20 ms·

I run the open source strategy and marketing team at AWS. As I told Tim privately and publicly (https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/1317084448119169024 https://tw

by mjasay 6y ago

I run the open source strategy and marketing team at AWS. As I told Tim privately and publicly (https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/1317084448119169024 https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/1317084448119169024), I hadn't been aware of this but am talking with the relevant product team to see how we can improve in his regard. AWS uses a lot of open source, and we contribute a lot, both in terms of code (first-party projects like Firecracker and Bottlerocket, but also third-party projects like Redis, GraphQL, Open Telemetry, etc.), testing, credits, foundation support, and more. But open source is ultimately about people and communities, and I personally feel we could have done more to acknowledge the great work Tim and his co-maintainers have done, and try to support their Headless Recorder work. We're talking with Tim now about this. (While I think we do far better than sometimes acknowledged, we're also always looking to improve, and appreciate all the feedback that helps us toward that goal.)

rickspencer3 6y ago
I know Matt. I'm impressed that AWS hired him for this. That's a promising sign.
unreal37 6y ago
Good job taking responsibility, Matt. Handling this the right way. I do think there's a larger discussion about trillion dollar companies just forking a project and announcing it as a new feature for their platform without even talking to the original creator. If there's anything to improve, "reach out first" will be a start. It's open source. You don't have to reach out. There's nothing legally or morally wrong with what you did. But you can do better. A trillion dollar company can do better to act grateful to be in the position that it's in. To be seen as a leader in a space instead of as a consumer of free work.
- eitland 6y ago
  > If there's anything to improve, "reach out first" will be a start. Just don't repeat Microsofts smooth talk, make-your-own and ghost strategy ;-) It is possibly even worse than just forking.
- cacois 6y ago
  I honestly think there's room for more than gratitude with, as you said, a trillion dollar company. I know its hard to find a balance when we want free and open tools, developed in a spirit of sharing and enabling innovation. But something feels slimy about an enormous company deriving a huge amount of revenue from a FOSS project, when they could easily compensate developer(s) with barely an impact to their bottom line. I know its not required by licensing - but "legal" doesn't always mean "right".
  - sslayer 6y ago
    I think the legal aspect of the licensing determines what is "right", otherwise the definition of "right" can be interpreted different ways. Don't be fooled, both parties entered into a contract. One when they published the software, and one when they used the software. Any expectations outside of that are left undocumented.
    - cacois 6y ago
      Even agreed-upon contracts can be predatory. Maybe there should be a license that says "free and clear for everyone but trillion-dollar companies, because they should really compensate developers for value". I personally think it would be a great look for Amazon if they made it a policy to compensate developers from whom they derive significant economic value. Because they can, and because the developers deserve it.
      - barumi 6y ago
        If developers expected to get compensated for the work they explicitly and voluntarily released for anyone and everyone in the world for absolutely free, wouldn't they have released it under different terms? I mean, it sounds awfully dishonest to do a 180 on the expectations once a user with a deep enough wallet happens to be singled out.
        sillysaurusx 6y ago
        It doesn’t seem dishonest. Companies do it (market segmentation).
- throwawgler87 6y ago
  Legally no, morally yes
  - branon 6y ago
    Legally no, morally no, ethically yes?
    - LukeBMM 6y ago
      I feel like this is an underrated distinction. While definitions vary, this way of looking at it resonates pretty strongly with me, personally.
    - dr_dshiv 6y ago
      Ethically yes — simply because it will be in their best interest to do so over time. That's why "Amazon can do better." Not to act more altruistically, but to do better. If they keep doing things like this, it won't be good for them.
    - tunesmith 6y ago
      Interesting, how would you define ethically different than morally?
      - jeromenerf 6y ago
        In a nutshell, ethics is a bit more pragmatic than morals. Ethos and moralis, the customs and "of the customs".
      - branon 6y ago
        It was my impression that morality regards the beliefs of one person/entity (here, Amazon) while ethics refers to a different/opposing group. So clearly Amazon has no moral scruples about doing what they did, but to us (or others) it's ethically ambiguous.
