by uji on 1/10/19, 1:49 AM with 282 comments
by int_19h on 1/10/19, 4:17 AM
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 choice, they didn't expect one of the options they gave them to be viable. They were wrong.
I don't see how Amazon is in the wrong here. They are no longer using MongoDB for free, as the authors demanded. They did not reuse any code. They are not advertising their replacement as MongoDB, either.
Is it because of API compatibility? But the notion that one cannot reimplement a public API for the sake of compatibility is in and of itself extremely hostile to the F/OSS ecosystem, given how many products in it are reimplementations of proprietary APIs.
by nemothekid on 1/10/19, 4:10 AM
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 SQL/PostgresQL isn't. Is Cockroach a middle finger Postgres? I don't consider this any more a middle finger than the SSPL.
by Pfhreak on 1/10/19, 3:46 AM
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.
by peterwwillis on 1/10/19, 4:31 AM
"If we put the software in the public domain, somebody else would be able to make a little bit of changes and turn that into a proprietary software package, which means that the users would be running our software, but they wouldn't have freedom to cooperate and share."
"And what we do is, we say, this software is copyrighted and we, the authors give you permission to redistribute copies, we give you permission to change, we give you permission to add to it. But when you redistribute it, it has to be under these terms, no more and no less. So that whoever gets it from you also gets the freedom to cooperate with other people, if he wants to. And then, in this way everywhere the software goes, the freedom goes, too. And it becomes an inalienable right to cooperate with other people and form a community."
Bruce Perens, on the choice of the GPL for Debian:
"Uh, it's one of the few software licenses that was written from the standpoint of the community rather than from the standpoint of um, protecting a company or um, as is the case with MIT and BSD license, performing the goals of a government grant program. Uh, and the GPL is really unique in that. It's not just a license. It's a whole philosophy that, I think, motivated the open source definition."
MongoDB tried to protect its company's profits, and as a result, Amazon [and its users] now have a proprietary product rather than an open source one. Could have gotten free fixes from the biggest lab in the world, but instead they're getting jack squat. And since Amazon's product is proprietary, now users and the community have less freedom.
Linus is asked at the end if he's bothered that he's not cashing out on billions of dollars of use, and he basically doesn't care. He just wanted people to work on the software. If Linux had the same licensing scheme, it may have remained a hobby operating system.
by tobyjsullivan on 1/10/19, 4:41 AM
Making a business choice to not buy licenses from a single for-profit company doesn't really have anything to do with open source in general.
by _cs2017_ on 1/10/19, 4:10 AM
by notyourwork on 1/10/19, 3:47 AM
That's a bold statement to make against AWS services.
by toyg on 1/10/19, 8:45 AM
This scenario is one of the many where (F)OSS explicitly protects downstream users: company reduces availability, user forks. It just so happens that the traditional players (the small, indie user va the big, bad corp) are actually mirrored (big, bad user vs small, indie corp). This has been the ugly reality of OSS for more than a decade now, and there seems to be no way to align the interests of “big users” more closely with upstream. Before the switch last year, MongoDB already used the most “aggressively collectivist” license available, and still it didn’t protect them from rich freeloaders.
This is also the other side of the coin in the Google vs Oracle debate about apis and copyright.
by bradrydzewski on 1/10/19, 4:35 AM
by jgowdy on 1/10/19, 3:23 PM
For someone to release a major software package under an open source license with particular terms, and then to get angry when other people enjoy that software under the terms that YOU specified, is just nonsense. You aren't happy with the way things played out, because you didn't really understand the types of activities that were possible or maybe just didn't think about it.
Look, it's their software and they can re-license it as they see fit. But to vilify AWS for using their open source software legitimately under the terms they licensed it under is offensive. That is giving the middle finger to open source.
How exactly the author of this article can write something that finds fault in the company using software legitimately under an open source license, and not with the company who is re-licensing their software to a non-OSI license? Who is truly giving the middle finger to open source?
by talkingtab on 1/10/19, 4:17 PM
The open source system is great. Many individuals create the content and share it. There has been a great tolerance for companies like Amazon that exploit - not use but exploit - this community. While I don't have enough experience to know if MongoDB's response was a good one, I do think it is time for the community at large to begin a continuing discussion of what to do when large companies like Amazon are bad citizens.
Open source thrives on being ... well open, and it is important to retain that openness within the community.
by benologist on 1/10/19, 3:12 PM
What's really funny about their not-mongodb as a service is they will inevitably roll over any piece of software third parties host on AWS too if they think it makes enough money. Your SaaS is just another project for some team waiting on their next. They have already done that for 10,000s of physical products on Amazon.com that were sold by third party vendors who became redundant via Amazon releasing similar products under their own brands.
by exabrial on 1/10/19, 4:49 AM
by ilovecaching on 1/10/19, 4:21 AM
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.
by crb002 on 1/10/19, 4:27 AM
by hannob on 1/10/19, 8:30 AM
AWS is not giving open source the middle finger. It is giving the middle finger to a project that was once open source and has decided to be no longer open source.
by throw2016 on 1/10/19, 10:24 AM
Because they don't have to focus on development they can divert their resources to marketing, adding the syrup on top to 'ease use' and ride the hype wave while the original developers are dismissed as 'technical' folks who do not understand marketing when the fact is they do not have time left over from development, or the resources.
It's perfectly legitimate to expect to sustain yourself while building open source products and projects. Unfortunately we are flooded with one sided superficial perspectives and short term narratives that look at open source projects as if its a crime to expect to make some money while not even examining slightly the parasitic models of cloud providers and others who in effect hijack open source projects with marketing.
The end game is few can compete with the resources, reach and engineering of behemoths like AWS, Azure, GCP and others. And at the customer end the cloud is unavoidable and thus will only see increased adoption. This is not only going to affect open source but dismantle entire groups of software and hardware ecosystems.
The only way forward seems open source projects that leverage these cloud platforms to provide some additional functionality, but these projects will be intimately tied to these platforms and not 'open' as we understand the term.
by justinjlynn on 1/10/19, 9:27 AM
snerk Well, if it doesn't lose your data or have broken replication protocols for years, then it'd be a poor imitation, so I'll give the CEO that one.
by callumjones on 1/10/19, 5:37 AM
by cperciva on 1/10/19, 3:53 AM
by cobbzilla on 1/10/19, 1:54 PM
by bwb on 1/10/19, 4:42 AM
by cmmartin on 1/10/19, 7:07 PM
Also, it's not like Amazon is not giving back to the open source community (https://aws.amazon.com/opensource/)
by Lazare on 1/10/19, 4:33 AM
by holografix on 1/10/19, 9:20 AM
If you're a small open source company with a services business model, how do you stop someone like AWS forking your code, making a few changes they don't share with you and basically becoming the de-facto supplier of maintenance and services for your tech?
by SergeAx on 1/10/19, 9:31 AM
by Sir_Cmpwn on 1/10/19, 3:44 PM
Is there any evidence for this? I assumed they forked the last Apache 2.0 version of Mongo.
by socrateslee on 1/10/19, 6:30 AM
by VvR-Ox on 1/10/19, 8:37 AM
It's not just Open Source who will get nasty signs from amazon. They already have too much power for one company and the more power they'll have the less they have to abide by rules normal companies/humans have to abide by.
by perseusprime11 on 1/10/19, 5:31 PM
by techslave on 1/10/19, 3:46 AM
by kerng on 1/10/19, 4:56 AM
by fogetti on 1/10/19, 4:08 AM