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This kind of problem is not going to be solved by clever licensing or whatever. Yes, it is open source, not free software, so you can prohibit people from maki

This kind of problem is not going to be solved by clever licensing or whatever. Yes, it is open source, not free software, so you can prohibit people from making money by hosting it and selling it as a service, but this is not ideal, because sometimes you want this to happen. The problem is when a oligopolistic entity does that, because by their sheer power it means you will be squeezed out of the very market your product created. Monopolies and oligopolies, by definition, are market failures, they can't be fixed by the market, they require government intervention. The only sustainable, long term solution for that is to mobilize politically for a government that have a more activist role in fighting market concentration and abuse.

gk1 5y ago
You might be happy to know this blog post led to me speaking with the journalist who then wrote this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/technology/amazon-aws-cloud-competition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/technology/amazon-aws-clo... That was nearly two years ago. A lot of effort has taken place since then to scrutinize the big clouds. I don't know if it's enough, and I'm not taking either side, but the situation isn't going unnoticed.
tharne 5y ago
Agreed. This is an anti-trust issue, not a strategy problem for small businesseses to figure out a solution to. What's the solution? The same one used on Standard Oil.
tzs 5y ago
It has little to do with monopolies and oligopolies. Suppose AWS, Azure, GCP, and all the other large cloud providers were split up into 10 providers each. So now we have several dozen cloud providers, all much smaller than when it has only a handful. They would still almost all be much bigger and offering a much wider range of products than a small company that has on product--a DB, a messaging service, a cache, etc--that is useful to cloud providers and cloud provider customers. Those dozens of providers will still find that the small companies product is a compliment to the cloud provider's products and services, and it will still make sense for the cloud providers to offer that service themselves to make it so they are a one stop source for as many of their customers cloud needs as possible.

gk1 5y ago

You might be happy to know this blog post led to me speaking with the journalist who then wrote this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/technology/amazon-aws-cloud-competition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/technology/amazon-aws-clo... That was nearly two years ago. A lot of effort has taken place since then to scrutinize the big clouds. I don't know if it's enough, and I'm not taking either side, but the situation isn't going unnoticed.

tharne 5y ago

Agreed. This is an anti-trust issue, not a strategy problem for small businesseses to figure out a solution to. What's the solution? The same one used on Standard Oil.

tzs 5y ago

It has little to do with monopolies and oligopolies. Suppose AWS, Azure, GCP, and all the other large cloud providers were split up into 10 providers each. So now we have several dozen cloud providers, all much smaller than when it has only a handful. They would still almost all be much bigger and offering a much wider range of products than a small company that has on product--a DB, a messaging service, a cache, etc--that is useful to cloud providers and cloud provider customers. Those dozens of providers will still find that the small companies product is a compliment to the cloud provider's products and services, and it will still make sense for the cloud providers to offer that service themselves to make it so they are a one stop source for as many of their customers cloud needs as possible.