        a1369209993 6y ago
- gozzoo 6y ago
  It doesn't sound exactly like taking responsibility to me. It's more an acknowledgment of the fact and damage control. Taking responsibility would suggest admitting fault and taking action to make things right. His statement doesn't have any of these. 'I am looking into it' is too vague and doesn't mean much. Probably Amazon's legal department doesn't let him say much more, but then his statement sounds unconvincing and doesn't serve the purpose of taking responsibility and assuring the comunity of their good intentions.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
    Fault for what? Using code in accordance with the license selected by its developer?
    - gozzoo 6y ago
      By admitting fault I mean if you have done something wrong to speak up. Legally there is no fault as far as I can judge, but there is a moral fault. Not giving credit, not trying to involve the developer in their effort and not offering any kind of reward for his effort is definitely a fault in my dictionary. These kinds of actions damage the community much more than some people realize. Open source developers lose trust in the idea of sharing their work when seeing how huge companies with limitless resources take advantage of their effort. This happens little by little but in the end we become cynical and when we see good intended initiatives from these companies we don't trust them and simply refuse to participate. I tought Microsoft has abandoned its evil demeanor and has become a good open source citizen until this happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331287 I think what they did is much worse than this, because they intentionally misled the developer by giving an impression that they were going to hire him and when he came for an interview they tricked him to share his ideas about the future of his product. What's similar is the reaction of both companies - half-heartedly acknowledging something that has already become public knowledge and giving some vague promise for fixing things.
- Reimersholme 6y ago
  “It’s always day one at Amazon” is their motto meaning they’ll hustle and squeeze out as much profit as possible without a thought of contributing back if it doesn’t increase their bottom line.
- ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
  > I do think there's a larger discussion about trillion dollar companies just forking a project and announcing it as a new feature for their platform without even talking to the original creator. I always find these messages weird, because in the end it's one engineer like you and I who looked at some open sourced stuff and decided to use it, and perhaps it didn't really do what they wanted so they forked it, and it ended up being used in whatever product they were working on, and in the grand scheme of things it was not about a big trillion dollar company being evil, it was about how engineers do their work nowadays.
tnolet 6y ago
OP here. Matt and I are chatting about this. We will work it out. As per my tweet, it's not about the letter of the licensing, it's about the spirit.
- bluetwo 6y ago
  Honestly, AWS should have a policy they apply consistently. Maybe mention that in your conversations.
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  Not quite the same behavior, but BigCo's free-riding on FOSS is nothing new. "At Serge’s trial Kevin Marino, his lawyer, flashed two pages of computer code: the original, with its open-source license on top, and a replica, with the open-source license stripped off and replaced by the Goldman Sachs license." [1] [1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldma...
  - hanniabu 6y ago
    Using open source software is different than selling it and profiting off of it without even contacting the project's maintainers.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
    Free-riding on the free? What else are you supposed to do with it?
- dingaling 6y ago
  > it's not about the letter of the licensing, it's about the spirit If it's not in black and white then it's not part of the license. Spirit isn't defined. To paraphrase Theo de Raadt, if you're not happy for your code to be used in a puppy mulching machine then don't license it under a permissive license.
sm84258 6y ago
OK but also do not stop this development is all..
gigatexal 6y ago
Wow what a great take. Kudos for doing the right thing here. Very excited to see how this pans out.
anigbrowl 6y ago
We're talking with Tim now about this. Offer him money and do it in public.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
strangemonad 6y ago
