4 ms·

> Not necessary as per the APLv2 license The conversation ends there, doesn't it?

by curiousgal 6y ago

andi999 6y ago
Is this a typo and shd ve GPLv2?
- ratsimihah 6y ago
  https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
  - andi999 6y ago
    Thanks. But is this standard to abbreviate to APLv2? I only knew the language APL and the apache license is normally abbreviated apache-v2, or so, isnt it?
Hamuko 6y ago
Well, the legal one at least. Morals are another thing, but maybe that's not really Amazon's concern.
3pt14159 6y ago
Not really. The conversation goes on as long as we like. Part of OSS is about trust and reputation. AWS could have really helped the maintainer with a single sentence and they didn't. It's like not saying thanks to the barista when you get your coffee. Not the end of the world, but it's still a touch rude.
- romanovcode 6y ago
  When you are a huge company you have to be careful about saying thanks to Barista. Maybe the developers would like to say thanks to barista but lawyers said to the developers to not talk to the barista no matter what since it's safer to say nothing than risk saying something wrong.
- h0l0cube 6y ago
  > AWS could have really helped the maintainer with a single sentence and they didn't. It's not befitting a large enterprise like AWS to tell their prospective customers that they are just wrapping their infra around free software in their marketing copy. If that single sentence even slightly impresses upon .1% of their potential customers that they ought to spin it up on their own infrastructure, obviating their need to pay for the service, that's plenty of disincentive to add the message.
  - Xylakant 6y ago
    That’s not as clear cut as your post may make it seem. Some users (me, for example) are more inclined to use a hosted service of some open source software than of some proprietary piece. Because that gives me a migration option if the providers service no longer fits my needs. For example, I’m paying four digits a month for some hosted Postgres database.
    - h0l0cube 6y ago
      Misses the point. The marketing copy there is to bamboozle the uninformed into opening their wallets. If you are better informed, you already know that AWS plagiars pretty much all it's services from open-source. A smaller player catering to a tech audience might add open source to its bullet points as some sort of virtue signalling, but that's no benefit to the established megalith that is AWS.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    Amazon's entire cloud business revolves around providing managed infrastructure as an alternative to self hosted solutions, so I don't think that is really a secret regardless. Also, consider that they rely on having a positive reputation to attract engineering talent and also to continue to get third party developers to release their infrastructural code under permissive licenses.
- varispeed 6y ago
  The model where company makes money off of someone else's work without paying them should be illegal. Currently you cannot hire someone as an apprentice and don't pay them - you need to give at least the minimum wage. OSS is sort of a loophole where companies can obtain work without payment. I think this practice should be illegal and regardless of the license company adopting OSS solution should pay its contributors market rates - that is the amount of money it would take AWS to pay to create such product.
  - 3pt14159 6y ago
    I appreciate the underlying sentiment, but I disagree. When I contribute to OSS it's my choice to and I want the right to let anyone do whatever they want with code even if I never exercise that right. Personally, I think OSS licences should be changed to prohibit unpaid use by any entity that has a single stakeholder worth more than a billion dollars. That way the startups and medium sized businesses around the world can benefit and the tech lottery winners pay something reasonable ($1m a year, say) to support OSS.
    - varispeed 6y ago
      There is the same argument that people who want apprenticeship use. They want to work for a company and learn, but company won't hire them because they don't have money to pay for "idle" worker and the overhead to teach them. But this is for the greater good. In the past you had companies who used their market share in particular city to drive wages down and people had a choice either work for them and starve or move to different city. Minimum wage stops this, at a cost of some people being unable to work for free. I can accept that. There will be projects for sure that would love their software were used by AWS and other companies without paying them, but that will only create a race to the bottom. We should stop exploitation of engineers by these giant companies.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    > The model where company makes money off of someone else's work without paying them should be illegal. So, once an author is dead, it should be illegal to sell anything they created? Or should ownership rights in content for the estate last forever? Your idea is terrible when examined in detail.
- tryptophan 6y ago
  >Part of OSS is about trust and reputation. If trust and reputation were enough, we would not need licenses. The GPL is great and had the impact it did exactly because it forced people to do things.
lki876 6y ago
Not legally required != shouldn't do it. You're not legally required to say "Hi" when you run into people you know and making it legally enforceable would be a legal nightmare, but it's the decent thing to do.
joseluisq 6y ago
However, if a company that uses some OSS stuff is not under a moral obligation to do so? If not so, then why do we do OSS with licenses? Why not just Copyright everything?
jillesvangurp 6y ago
Not really, it's about Amazon not being a great OSS citizen. They don't have to be but it's a combination of immature, rude, and unprofessional to not be like that if your core business is packaging up and integrating other people's OSS software. They are of course well within their rights as per the license to behave like this but there's a notion of being courteous, grateful, and constructive in the OSS world that comes with being a responsible OSS citizen and that goes a long way to ensure people volunteer to help you out with bugs, support, change requests, etc. It doesn't cost anything to just reach out and give this person some kudos. It's the right thing to do. Amazon is being a bit insensitive here and this sounds to me like somebody up high ought to do a bit of yelling internally about acting professionally and not needlessly burning bridges with the OSS people that they depend on for their core business. At least I'd be all over this if I were confronted with this kind of behavior by one of my colleagues. Not cool. A public apology would go a long way to fixing this; maybe a couple of lines in the readme. Doesn't cost a thing.
ojnabieoot 6y ago
This is analogous to "hey, fella, I have a First Amendment protects right to be a manipulative, sociopathic liar" - it's true, and it doesn't invalidate people complaining about your behavior. AWS did something rude, unprofessional, and indicative of bad OSS citizenship. The fact that the lawyers can sign off on it is irrelevant.

