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"I'm sure people will get riled up about this, but it makes sense. Building a business on an OSS database in a world of behemoth cloud providers is really hard.

"I'm sure people will get riled up about this, but it makes sense. Building a business on an OSS database in a world of behemoth cloud providers is really hard. It's clear Google and Amazon (and maybe even Azure) are comfy taking OSS work, doing a ton of proprietary development on it, and leaving the companies who did all the groundwork flailing in the wind. " This is simply not true in any meaningful way. Please cite real data. It's very hard to disagree with handwaving like this. Both Google's official policy (which is super clear about this: https://opensource.google.com/docs/ https://opensource.google.com/docs/), and practice (releasing and working on tens of thousands of open source projects) say otherwise. I would love to see the data that goes with this claim.

wmf 8y ago
It seems like even if the cloud providers contributed 100% of their code back to Mongo it still wouldn't be enough to keep Mongo alive. They need money, not code. That's the subtext to this whole discussion. AGPL was a roundabout way of hinting that cloud providers should kick back some revenue and now that it didn't work the truth can come out.
- sangnoir 8y ago
  > AGPL was a roundabout way of hinting that cloud providers should kick back some revenue and now that it didn't work the truth can come out. How does AGPL force kicking back of revenue? The only way I can think of is if the cloud-provider choose to relicense the software (for a fee), because they can always fulfill the terms of the AGPL by publishing all their changes without paying a dime.
  - wmf 8y ago
    There was an unstated assumption that hosting providers aren't willing to contribute back their secret sauce changes so they would have to buy a commercial license. But that didn't work. I don't know if the new MongoDB license will work either; the Commons "Clause" seems more honest in its wording.
lacker 8y ago
Of course it's true. Google doesn't pay companies that developed open source software that Google now relies on. That's exactly how open source works. Google helps "open source" in general by releasing and funding open source projects. But Google doesn't pay companies that build useful open source software in the first place, to use their software.
- DannyBee 8y ago
  "Google doesn't pay companies that developed open source software that Google now relies on." This is false. Seriously - i'm not sure why people on HN like to offer things as facts that they simply aren't ever going to know about. Google in fact does pay companies that developed open source software that Google relies upon.
mrkurt 8y ago
My belief is: Amazon/Google (and to a lesser extent, Azure) capture a tremendous amount of revenue by coupling known OSS infrastructure with a hosted cloud business. This is because they've been able to extend unrelated monopolies What you're saying is (I think): Google contributes code + projects back to the OSS community and sponsors OSS organizations. I think if we could see the actual numbers — if it were possible to see Google's cloud revenue with associated OSS contributions — we'd see that what they're actually giving "back" is tiny, and it's the equivalent of donating to charities. Since we don't know how many people actually work on OSS at Google, we can maybe use this estimate: https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/960563592683667456 https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/960563592683667456 Assuming Google pays ~$250k salaries to all of those folks to work full time on other peoples' projects, they're spending about $500mm/year on OSS while making ~$2bn/yr on just Google cloud. And that's horribly optimistic, I doubt much of that money is going to projects Google doesn't control. Google's original OSS projects are different, I tend to like them. But given Google's market power the actual effect is to commoditize all the things Google doesn't expect to make money on. Kubernetes is great. Mesosphere is increasingly irrelevant because of it. OSS projects from megacorps tend to have the same effect as price dumping. They can afford to spend more money making something an non-viable business than most companies can spend at all.

wmf 8y ago

It seems like even if the cloud providers contributed 100% of their code back to Mongo it still wouldn't be enough to keep Mongo alive. They need money, not code. That's the subtext to this whole discussion. AGPL was a roundabout way of hinting that cloud providers should kick back some revenue and now that it didn't work the truth can come out.

sangnoir 8y ago
> AGPL was a roundabout way of hinting that cloud providers should kick back some revenue and now that it didn't work the truth can come out. How does AGPL force kicking back of revenue? The only way I can think of is if the cloud-provider choose to relicense the software (for a fee), because they can always fulfill the terms of the AGPL by publishing all their changes without paying a dime.
- wmf 8y ago
  There was an unstated assumption that hosting providers aren't willing to contribute back their secret sauce changes so they would have to buy a commercial license. But that didn't work. I don't know if the new MongoDB license will work either; the Commons "Clause" seems more honest in its wording.

lacker 8y ago

Of course it's true. Google doesn't pay companies that developed open source software that Google now relies on. That's exactly how open source works. Google helps "open source" in general by releasing and funding open source projects. But Google doesn't pay companies that build useful open source software in the first place, to use their software.

DannyBee 8y ago
"Google doesn't pay companies that developed open source software that Google now relies on." This is false. Seriously - i'm not sure why people on HN like to offer things as facts that they simply aren't ever going to know about. Google in fact does pay companies that developed open source software that Google relies upon.

mrkurt 8y ago

My belief is: Amazon/Google (and to a lesser extent, Azure) capture a tremendous amount of revenue by coupling known OSS infrastructure with a hosted cloud business. This is because they've been able to extend unrelated monopolies What you're saying is (I think): Google contributes code + projects back to the OSS community and sponsors OSS organizations. I think if we could see the actual numbers — if it were possible to see Google's cloud revenue with associated OSS contributions — we'd see that what they're actually giving "back" is tiny, and it's the equivalent of donating to charities. Since we don't know how many people actually work on OSS at Google, we can maybe use this estimate: https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/960563592683667456 https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/960563592683667456 Assuming Google pays ~$250k salaries to all of those folks to work full time on other peoples' projects, they're spending about $500mm/year on OSS while making ~$2bn/yr on just Google cloud. And that's horribly optimistic, I doubt much of that money is going to projects Google doesn't control. Google's original OSS projects are different, I tend to like them. But given Google's market power the actual effect is to commoditize all the things Google doesn't expect to make money on. Kubernetes is great. Mesosphere is increasingly irrelevant because of it. OSS projects from megacorps tend to have the same effect as price dumping. They can afford to spend more money making something an non-viable business than most companies can spend at all.