Honestly, even putting aside the social and community aspects. When I’m evaluating a technical offering I’m often very willing to pay for “hosted xyz”. I feel like I’m reading through the tea leaves to understand which AWS product offering is more or less a hosted offering of an open source product and what additions AWS has made that might change performance characteristics. Even without upstreaming changes, if the offering were pitched as “hosted X with these additions unique to aws” I would likely choose the hosted option over operating it myself. It goes without saying though that supporting the open source core (and the core developers) would also go a long way.
rorykoehler 6y ago
Surely you should be sending him a significant pay check. You're worth billions and just ripping off other peoples projects?
- SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
  Why? It was knowingly and intentionally released to the world for free, to do with as anyone wishes. No one is ripping anyone off.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    Technically true (only). Amazon are devoid of ethics but we know that already.
yummybear 6y ago
Imo there needs to be an official policy from aws on thes kinds of issues. Taking a free product and monetizing it on this scale morally requires some compensation for the original creator(s).
no_wizard 6y ago
I hope you write an update to this. I'd love to know how this went.
pabs3 6y ago
Does AWS have a policy of directly funding existing upstream developers/maintainers of projects you are using?
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  Given the massive amount of revenue they're making off Linux, they should be at list platinum tier Linux Foundation members, but their logo is nowhere to be seen here... https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/
  - pabs3 6y ago
    Their strategy for Linux appears to be to contribute code upstream rather than contributing money, according to linux.git's MAINTAINERS and `git log --author=amazon.com`. Also its not like the Linux foundation funds Linux development in general, apart from Linus and possibly similar folks.
- TimJRobinson 6y ago
  On my old team, AWS RoboMaker they do. Contributed a lot of money and developers to ROS2 to make it a solid robotics platform.
ineedasername 6y ago
This is nice to hear. Regarding "giving back" by a company like Amazon, we often talk about the problem of open source maintenance being thankless and difficult due to time commitment and lack of compensation, etc. Personally I don't think direct $$ compensation is the answer, but how about a policy that, for example, dedicated X number of developer hours to the main branch? As in, Amazon tasks a few developers to each give 10 hours of time in direct collaboration with the maintainer(s) to perform tasks the maintainers may have in their queue. That way "giving back" for a project you use is specific and alleviats some of the burden of running a project for exactly those projects from which Amazon benefits.
- fallenpegasus 6y ago
  I am a Principal Engineer in the Open Source Programs Office at Amazon. This is something we are very aware of, and discussions about this cross my desk weekly. One big problem of the many problems I face regarding such proposals is the people who are the best at writing open source who need the money the most are not the people who are good at writing grant proposals and are good at sucking the money out of such funding systems.
nanoscopic 6y ago
Please release my rewrite / serialization library for Apache Avro. I wrote it in 3 different languages for Amazon when I worked there, and went through all sorts of discussions to have them release it, and they refused for no meaningful reason that I could see. The only reason I was ever given was "we use it and think it is great therefore we won't release it." The implication was "If what you wrote was junk we'd let you release it." Needless to say I never tried to get Amazon to release any of my software during my time there after that, because the response was so poor. Edit: If Amazon releases my code, I'll be happy to add a tiny credit to Amazon in Notices.Txt and in no other way be thankful to Amazon.
- fallenpegasus 6y ago
  I'm the Principal Engineer for the Open Source Program Office at Amazon. We've gotten much better about being responsive and inclined to open source projects like that. Email me at atwoodm@amazon.com, and tell me what the internal code names for your projects were, and were you were in the org. I'll see what I can do.
the_resistence 6y ago
Well done response. Kudos.
scoot_718 6y ago
It doesn't matter, anyone who uses AWS services beyond those that are easily replaced by alternatives (say DigitalOcean, OpenStack, Azure, etc.) is setting themselves up for failure. At the very least they'll need a translation dictionary of Amazon's stupid naming scheme when they want to move. The long tail of AWS services is a massive waste of time.
anaganisk 6y ago
Where is that crowd that denounced n8n.io for using a license that explicitly prevents this kind of exploitation. I dont understand why people harp constantly for software to be open completely and free, and put a suprised pickachu face when it gets exploited.

