I feel this is a very scary trend starting. I have not come across a single founder in the last 5-6 years who does not start with AWS credits or is not craving for them.
AWS is a monopoly and they use their cash to buy early customers. Initially it was Amazon's money, but now AWS has enough cash of their own to push whatever they wish to. The same goes for Google and Microsoft.
AWS directly building up the software side of what started out as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is only going to hurt software vendors. We can only expect new software players or ones with low capital to restrict their licenses even more.
Open source licenses are not only for ideological freedom, but very necessary for companies (end users) to integrate and modify products on their own. We will migrate more toward source-available licenses instead since big giants are going to corner the small companies.
Complaining about AWS building off open source software when you did too seems a bit awkward. I'd be willing to bet AWS has spent at least as many person-hours developing their service as has been put into ES itself.
I don't really know where I fall on this subject. Companies need a route to monetize when developing open source products. It feels like AWS has been closing many ways to do that. Short term it might feel good for us end users, but long term it's probably bad for the ecosystem.
AWS makes me wonder what the future of open source infrastructure will look like. I'm sure they contribute back at least a little but providers have little reason to contribute back the distributed/scale modifications they make. They can take any project with a friendly license and essentially siphon away its future user base by turning it into a service. It's basically what a lot of open core companies do but it's different since those companies are usually the creators/maintainers so they have a vested interest in preserving and maintaining it.
I'm probably over thinking it but big bang announcements of multiple products does make me wonder.
I would have no problem with AWS were their shit open source. Starting from all the ugly Perl, that holds whatever obscure nefarious systems in perpetual black magic motion.
But they take the successful open source thing, skin it, provide something similar with the same API, and that's it.
This contributes back nothing to the community. It actively distorts the cashflows. (Because instead of hiring someone to set up a let's say ES cluster, or buy it from elastic co. they buy it from AWS.)
AWS is the actual villain here. They are the one abusing open source work while giving nothing in return.
We can all keep blabbering that it's not open source anymore, and blah blah, but the reality is that development of such systems is incredibly time consuming, and costs real money. Providing hosted solutions and offering some sirt of consultancy are the only 2 realistic income streams for the people who actually have built 99% of that.
Companies like Amazon destroy this because of their greed.
Can you give an example of where they are just selling open source packages without any infrastructure behind them? The selling point of aws is the infrastructure they provide.
Nice to see someone flipping the script and encroaching on AWS' territory rather than vice a versa
Taking the have-a-much-better-product route to siphoning use from AWS is particularly ambitious. I hope it works out. AWS has had it a little too easy for too long
Parent comment said most devs use open source technologies. That is, when given the option, most devs will choose open source technologies where possible.
As such, offering licensed, closed-source products to devs is a bit of a waste. People want to pay for hosted/managed versions of open source products they’re already using, not extra for licences. This is one area I’d say AWS has the advantage.
Can I ask: why do people chose to waste their very precious time writing software to deal with EBS failures (and other AWS deficiencies) instead of just not using AWS?
The world is full of wonderful alternatives like SoftLayer, for example (no affiliation). We've been running a very high traffic system there with individual box uptimes of 700 days before we had to reboot them during scheduled OS upgrade/maintenance.
The "AWS scaling stories" I hear at dev. meetups make absolutely no sense. People, AWS original sales pitch was to take care of scaling for you, not the other way around.
The developers obsession with AWS amazes me. It's like paying for a BMW and being proud of carrying around a self-made toolbox in case of an engine failure in the middle of nowhere, and everyone is proud to "know someone inside Amazon". Since when establishing a personal relationship with a car mechanic is seen as "cool"? Why not just pick a quality brand?
AWS benefits heavily from a rich foss ecosystem, but foss systems also makes it easier for users to migrate to similar platforms. If they were to disrupt the foss ecosystem enough, do we enter a world of heavy reliance on proprietary cloud-based systems?
If you were intending to create a profitable business, and really wanted your product to be foss, and Amazon might just fork your project, honestly, what are your options? I'm honestly curious, it seems like such a difficult situation
I'm curious, is there an intersection of people who make significant use of AWS who purport to support the open source movement? If so, how do you reconcile centralizing so much of your business/personal data and technology influence behind such a proprietary platform?
This is a middle finger to open source the business model.
This is a thumb up for open source the development model.
IMHO I will be more worried that a good piece of open source software is only commercialized by one company, by all accounts, that leaves a lot of risks unaddressed.
Lastly, to anyone claim that this hurts their feeling, I cannot help feel very surprised that one with some ideas of the business cycle and Amazon's (or any big corporations) track record, would not anticipate this. Personally, I am surprised that AWS have not started this in 2014, I guess they have been so successful that they probably cannot hire fast enough to get started.
This feels like a spin? Isn't AWS biting hand that feeds them? They need a win-win strategy for open source devs. It's hard enough to compete with their version of your service (spark, kafka) without them forking your project. what's next, are they going to fork spark and kafka?
The whole open source model is scratching each others back but your own just a little bit more. But you make it sound as if aws was hypocritical for contributing and at the same time making money with it. Well ehh, isn't that the whole deal?
Matt Asay
@mjasay
·
Tim, I run the open source strategy and marketing team at AWS. I hadn't been aware of this but am looking into it. (Regardless of anything we may have done, thank you for what you clearly have done with your project)
Standard Disclaimer: I’m a consultant at AWS. Opinions are my own.
Forget about open source. AWS is eating the lunch of venture backed pure software (and hardware!) businesses everywhere. Go to re:Invent and look at what they release in terms of MVPs. Each product release that they present could be a huge headline for Sequoia, a16z, etc on TechCrunch 5 years ago. For example, in 2018 we had:
Ground Station
Robo Maker
DeepRacer
Bunch of storage features (many could be standalone startups)
Bunch of IoT stuff (same -- SiteWise, ThingsGraph, etc.)
Many launched with real customers, too.
It is NOT EASY to bring a software MVP to market and AWS does it massively, across many efforts, in parallel, EVERY SINGLE YEAR.
Being a developer right now and complaining about AWS cannibalizing open source is a lot like running a late 1400s monastery and complaining about how Gutenberg Bibles are displacing hand-written Bibles.
AWS is a monopoly and they use their cash to buy early customers. Initially it was Amazon's money, but now AWS has enough cash of their own to push whatever they wish to. The same goes for Google and Microsoft.
AWS directly building up the software side of what started out as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is only going to hurt software vendors. We can only expect new software players or ones with low capital to restrict their licenses even more.
Open source licenses are not only for ideological freedom, but very necessary for companies (end users) to integrate and modify products on their own. We will migrate more toward source-available licenses instead since big giants are going to corner the small companies.
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