5 ms·

Yeah - damn these businesses for using open source rather than building common tools from scratch. Cleary they are just as bad as a company with about a trillio

Yeah - damn these businesses for using open source rather than building common tools from scratch. Cleary they are just as bad as a company with about a trillion dollar market cap that deliberately cannibalizes fledgling companies once said companies have bled themselves dry exploring a new market. When will the corporate shilling on HN end?

paulddraper 7y ago
Damn these businesses for trying to profit from others' open source, and then condemning the other businesses that do the same to them. The only difference -- as you pointed out -- is size. "Might makes right" is just as untrue as its opposite.
meowface 7y ago
Mongo and Elastic would probably continue doing the same thing if they became Amazon's size. If something is unethical in the business world, it should be unethical regardless of your company's size. Although I don't personally find the integration of open source software into a commercial project to be unethical, if the license is adhered to.
- blazespin 7y ago
  This is not how anti trust works. The idea is that once you gain certain monopolistic powers you have to play by different rules.
  - tguedes 7y ago
    How exactly is Amazon a monopoly though?
    - Jommi 7y ago
      It's "monopolistic" not monopoly. There is a huge difference.
automated_toast 7y ago
Fledgling? Since when is a $5B company a 'fledgling'?
ctvo 7y ago
Your moral position is based on market capitalization? The core piece of ElasticSearch's technology is Lucene, an open soure project. Elastic the company uses this open source work to become a 5 billion dollar company. The core piece of AWS's ES service is ElasticSearch, an open source project. Amazon the company uses this open source work to further enrich themselves. Amazon is bad because they're a 1 trillion dollar company. Elastic is OK because they're a 5 billion dollar company.
- blazespin 7y ago
  Yes, the whole argument is based on anti trust. Did you not read the article?
  - majewsky 7y ago
    Please don't insinuate that someone has not read the submitted article. You could rephrase this, for example, like this: > Yes, the whole argument is based on anti trust, as the article explains.
- mgoetzke 7y ago
  I get where you are coming from, but Lucene is a building block, a library and cannot be immediately used as a valuable service. ES can be used by quite high level developers to implement scalable solutions. Building blocks and libraries offering convenience are not as valuable on its own than solutions that offer some quite immediate value at a reasonably high level. Even if from an abstract view both still require developers as users the applicability is quite different. Amazon cannot 'host' lucene as a service per se. Services vs Libraries
  - geezerjay 7y ago
    > I get where you are coming from, but Lucene is a building block, a library and cannot be immediately used as a valuable service. ES can be used by quite high level developers to implement scalable solutions. Your argument makes no sense. Even if we accept the thesis that building block components are up for grabs because they cannot be immediately used as valuable services... Well, neither can services. You need to design a system architecture, figure out how and if a component plays a role, pick a component, config the component, setup a deployment ans scaling strategy, config and integrate metrics and health checks, ingest data, monitor the service, etc etc etc. And if we actually want to make an objective comparison between libraries and services... Well, in the end they are all components of a larger system. So, obviously there is no objective distinction. There's only intellectual property and companies being hypocrite wanting to have their cake and eating it too. They can't get it both ways.

paulddraper 7y ago

Damn these businesses for trying to profit from others' open source, and then condemning the other businesses that do the same to them. The only difference -- as you pointed out -- is size. "Might makes right" is just as untrue as its opposite.

meowface 7y ago

Mongo and Elastic would probably continue doing the same thing if they became Amazon's size. If something is unethical in the business world, it should be unethical regardless of your company's size. Although I don't personally find the integration of open source software into a commercial project to be unethical, if the license is adhered to.

blazespin 7y ago
This is not how anti trust works. The idea is that once you gain certain monopolistic powers you have to play by different rules.
- tguedes 7y ago
  How exactly is Amazon a monopoly though?
  - Jommi 7y ago
    It's "monopolistic" not monopoly. There is a huge difference.

automated_toast 7y ago

Fledgling? Since when is a $5B company a 'fledgling'?

ctvo 7y ago

Your moral position is based on market capitalization? The core piece of ElasticSearch's technology is Lucene, an open soure project. Elastic the company uses this open source work to become a 5 billion dollar company. The core piece of AWS's ES service is ElasticSearch, an open source project. Amazon the company uses this open source work to further enrich themselves. Amazon is bad because they're a 1 trillion dollar company. Elastic is OK because they're a 5 billion dollar company.

blazespin 7y ago
Yes, the whole argument is based on anti trust. Did you not read the article?
- majewsky 7y ago
  Please don't insinuate that someone has not read the submitted article. You could rephrase this, for example, like this: > Yes, the whole argument is based on anti trust, as the article explains.
mgoetzke 7y ago
I get where you are coming from, but Lucene is a building block, a library and cannot be immediately used as a valuable service. ES can be used by quite high level developers to implement scalable solutions. Building blocks and libraries offering convenience are not as valuable on its own than solutions that offer some quite immediate value at a reasonably high level. Even if from an abstract view both still require developers as users the applicability is quite different. Amazon cannot 'host' lucene as a service per se. Services vs Libraries
- geezerjay 7y ago
  > I get where you are coming from, but Lucene is a building block, a library and cannot be immediately used as a valuable service. ES can be used by quite high level developers to implement scalable solutions. Your argument makes no sense. Even if we accept the thesis that building block components are up for grabs because they cannot be immediately used as valuable services... Well, neither can services. You need to design a system architecture, figure out how and if a component plays a role, pick a component, config the component, setup a deployment ans scaling strategy, config and integrate metrics and health checks, ingest data, monitor the service, etc etc etc. And if we actually want to make an objective comparison between libraries and services... Well, in the end they are all components of a larger system. So, obviously there is no objective distinction. There's only intellectual property and companies being hypocrite wanting to have their cake and eating it too. They can't get it both ways.