by mjasay 6y ago

rickspencer3 6y ago

I know Matt. I'm impressed that AWS hired him for this. That's a promising sign.

unreal37 6y ago

Good job taking responsibility, Matt. Handling this the right way. I do think there's a larger discussion about trillion dollar companies just forking a project and announcing it as a new feature for their platform without even talking to the original creator. If there's anything to improve, "reach out first" will be a start. It's open source. You don't have to reach out. There's nothing legally or morally wrong with what you did. But you can do better. A trillion dollar company can do better to act grateful to be in the position that it's in. To be seen as a leader in a space instead of as a consumer of free work.

eitland 6y ago
> If there's anything to improve, "reach out first" will be a start. Just don't repeat Microsofts smooth talk, make-your-own and ghost strategy ;-) It is possibly even worse than just forking.
cacois 6y ago
I honestly think there's room for more than gratitude with, as you said, a trillion dollar company. I know its hard to find a balance when we want free and open tools, developed in a spirit of sharing and enabling innovation. But something feels slimy about an enormous company deriving a huge amount of revenue from a FOSS project, when they could easily compensate developer(s) with barely an impact to their bottom line. I know its not required by licensing - but "legal" doesn't always mean "right".
- sslayer 6y ago
  I think the legal aspect of the licensing determines what is "right", otherwise the definition of "right" can be interpreted different ways. Don't be fooled, both parties entered into a contract. One when they published the software, and one when they used the software. Any expectations outside of that are left undocumented.
  - cacois 6y ago
    Even agreed-upon contracts can be predatory. Maybe there should be a license that says "free and clear for everyone but trillion-dollar companies, because they should really compensate developers for value". I personally think it would be a great look for Amazon if they made it a policy to compensate developers from whom they derive significant economic value. Because they can, and because the developers deserve it.
    - barumi 6y ago
      If developers expected to get compensated for the work they explicitly and voluntarily released for anyone and everyone in the world for absolutely free, wouldn't they have released it under different terms? I mean, it sounds awfully dishonest to do a 180 on the expectations once a user with a deep enough wallet happens to be singled out.
      - sillysaurusx 6y ago
        It doesn’t seem dishonest. Companies do it (market segmentation).
throwawgler87 6y ago
Legally no, morally yes
- branon 6y ago
  Legally no, morally no, ethically yes?
  - LukeBMM 6y ago
    I feel like this is an underrated distinction. While definitions vary, this way of looking at it resonates pretty strongly with me, personally.
  - dr_dshiv 6y ago
    Ethically yes — simply because it will be in their best interest to do so over time. That's why "Amazon can do better." Not to act more altruistically, but to do better. If they keep doing things like this, it won't be good for them.
  - tunesmith 6y ago
    Interesting, how would you define ethically different than morally?
    - jeromenerf 6y ago
      In a nutshell, ethics is a bit more pragmatic than morals. Ethos and moralis, the customs and "of the customs".
    - branon 6y ago
      It was my impression that morality regards the beliefs of one person/entity (here, Amazon) while ethics refers to a different/opposing group. So clearly Amazon has no moral scruples about doing what they did, but to us (or others) it's ethically ambiguous.
      - a1369209993 6y ago
gozzoo 6y ago
It doesn't sound exactly like taking responsibility to me. It's more an acknowledgment of the fact and damage control. Taking responsibility would suggest admitting fault and taking action to make things right. His statement doesn't have any of these. 'I am looking into it' is too vague and doesn't mean much. Probably Amazon's legal department doesn't let him say much more, but then his statement sounds unconvincing and doesn't serve the purpose of taking responsibility and assuring the comunity of their good intentions.
- SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
  Fault for what? Using code in accordance with the license selected by its developer?
  - gozzoo 6y ago
    By admitting fault I mean if you have done something wrong to speak up. Legally there is no fault as far as I can judge, but there is a moral fault. Not giving credit, not trying to involve the developer in their effort and not offering any kind of reward for his effort is definitely a fault in my dictionary. These kinds of actions damage the community much more than some people realize. Open source developers lose trust in the idea of sharing their work when seeing how huge companies with limitless resources take advantage of their effort. This happens little by little but in the end we become cynical and when we see good intended initiatives from these companies we don't trust them and simply refuse to participate. I tought Microsoft has abandoned its evil demeanor and has become a good open source citizen until this happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331287 I think what they did is much worse than this, because they intentionally misled the developer by giving an impression that they were going to hire him and when he came for an interview they tricked him to share his ideas about the future of his product. What's similar is the reaction of both companies - half-heartedly acknowledging something that has already become public knowledge and giving some vague promise for fixing things.
Reimersholme 6y ago
“It’s always day one at Amazon” is their motto meaning they’ll hustle and squeeze out as much profit as possible without a thought of contributing back if it doesn’t increase their bottom line.
ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
> I do think there's a larger discussion about trillion dollar companies just forking a project and announcing it as a new feature for their platform without even talking to the original creator. I always find these messages weird, because in the end it's one engineer like you and I who looked at some open sourced stuff and decided to use it, and perhaps it didn't really do what they wanted so they forked it, and it ended up being used in whatever product they were working on, and in the grand scheme of things it was not about a big trillion dollar company being evil, it was about how engineers do their work nowadays.

tnolet 6y ago

OP here. Matt and I are chatting about this. We will work it out. As per my tweet, it's not about the letter of the licensing, it's about the spirit.

bluetwo 6y ago
Honestly, AWS should have a policy they apply consistently. Maybe mention that in your conversations.
rmrfstar 6y ago
Not quite the same behavior, but BigCo's free-riding on FOSS is nothing new. "At Serge’s trial Kevin Marino, his lawyer, flashed two pages of computer code: the original, with its open-source license on top, and a replica, with the open-source license stripped off and replaced by the Goldman Sachs license." [1] [1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldma...
- hanniabu 6y ago
  Using open source software is different than selling it and profiting off of it without even contacting the project's maintainers.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
  Free-riding on the free? What else are you supposed to do with it?
dingaling 6y ago
> it's not about the letter of the licensing, it's about the spirit If it's not in black and white then it's not part of the license. Spirit isn't defined. To paraphrase Theo de Raadt, if you're not happy for your code to be used in a puppy mulching machine then don't license it under a permissive license.

