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I haven't used many of the new AWS services. Someone tell me, what's the quality level? I'll be surprised if all the new AWS stuff works that well given how div

I haven't used many of the new AWS services. Someone tell me, what's the quality level? I'll be surprised if all the new AWS stuff works that well given how divided their focus must be now.

ranman 10y ago
(I WORK FOR AWS) Each service has it's own dedicated service team. I've used some (not all) of the new services and I believe there is room to improve but I didn't think they were unstable or anything like that.
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  I know there's no obligation to invest in services that don't make money, so please don't take this as some kind of expectation of that. A dedicated team doesn't always mean there's an equal distribution of quality and innovation. You can have a dedicated team that's so small they only have time to do bug fixes or a team with less talent/experience because everyone wants to move to teams working on the projects with the most organizational momentum.
  - ranman 10y ago
    TBH I think you have a point there: the hot new thing is serverless and lambda so everyone I know really wants to work on those teams. I see where you're coming from for sure. There are still a lot of talented and passionate people at Amazon who want to execute on other products. The S3 team is still growing 10 years later and they're still doing (IMO) cool stuff. I'm a devangelist though so I don't always get to see the inside of every team (not enough time). I do know that we all drink the customer focused kool-aide and we genuinely believe in it. Sorry if this all sounds like marketing.
    - brazzledazzle 10y ago
      It doesn't sound like marketing to me and I appreciate your response. You could have just as easily ignored my comment.
jjoonathan 10y ago
You say that like their quality doesn't suffer today because of how divided their focus has been in the past :) AWS's crustiness is exactly what I would expect from an agglomeration of adversarial teams each looking to minimize their own liability at the expense of everyone else. Given that they're still organized that way, the surprise would be if they turned the trend around, not if it continued.
- msane 10y ago
  Ive been pretty impressed by the latest AWS services. There are a ton of them though. I wouldnt expect anything different from a system designed to accomodate arbitry infrastructure. I'm considering deploying to Lightsail next, which looks like refreshing simplicity for smaller projects.
  - cg67 10y ago
    If you're considering LightSail check out Digital Ocean. They've been offering this style of service longer and offer better performance per dollar.
    - msane 10y ago
      Thanks
joseph 10y ago
It depends, but the quality is often MVP level. Some new services are introduced but then virtually abandoned or developed at a snail's pace (Service Catalog, ECS). Sometimes I wish they'd spend more time making the core awesome instead of constantly introducing new services.
- sharpy 10y ago
  Having worked at AWS for a number of years, I had difficulty keeping track of all the new features/services when I was there. If I were still there, I would have given up :-) But I do think that overall, it's better for both the customers and the company. As to some concerns about diluted focus, service teams operate with great deal of autonomy. From what I have seen, features are driven by teams, and often as a result of conversations with customers.
brazzledazzle 10y ago
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.
- deegles 10y ago
  If I were developing a new project I'd probably go with an AGPL style license. It just seems appropriate for anything that could be hosted. Not sure what the downsides are.
  - abraae 10y ago
    If your software was AGPL, we wouldn't use it, and hence wouldn't contribute patches. Plenty of other companies would be the same. That might or might not be a downside to you.
    - saurik 10y ago
      As someone who writes AGPL software, I will say to most of us it isn't a downside: I would conceptialize that scenario as "your loss" and hope that my work helps give companies who are more friendly to the idea of community software at least a little bit of a competitive advantage over your company. In all seriousness: if you are intending to not contribute changes back (which is the only legitimate reason to avoid GPL variants: because you want to use someone else's work while hoarding your own), your gracious "using" of my software has absolutely no value to me...
      - abraae 10y ago
        Totally agree that it is indeed "our loss". No argument there. I don't want to appear a kook, so I won't relitigate what I said in another reply. But essentially we do want to give back. We just aren't always able to give back everything (at least not right now). AGPL, like GPL, is all or nothing in that way. I don't get the option of giving back something, then giving back more later (OSS is threatening to some people - I have frequent discussion at work re why we give anything at all back). Your software, your rules. You have every right to take this all or nothing position! More power to you. But assuming that anyone that doesn't like AGPL does so because they "want to use someone else's work while hoarding [their] own" is, respectfully, a simplistic and stereotyped point of view.
nissimk 10y ago
Part of it is the cereal business model. You introduce more flavors not because they are going to sell well or to increase volume, but just to take shelf space at the supermarket away from your competitors. In this case the shelf space is mindshare, media coverage and "feature coverage" in researcher's market comparisons.
- ec109685 10y ago
  If your new cereal favor doesn't increase sales, wouldn't the supermarket find a brand that does? Otherwise, the super market isn't optimizing shelf space.

