradeoff, particularly if the database is not the system of record.
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