6 ms·

M3O – An open source AWS alternative

19 points by asim 5y ago

dubcanada 5y ago
The reason why AWS is so complex is because there is like 200 different services. I am sure AWS would be infinitely less complex with only 39 (and most of those are small things like get the current weather, stocks, currency, crypto, etc not actual services in the same sense as AWS). I appreciate the project, but advertising yourselves as a AWS alternative when you don't even have a EC2 competitor seems a little disingenuous.
Quentincestino 5y ago
That's nice af but AWS is already widely used :/
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  It's also very expensive and has considerable vendor lock-in. Open source alternatives are always welcome.
- dang 5y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
theamk 5y ago
PSA: That "M3O" is read as "Micro". (I initially expected that it was "minio" deciding to rebrand to sound more like AWS) Also, this is not like AWS at all -- this is not IaaS offering, but a single specific microservices framework [0] and a hosting which specializes on apps using that framework. [0] https://micro.mu/introduction https://micro.mu/introduction
- asim 5y ago
  No, that's incorrect. We provide a catalog of services as public APIs consumed via HTTP/JSON. So far we offer 35+ services which you can see here https://m3o.com/explore https://m3o.com/explore. Those services are open source and you can see the source code at https://github.com/micro/services https://github.com/micro/services. The entire suite of services are built using the Micro platform which is also open source. Think Android for Cloud.
ignoramous 5y ago
The title is misleading. This project isn't open source, rather "source available". I get that the underlying packages from github.com/micro/* are FOSS, but m3o isn't: https://github.com/m3o/m3o/blob/8a533e3ab/LICENSE https://github.com/m3o/m3o/blob/8a533e3ab/LICENSE Also, the title could be prefixed with a Show HN.
- asim 5y ago
  If you look at the situation with Elastic and AWS, licensing has become something of a difficult situation. The entirety of the system is built on open source services and infrastructure. The pieces we've built around dev UX and self hosting we're still trying to figure out what to do with. Likely most of it will be moved to open source licenses. But it does not stop anyone from hosting it right now as long as they're not attempting to sell it as a service.
  - runako 5y ago
    > Likely most of it will be moved to open source licenses. As OP said, the title is misleading as it is not open source now. Looks like an interesting project, why muddle the message by making an obviously false claim up front?
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    I can honestly see why you would do this, but I’m not sure the over all ecosystem would benefit from this. Consider the user’s perspective. If they’ve decided to be locked into your stack and your company dies (/becomes prohibitively expensive/etc), they can still host the stuff themselves on premise - a welcome step out, but also quite expensive. There are reasons they wanted cloud hosting in the first place, after all. They can not get another cloud service. You may be able to somewhat work around this problem by doing a deal like the Qt Company has with KDE: If you can’t meet certain criteria, the code will be released under an open license.
    - asim 5y ago
      The idea here is we can potentially partner with existing cloud providers who do not have the breadth of services AWS offers. People don't want to be locked in, they want to know they can still take the services with them but you're right they also don't want to manage it themselves anymore. I think this is where there's prime opportunity to work with the Hetzners, OVH's, Linode's of the world.
xtracto 5y ago
Just a couple of days ago I was thinking on how a really decentralised AWS would look like. I think something on top of STORJ, GolemNetwork, IPFS and similar distributed technologies could work. One of the missing links is compatibility with current services. Storj already has S3 compatibility, but something that allows you to setup a "virtual machine" a la EC2 with specific allocated RAM/CPU/HDD would be an interesting use case.
- VikingCoder 5y ago
  I don't think I want "distributed," I think I just want "federated." I keep hoping something like Standstorm.io will come along, that makes it easy for someone like me to host different apps for my friends and family.

19 points by asim 5y ago

The reason why AWS is so complex is because there is like 200 different services. I am sure AWS would be infinitely less complex with only 39 (and most of those are small things like get the current weather, stocks, currency, crypto, etc not actual services in the same sense as AWS). I appreciate the project, but advertising yourselves as a AWS alternative when you don't even have a EC2 competitor seems a little disingenuous.

Quentincestino 5y ago

That's nice af but AWS is already widely used :/

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
It's also very expensive and has considerable vendor lock-in. Open source alternatives are always welcome.
dang 5y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

theamk 5y ago

PSA: That "M3O" is read as "Micro". (I initially expected that it was "minio" deciding to rebrand to sound more like AWS) Also, this is not like AWS at all -- this is not IaaS offering, but a single specific microservices framework [0] and a hosting which specializes on apps using that framework. [0] https://micro.mu/introduction https://micro.mu/introduction

asim 5y ago
No, that's incorrect. We provide a catalog of services as public APIs consumed via HTTP/JSON. So far we offer 35+ services which you can see here https://m3o.com/explore https://m3o.com/explore. Those services are open source and you can see the source code at https://github.com/micro/services https://github.com/micro/services. The entire suite of services are built using the Micro platform which is also open source. Think Android for Cloud.

ignoramous 5y ago

The title is misleading. This project isn't open source, rather "source available". I get that the underlying packages from github.com/micro/* are FOSS, but m3o isn't: https://github.com/m3o/m3o/blob/8a533e3ab/LICENSE https://github.com/m3o/m3o/blob/8a533e3ab/LICENSE Also, the title could be prefixed with a Show HN.

asim 5y ago
If you look at the situation with Elastic and AWS, licensing has become something of a difficult situation. The entirety of the system is built on open source services and infrastructure. The pieces we've built around dev UX and self hosting we're still trying to figure out what to do with. Likely most of it will be moved to open source licenses. But it does not stop anyone from hosting it right now as long as they're not attempting to sell it as a service.
- runako 5y ago
  > Likely most of it will be moved to open source licenses. As OP said, the title is misleading as it is not open source now. Looks like an interesting project, why muddle the message by making an obviously false claim up front?
- solarkraft 5y ago
  I can honestly see why you would do this, but I’m not sure the over all ecosystem would benefit from this. Consider the user’s perspective. If they’ve decided to be locked into your stack and your company dies (/becomes prohibitively expensive/etc), they can still host the stuff themselves on premise - a welcome step out, but also quite expensive. There are reasons they wanted cloud hosting in the first place, after all. They can not get another cloud service. You may be able to somewhat work around this problem by doing a deal like the Qt Company has with KDE: If you can’t meet certain criteria, the code will be released under an open license.
  - asim 5y ago
    The idea here is we can potentially partner with existing cloud providers who do not have the breadth of services AWS offers. People don't want to be locked in, they want to know they can still take the services with them but you're right they also don't want to manage it themselves anymore. I think this is where there's prime opportunity to work with the Hetzners, OVH's, Linode's of the world.

xtracto 5y ago

Just a couple of days ago I was thinking on how a really decentralised AWS would look like. I think something on top of STORJ, GolemNetwork, IPFS and similar distributed technologies could work. One of the missing links is compatibility with current services. Storj already has S3 compatibility, but something that allows you to setup a "virtual machine" a la EC2 with specific allocated RAM/CPU/HDD would be an interesting use case.

VikingCoder 5y ago
I don't think I want "distributed," I think I just want "federated." I keep hoping something like Standstorm.io will come along, that makes it easy for someone like me to host different apps for my friends and family.