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There are now at least 4 different implementations of every data/app related technology: the oss/original version, the aws version, the azure version and the gc

There are now at least 4 different implementations of every data/app related technology: the oss/original version, the aws version, the azure version and the gcp version Is this a good idea? I don’t think so

spfink 6y ago
What is your ideal solution in these cases? In my experience, large enterprise customers (among others) tend to prefer managed versions of software where available. Cloud agnostic/interop versions would certainly seem like a good idea but I wonder what effect that would have on pricing and growth of the product.
deanCommie 6y ago
If you think of the major cloud providers as "operating systems" (and you should), this is no different than a piece of software having a Mac version, a Windows version, and a Linux version. Or people working to make some *nix tools work on different distributions.
sixdimensional 6y ago
Only so long as you are able to easily interop one tool from one cloud with the others without major consequences. If that was true, then you can freely mix and match cloud services from different vendors. Alas, this relies on many things, not the least of which are peering agreements between cloud vendors that do not punish the consumer for using a service on one cloud with services from another. It is possible to an extent today, but for competitive reasons, cloud companies do not seem to have a built in incentive to collaborate. Perhaps the cost of switching and lock-in will force cloud providers to work together in the long one, else they risk alienating customers, and then lack the ability to capture a larger market. In other words, competition is good as long as people can realistically take advantage of it. I think cloud vendors have an obligation to see that this competition is encouraged and supported.
herodoturtle 6y ago
> Is this a good idea? I don’t think so I agree. It would be swell if, as part of the bigger open source movement, Jeff, Bill, and Larry - who at their disposal have AWS, Microsoft, and Google - competed with one another to submit the meritocratically superior implementation of our meritocratically determined open source standards, and then we, as custodians of the open source project, would select the winner, merge it, and use it - to the exclusion of all other implementations - not because of bias, but because of the truth underlying our meritocracy. The question for me is - when we engage in said meritocracy, with all these BDFLs calling the shots, will they be the ones to negotiate with Jeff, Bill, and Larry? Or will we?
- lmeyerov 6y ago
  they could submit their patches and extensions for OSS but are largely not, narrowing to sharing core tweaks, and keeping the PaaS layers proprietary so it's not the maintainers failing to pick & unify, but Google etc employees not giving back
aeyes 6y ago
I haven't tried it yet but this honestly looks pretty close to vanilla, the post even says that they contributed their patches to upstream. What differences have you spotted? Of course their storage backend is going to be S3 and they are going to send logs to Cloudwatch, we have been doing it in a similar way for quite some time and it is what I expect from a solution managed by AWS.
PradeetPatel 6y ago
I respectfully disagree. Not only do cloud native versions of an OSS encourages innovation and enrichment, it also lowers the operational cost of running it in-house and aligns closely to Devops principles.

spfink 6y ago

What is your ideal solution in these cases? In my experience, large enterprise customers (among others) tend to prefer managed versions of software where available. Cloud agnostic/interop versions would certainly seem like a good idea but I wonder what effect that would have on pricing and growth of the product.

deanCommie 6y ago

If you think of the major cloud providers as "operating systems" (and you should), this is no different than a piece of software having a Mac version, a Windows version, and a Linux version. Or people working to make some *nix tools work on different distributions.

sixdimensional 6y ago

Only so long as you are able to easily interop one tool from one cloud with the others without major consequences. If that was true, then you can freely mix and match cloud services from different vendors. Alas, this relies on many things, not the least of which are peering agreements between cloud vendors that do not punish the consumer for using a service on one cloud with services from another. It is possible to an extent today, but for competitive reasons, cloud companies do not seem to have a built in incentive to collaborate. Perhaps the cost of switching and lock-in will force cloud providers to work together in the long one, else they risk alienating customers, and then lack the ability to capture a larger market. In other words, competition is good as long as people can realistically take advantage of it. I think cloud vendors have an obligation to see that this competition is encouraged and supported.

herodoturtle 6y ago

> Is this a good idea? I don’t think so I agree. It would be swell if, as part of the bigger open source movement, Jeff, Bill, and Larry - who at their disposal have AWS, Microsoft, and Google - competed with one another to submit the meritocratically superior implementation of our meritocratically determined open source standards, and then we, as custodians of the open source project, would select the winner, merge it, and use it - to the exclusion of all other implementations - not because of bias, but because of the truth underlying our meritocracy. The question for me is - when we engage in said meritocracy, with all these BDFLs calling the shots, will they be the ones to negotiate with Jeff, Bill, and Larry? Or will we?

lmeyerov 6y ago
they could submit their patches and extensions for OSS but are largely not, narrowing to sharing core tweaks, and keeping the PaaS layers proprietary so it's not the maintainers failing to pick & unify, but Google etc employees not giving back

aeyes 6y ago

I haven't tried it yet but this honestly looks pretty close to vanilla, the post even says that they contributed their patches to upstream. What differences have you spotted? Of course their storage backend is going to be S3 and they are going to send logs to Cloudwatch, we have been doing it in a similar way for quite some time and it is what I expect from a solution managed by AWS.

PradeetPatel 6y ago

I respectfully disagree. Not only do cloud native versions of an OSS encourages innovation and enrichment, it also lowers the operational cost of running it in-house and aligns closely to Devops principles.