4 ms·
> 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 s
by 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 agoDepends 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 agoActually 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 agoit 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 ... ?