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It seems a lot of Amazon services are managed instances of open source applications. For example, commenters are suggesting this may be based on Janus. Elastic

It seems a lot of Amazon services are managed instances of open source applications. For example, commenters are suggesting this may be based on Janus. Elastic load balancers, at least originally, were likely based on haproxy. Etc etc. Has anyone ever considered the licensing implications of this? How is amazon able to convert an open source product into a proprietary one and then charge for access to it? Of course you can argue they’re charging for the infrastructure management, not the software itself. But that argument quickly breaks down as Amazon introduces new software, under new names, with a proprietary management interface over an open source core. Try to find the source code; you can’t. And if you accept the premise that they’re just charging for hosting, then it leads to the question of why an open source project doesn’t reap any benefits from that hosting, or at the very least, from the management interface on top of it. It seems like a better solution would be something akin to AWS marketplace, where open source projects are available to be hosted, and the maintainers can see some revenue from them. It seems like unfair rent seeking behavior that amazon is able to slap a management interface on open source software and then charge for it under the guise of “hosting.”

eitland 9y ago
> How is amazon able to convert an open source product into a proprietary one and then charge for access to it? Totally no problem with liberal licensed open source software. This is also the intended behaviour of such licenses. Also many of those big bad commercial companies contribute back big time to a number of projects. Why? I guess sometimes because devs want to and also because it makes sense business wise so they don’t have to maintain the code themselves.
- chatmasta 9y ago
  Depends on the license, doesn’t it? I’m not a licensing expert, but my understanding is GPLv2 / copy left licensing means that if you create a derivative product, you need to open source the new code along with the dependencies. Seems like a management interface is a clear cut derivative product. Where’s the source code? Or perhaps amazon does consider licensing and only builds on top of, eg Apache licensed projects?
  - eitland 9y ago
    Actually GPL allows you to keep your source code as long as you don’t ship the software and only allows users to use it over the network. (The full truth is a bit more nuanced.) The newer AGPL closes this loophole. And yes: except for Linux and the GNU tools I guess most companies stick with Apache, BSD, Eclipse and MIT licensed software.
- convolvatron 9y ago
  it seems clearly ok to sell managed services on open source platform x. the question in amazons case is that since they sell the infrastructure, they can and probably do undercut any competing providers by charging themselves less. so, it seems monopolistic. otoh their service is good and their customers get at least reasonable prices. so ... ?
connorelsea 9y ago
Time is money. It takes time to manage servers/infra - services like this let people make the choice between spending their time or their money managing infra. The category of managed infra is huge and goes beyond Amazon
- chatmasta 9y ago
  My question is not about why someone would pay for the service. It’s about where amazon got the right to charge for it without open sourcing their derivative work. To be clear, it’s not the hosting of open source applications I see as the problem, but the closed source management/orchestration software built on top of it.
supergreg 9y ago
Don't free and open source licenses apply only during redistribution of the software? Unless it is licensed with the Affero GPL, just connecting to a service does not require its source code to be available. That is assuming Amazon modifies the software. If they don't, then there's nothing to argue. Are they making money with software they didn't build? Yes, but so are we.
SEJeff 9y ago
Here is a great article on just this. It is commonly known as the "gpl loophole", which RMS is entirely fine with. If you want to prevent this, you license the software the with Affero GPL, which explicitly forbids this. http://radar.oreilly.com/2007/07/the-gpl-and-software-as-a-serv.html http://radar.oreilly.com/2007/07/the-gpl-and-software-as-a-s... Amazon / Google / etc are not redistributing the software as it is running on their servers in their environment, therefor, there is nothing wrong with the existing licenses.

eitland 9y ago

> How is amazon able to convert an open source product into a proprietary one and then charge for access to it? Totally no problem with liberal licensed open source software. This is also the intended behaviour of such licenses. Also many of those big bad commercial companies contribute back big time to a number of projects. Why? I guess sometimes because devs want to and also because it makes sense business wise so they don’t have to maintain the code themselves.

chatmasta 9y ago
Depends on the license, doesn’t it? I’m not a licensing expert, but my understanding is GPLv2 / copy left licensing means that if you create a derivative product, you need to open source the new code along with the dependencies. Seems like a management interface is a clear cut derivative product. Where’s the source code? Or perhaps amazon does consider licensing and only builds on top of, eg Apache licensed projects?
- eitland 9y ago
  Actually GPL allows you to keep your source code as long as you don’t ship the software and only allows users to use it over the network. (The full truth is a bit more nuanced.) The newer AGPL closes this loophole. And yes: except for Linux and the GNU tools I guess most companies stick with Apache, BSD, Eclipse and MIT licensed software.
convolvatron 9y ago
it seems clearly ok to sell managed services on open source platform x. the question in amazons case is that since they sell the infrastructure, they can and probably do undercut any competing providers by charging themselves less. so, it seems monopolistic. otoh their service is good and their customers get at least reasonable prices. so ... ?

connorelsea 9y ago

Time is money. It takes time to manage servers/infra - services like this let people make the choice between spending their time or their money managing infra. The category of managed infra is huge and goes beyond Amazon

chatmasta 9y ago
My question is not about why someone would pay for the service. It’s about where amazon got the right to charge for it without open sourcing their derivative work. To be clear, it’s not the hosting of open source applications I see as the problem, but the closed source management/orchestration software built on top of it.

supergreg 9y ago

Don't free and open source licenses apply only during redistribution of the software? Unless it is licensed with the Affero GPL, just connecting to a service does not require its source code to be available. That is assuming Amazon modifies the software. If they don't, then there's nothing to argue. Are they making money with software they didn't build? Yes, but so are we.

SEJeff 9y ago

Here is a great article on just this. It is commonly known as the "gpl loophole", which RMS is entirely fine with. If you want to prevent this, you license the software the with Affero GPL, which explicitly forbids this. http://radar.oreilly.com/2007/07/the-gpl-and-software-as-a-serv.html http://radar.oreilly.com/2007/07/the-gpl-and-software-as-a-s... Amazon / Google / etc are not redistributing the software as it is running on their servers in their environment, therefor, there is nothing wrong with the existing licenses.