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Because they have limited resources and have to support existing customers? And they were doing the right thing by contributing everything back to the open sour

by sg47 7y ago

Because they have limited resources and have to support existing customers? And they were doing the right thing by contributing everything back to the open source community and weren't expecting Amazon to offer a service?

manigandham 7y ago
That's called business competition. Should startups shut down because a bigger company might be selling the same thing? There's no expectation of contribution with open-source software and the vast majority of users don't add anything. That's how it goes. If you don't want to give it away, then simply don't give it away. DB vendors earn revenue by charging for features, support and services, just like AWS. There's nothing stopping them from selling proprietary closed-source products and I can name dozens that are doing well.
- sg47 7y ago
  "There's no expectation of contribution with open-source software and the vast majority of users don't add anything. That's how it goes. If you don't want to give it away, then simply don't give it away." - Vendors are wising up to it now and changing their licenses. Amazon definitely took advantage of this before the days of AGPL. I agree that there's no expectation of contribution. As I said before, it just discourages open source in general because of what Amazon might do. My original comment was in response to someone asking how Amazon is able to launch these services quickly. My response was that the bulk of the work is being done by someone else. I guess that's not new. On the retail side, Amazon takes products that sell well and then offer an Amazon Basics version of the same product.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    As did millions of other users and companies. If you give away source code then people will probably use it. Don't do it if you don't want that to happen. If they're changing licenses now then good for them, but you could say they also took advantage of the free marketing from open-source and now put most of the development into enterprise versions. There's no right vs wrong side here.
    - sg47 7y ago
      There's a difference between people using it and making money off it. What Amazon is doing is putting a wrapper around other people's hard work and claiming it as their own.
      - manigandham 7y ago
        They've never "claimed" anything like that. What does it matter who worked on it? They gave it away. Don't do that if you don't want to. Do you also have a complaint against the numerous vendors offering managed Postgres? Or is this just relegated to some databases you specifically like?

by sg47 7y ago

manigandham 7y ago

That's called business competition. Should startups shut down because a bigger company might be selling the same thing? There's no expectation of contribution with open-source software and the vast majority of users don't add anything. That's how it goes. If you don't want to give it away, then simply don't give it away. DB vendors earn revenue by charging for features, support and services, just like AWS. There's nothing stopping them from selling proprietary closed-source products and I can name dozens that are doing well.

sg47 7y ago
"There's no expectation of contribution with open-source software and the vast majority of users don't add anything. That's how it goes. If you don't want to give it away, then simply don't give it away." - Vendors are wising up to it now and changing their licenses. Amazon definitely took advantage of this before the days of AGPL. I agree that there's no expectation of contribution. As I said before, it just discourages open source in general because of what Amazon might do. My original comment was in response to someone asking how Amazon is able to launch these services quickly. My response was that the bulk of the work is being done by someone else. I guess that's not new. On the retail side, Amazon takes products that sell well and then offer an Amazon Basics version of the same product.
- manigandham 7y ago
  As did millions of other users and companies. If you give away source code then people will probably use it. Don't do it if you don't want that to happen. If they're changing licenses now then good for them, but you could say they also took advantage of the free marketing from open-source and now put most of the development into enterprise versions. There's no right vs wrong side here.
  - sg47 7y ago
    There's a difference between people using it and making money off it. What Amazon is doing is putting a wrapper around other people's hard work and claiming it as their own.
    - manigandham 7y ago
      They've never "claimed" anything like that. What does it matter who worked on it? They gave it away. Don't do that if you don't want to. Do you also have a complaint against the numerous vendors offering managed Postgres? Or is this just relegated to some databases you specifically like?