I haven't used many of the new AWS services. Someone tell me, what's the quality level? I'll be surprised if all the new AWS stuff works that well given how divided their focus must be now.

ranman 10y ago

(I WORK FOR AWS) Each service has it's own dedicated service team. I've used some (not all) of the new services and I believe there is room to improve but I didn't think they were unstable or anything like that.

brazzledazzle 10y ago
I know there's no obligation to invest in services that don't make money, so please don't take this as some kind of expectation of that. A dedicated team doesn't always mean there's an equal distribution of quality and innovation. You can have a dedicated team that's so small they only have time to do bug fixes or a team with less talent/experience because everyone wants to move to teams working on the projects with the most organizational momentum.
- ranman 10y ago
  TBH I think you have a point there: the hot new thing is serverless and lambda so everyone I know really wants to work on those teams. I see where you're coming from for sure. There are still a lot of talented and passionate people at Amazon who want to execute on other products. The S3 team is still growing 10 years later and they're still doing (IMO) cool stuff. I'm a devangelist though so I don't always get to see the inside of every team (not enough time). I do know that we all drink the customer focused kool-aide and we genuinely believe in it. Sorry if this all sounds like marketing.
  - brazzledazzle 10y ago
    It doesn't sound like marketing to me and I appreciate your response. You could have just as easily ignored my comment.

jjoonathan 10y ago

You say that like their quality doesn't suffer today because of how divided their focus has been in the past :) AWS's crustiness is exactly what I would expect from an agglomeration of adversarial teams each looking to minimize their own liability at the expense of everyone else. Given that they're still organized that way, the surprise would be if they turned the trend around, not if it continued.

msane 10y ago
Ive been pretty impressed by the latest AWS services. There are a ton of them though. I wouldnt expect anything different from a system designed to accomodate arbitry infrastructure. I'm considering deploying to Lightsail next, which looks like refreshing simplicity for smaller projects.
- cg67 10y ago
  If you're considering LightSail check out Digital Ocean. They've been offering this style of service longer and offer better performance per dollar.
  - msane 10y ago
    Thanks

joseph 10y ago

It depends, but the quality is often MVP level. Some new services are introduced but then virtually abandoned or developed at a snail's pace (Service Catalog, ECS). Sometimes I wish they'd spend more time making the core awesome instead of constantly introducing new services.

sharpy 10y ago
Having worked at AWS for a number of years, I had difficulty keeping track of all the new features/services when I was there. If I were still there, I would have given up :-) But I do think that overall, it's better for both the customers and the company. As to some concerns about diluted focus, service teams operate with great deal of autonomy. From what I have seen, features are driven by teams, and often as a result of conversations with customers.

brazzledazzle 10y ago

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.

deegles 10y ago
If I were developing a new project I'd probably go with an AGPL style license. It just seems appropriate for anything that could be hosted. Not sure what the downsides are.
- abraae 10y ago
  If your software was AGPL, we wouldn't use it, and hence wouldn't contribute patches. Plenty of other companies would be the same. That might or might not be a downside to you.
  - saurik 10y ago
    As someone who writes AGPL software, I will say to most of us it isn't a downside: I would conceptialize that scenario as "your loss" and hope that my work helps give companies who are more friendly to the idea of community software at least a little bit of a competitive advantage over your company. In all seriousness: if you are intending to not contribute changes back (which is the only legitimate reason to avoid GPL variants: because you want to use someone else's work while hoarding your own), your gracious "using" of my software has absolutely no value to me...
    - abraae 10y ago
      Totally agree that it is indeed "our loss". No argument there. I don't want to appear a kook, so I won't relitigate what I said in another reply. But essentially we do want to give back. We just aren't always able to give back everything (at least not right now). AGPL, like GPL, is all or nothing in that way. I don't get the option of giving back something, then giving back more later (OSS is threatening to some people - I have frequent discussion at work re why we give anything at all back). Your software, your rules. You have every right to take this all or nothing position! More power to you. But assuming that anyone that doesn't like AGPL does so because they "want to use someone else's work while hoarding [their] own" is, respectfully, a simplistic and stereotyped point of view.

nissimk 10y ago

Part of it is the cereal business model. You introduce more flavors not because they are going to sell well or to increase volume, but just to take shelf space at the supermarket away from your competitors. In this case the shelf space is mindshare, media coverage and "feature coverage" in researcher's market comparisons.

ec109685 10y ago
If your new cereal favor doesn't increase sales, wouldn't the supermarket find a brand that does? Otherwise, the super market isn't optimizing shelf space.