sm84258 6y ago

OK but also do not stop this development is all..

gigatexal 6y ago

Wow what a great take. Kudos for doing the right thing here. Very excited to see how this pans out.

anigbrowl 6y ago

We're talking with Tim now about this. Offer him money and do it in public.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

strangemonad 6y ago

Honestly, even putting aside the social and community aspects. When I’m evaluating a technical offering I’m often very willing to pay for “hosted xyz”. I feel like I’m reading through the tea leaves to understand which AWS product offering is more or less a hosted offering of an open source product and what additions AWS has made that might change performance characteristics. Even without upstreaming changes, if the offering were pitched as “hosted X with these additions unique to aws” I would likely choose the hosted option over operating it myself. It goes without saying though that supporting the open source core (and the core developers) would also go a long way.

rorykoehler 6y ago

Surely you should be sending him a significant pay check. You're worth billions and just ripping off other peoples projects?

SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
Why? It was knowingly and intentionally released to the world for free, to do with as anyone wishes. No one is ripping anyone off.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  Technically true (only). Amazon are devoid of ethics but we know that already.

yummybear 6y ago

Imo there needs to be an official policy from aws on thes kinds of issues. Taking a free product and monetizing it on this scale morally requires some compensation for the original creator(s).

no_wizard 6y ago

I hope you write an update to this. I'd love to know how this went.

pabs3 6y ago

Does AWS have a policy of directly funding existing upstream developers/maintainers of projects you are using?

29athrowaway 6y ago
Given the massive amount of revenue they're making off Linux, they should be at list platinum tier Linux Foundation members, but their logo is nowhere to be seen here... https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/
- pabs3 6y ago
  Their strategy for Linux appears to be to contribute code upstream rather than contributing money, according to linux.git's MAINTAINERS and `git log --author=amazon.com`. Also its not like the Linux foundation funds Linux development in general, apart from Linus and possibly similar folks.
TimJRobinson 6y ago
On my old team, AWS RoboMaker they do. Contributed a lot of money and developers to ROS2 to make it a solid robotics platform.

ineedasername 6y ago

This is nice to hear. Regarding "giving back" by a company like Amazon, we often talk about the problem of open source maintenance being thankless and difficult due to time commitment and lack of compensation, etc. Personally I don't think direct $$ compensation is the answer, but how about a policy that, for example, dedicated X number of developer hours to the main branch? As in, Amazon tasks a few developers to each give 10 hours of time in direct collaboration with the maintainer(s) to perform tasks the maintainers may have in their queue. That way "giving back" for a project you use is specific and alleviats some of the burden of running a project for exactly those projects from which Amazon benefits.

fallenpegasus 6y ago
I am a Principal Engineer in the Open Source Programs Office at Amazon. This is something we are very aware of, and discussions about this cross my desk weekly. One big problem of the many problems I face regarding such proposals is the people who are the best at writing open source who need the money the most are not the people who are good at writing grant proposals and are good at sucking the money out of such funding systems.

nanoscopic 6y ago

Please release my rewrite / serialization library for Apache Avro. I wrote it in 3 different languages for Amazon when I worked there, and went through all sorts of discussions to have them release it, and they refused for no meaningful reason that I could see. The only reason I was ever given was "we use it and think it is great therefore we won't release it." The implication was "If what you wrote was junk we'd let you release it." Needless to say I never tried to get Amazon to release any of my software during my time there after that, because the response was so poor. Edit: If Amazon releases my code, I'll be happy to add a tiny credit to Amazon in Notices.Txt and in no other way be thankful to Amazon.

fallenpegasus 6y ago
I'm the Principal Engineer for the Open Source Program Office at Amazon. We've gotten much better about being responsive and inclined to open source projects like that. Email me at atwoodm@amazon.com, and tell me what the internal code names for your projects were, and were you were in the org. I'll see what I can do.

the_resistence 6y ago

Well done response. Kudos.

scoot_718 6y ago

It doesn't matter, anyone who uses AWS services beyond those that are easily replaced by alternatives (say DigitalOcean, OpenStack, Azure, etc.) is setting themselves up for failure. At the very least they'll need a translation dictionary of Amazon's stupid naming scheme when they want to move. The long tail of AWS services is a massive waste of time.

anaganisk 6y ago

Where is that crowd that denounced n8n.io for using a license that explicitly prevents this kind of exploitation. I dont understand why people harp constantly for software to be open completely and free, and put a suprised pickachu face when it gets exploited.