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Even if cloud providers give back more than they take, there nothing legally stopping them from stealing an open source project as their own. The Business Sour

Even if cloud providers give back more than they take, there nothing legally stopping them from stealing an open source project as their own. The Business Source License (BSL) seems like a good reaction. What Amazon did to confluent.io and so many others seems pretty cold hearted.

DVassallo 7y ago
Stealing an open source project would be like saying stealing quick sort. You can't steal something if it was given to the public domain.
- vageli 7y ago
  > Stealing an open source project would be like saying stealing quick sort. You can't steal something if it was given to the public domain. Most open source projects are not given to the public domain, but encumbered with clauses in the form of their license.
  - DVassallo 7y ago
    Permissive licenses are basically public domain with some attribution clauses and litigation indemnity.
  - paxys 7y ago
    And none of the companies are breaching the license.
- iblaine 7y ago
  Quicksort is an algorithm, a copyright on it would not hold up, but a creative use of it may hold up. Kafka is not part of the public domain, but available through an open source license, that AWS is arguably exploiting to make some money off the back of open source contributors.
  - DVassallo 7y ago
    True, but for all intents and purposes, it's basically public domain with some attribution clauses and litigation indemnity: "Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form." https://github.com/apache/kafka/blob/trunk/LICENSE#L67-L72 https://github.com/apache/kafka/blob/trunk/LICENSE#L67-L72

DVassallo 7y ago

Stealing an open source project would be like saying stealing quick sort. You can't steal something if it was given to the public domain.

vageli 7y ago
> Stealing an open source project would be like saying stealing quick sort. You can't steal something if it was given to the public domain. Most open source projects are not given to the public domain, but encumbered with clauses in the form of their license.
- DVassallo 7y ago
  Permissive licenses are basically public domain with some attribution clauses and litigation indemnity.
- paxys 7y ago
  And none of the companies are breaching the license.
iblaine 7y ago
Quicksort is an algorithm, a copyright on it would not hold up, but a creative use of it may hold up. Kafka is not part of the public domain, but available through an open source license, that AWS is arguably exploiting to make some money off the back of open source contributors.
- DVassallo 7y ago
  True, but for all intents and purposes, it's basically public domain with some attribution clauses and litigation indemnity: "Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form." https://github.com/apache/kafka/blob/trunk/LICENSE#L67-L72 https://github.com/apache/kafka/blob/trunk/LICENSE#L67-L72