> Not necessary as per the APLv2 license The conversation ends there, doesn't it?

andi999 6y ago

Is this a typo and shd ve GPLv2?

ratsimihah 6y ago
https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
- andi999 6y ago
  Thanks. But is this standard to abbreviate to APLv2? I only knew the language APL and the apache license is normally abbreviated apache-v2, or so, isnt it?

Hamuko 6y ago

Well, the legal one at least. Morals are another thing, but maybe that's not really Amazon's concern.

3pt14159 6y ago

Not really. The conversation goes on as long as we like. Part of OSS is about trust and reputation. AWS could have really helped the maintainer with a single sentence and they didn't. It's like not saying thanks to the barista when you get your coffee. Not the end of the world, but it's still a touch rude.

romanovcode 6y ago
When you are a huge company you have to be careful about saying thanks to Barista. Maybe the developers would like to say thanks to barista but lawyers said to the developers to not talk to the barista no matter what since it's safer to say nothing than risk saying something wrong.
h0l0cube 6y ago
> AWS could have really helped the maintainer with a single sentence and they didn't. It's not befitting a large enterprise like AWS to tell their prospective customers that they are just wrapping their infra around free software in their marketing copy. If that single sentence even slightly impresses upon .1% of their potential customers that they ought to spin it up on their own infrastructure, obviating their need to pay for the service, that's plenty of disincentive to add the message.
- Xylakant 6y ago
  That’s not as clear cut as your post may make it seem. Some users (me, for example) are more inclined to use a hosted service of some open source software than of some proprietary piece. Because that gives me a migration option if the providers service no longer fits my needs. For example, I’m paying four digits a month for some hosted Postgres database.
  - h0l0cube 6y ago
    Misses the point. The marketing copy there is to bamboozle the uninformed into opening their wallets. If you are better informed, you already know that AWS plagiars pretty much all it's services from open-source. A smaller player catering to a tech audience might add open source to its bullet points as some sort of virtue signalling, but that's no benefit to the established megalith that is AWS.
- shawnz 6y ago
  Amazon's entire cloud business revolves around providing managed infrastructure as an alternative to self hosted solutions, so I don't think that is really a secret regardless. Also, consider that they rely on having a positive reputation to attract engineering talent and also to continue to get third party developers to release their infrastructural code under permissive licenses.
varispeed 6y ago
The model where company makes money off of someone else's work without paying them should be illegal. Currently you cannot hire someone as an apprentice and don't pay them - you need to give at least the minimum wage. OSS is sort of a loophole where companies can obtain work without payment. I think this practice should be illegal and regardless of the license company adopting OSS solution should pay its contributors market rates - that is the amount of money it would take AWS to pay to create such product.
- 3pt14159 6y ago
  I appreciate the underlying sentiment, but I disagree. When I contribute to OSS it's my choice to and I want the right to let anyone do whatever they want with code even if I never exercise that right. Personally, I think OSS licences should be changed to prohibit unpaid use by any entity that has a single stakeholder worth more than a billion dollars. That way the startups and medium sized businesses around the world can benefit and the tech lottery winners pay something reasonable ($1m a year, say) to support OSS.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    There is the same argument that people who want apprenticeship use. They want to work for a company and learn, but company won't hire them because they don't have money to pay for "idle" worker and the overhead to teach them. But this is for the greater good. In the past you had companies who used their market share in particular city to drive wages down and people had a choice either work for them and starve or move to different city. Minimum wage stops this, at a cost of some people being unable to work for free. I can accept that. There will be projects for sure that would love their software were used by AWS and other companies without paying them, but that will only create a race to the bottom. We should stop exploitation of engineers by these giant companies.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  > The model where company makes money off of someone else's work without paying them should be illegal. So, once an author is dead, it should be illegal to sell anything they created? Or should ownership rights in content for the estate last forever? Your idea is terrible when examined in detail.
tryptophan 6y ago
>Part of OSS is about trust and reputation. If trust and reputation were enough, we would not need licenses. The GPL is great and had the impact it did exactly because it forced people to do things.

lki876 6y ago

Not legally required != shouldn't do it. You're not legally required to say "Hi" when you run into people you know and making it legally enforceable would be a legal nightmare, but it's the decent thing to do.

joseluisq 6y ago

However, if a company that uses some OSS stuff is not under a moral obligation to do so? If not so, then why do we do OSS with licenses? Why not just Copyright everything?

jillesvangurp 6y ago

Not really, it's about Amazon not being a great OSS citizen. They don't have to be but it's a combination of immature, rude, and unprofessional to not be like that if your core business is packaging up and integrating other people's OSS software. They are of course well within their rights as per the license to behave like this but there's a notion of being courteous, grateful, and constructive in the OSS world that comes with being a responsible OSS citizen and that goes a long way to ensure people volunteer to help you out with bugs, support, change requests, etc. It doesn't cost anything to just reach out and give this person some kudos. It's the right thing to do. Amazon is being a bit insensitive here and this sounds to me like somebody up high ought to do a bit of yelling internally about acting professionally and not needlessly burning bridges with the OSS people that they depend on for their core business. At least I'd be all over this if I were confronted with this kind of behavior by one of my colleagues. Not cool. A public apology would go a long way to fixing this; maybe a couple of lines in the readme. Doesn't cost a thing.

ojnabieoot 6y ago

This is analogous to "hey, fella, I have a First Amendment protects right to be a manipulative, sociopathic liar" - it's true, and it doesn't invalidate people complaining about your behavior. AWS did something rude, unprofessional, and indicative of bad OSS citizenship. The fact that the lawyers can sign off on it is irrelevant.