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It would seem, that Amazon "donated" the Lumberyard/CryTec Engine to the Open 3D foundation, which is a newly created subsidiary of the Linux foundation. It's

by hooby 5y ago

It would seem, that Amazon "donated" the Lumberyard/CryTec Engine to the Open 3D foundation, which is a newly created subsidiary of the Linux foundation. It's available under very permissive licenses - Apache 2.0 or MIT, whichever you prefer - no strings attached. With Amazon being just one of 20 different founding members, and under the stewardship of the Linux foundation, it might just be, that this project is sufficiently independent from AWS now, to stand on it's own. Does anyone know if the foundation does grant any special "founding member" rights to AWS? Could AWS theoretically still pull some crazy stuff, like Microsoft recently did with the .NET foundation?

moonchrome 5y ago
>Does anyone know if the foundation does grant any special "founding member" rights to AWS? Could AWS theoretically still pull some crazy stuff, like Microsoft recently did with the .NET foundation? Why does it matter ? It's Apache 2.0, they can't pin you for using it on patents or copyright. For a 3D engine it should be more realistic to fork if you don't agree with the direction.
slimsag 5y ago
Despite ~20 members in the Open3D Foundation, it's nearly impossible to find any impactful contributor that is not an Amazon employee[0] [0] https://github.com/o3de/o3de/graphs/contributors https://github.com/o3de/o3de/graphs/contributors
- hooby 5y ago
  That does not seem particularly unusual to me? This is a piece of formerly proprietary software, that is now being made open source. So of course almost all contributors would be employees of the former owner of the proprietary version of the software. Just like for example Doom was still 100% made by id software, at the moment of it becoming open source. How this evolves/develops remains to be seen, of course. But as of right now, I'd say that's to be expected.
Mikeb85 5y ago
> Could AWS theoretically still pull some crazy stuff They could but they won't. In my experience Amazon doesn't care about anything except wanting people to use their infrastructure. While they haven't shown Google levels of goodwill towards OSS they also have never shown MS levels of contempt.
- hooby 5y ago
  Well, Microsoft is contractually the ONLY founding member of their foundation, and the statutes define that the executive officer has to come from the founding member, and that every decision the foundation makes has to be approved by the executive officer. That setup gives Microsoft 100% control over the foundation. So, unless this new foundation's statutes grant special privileges to AWS - they can't possibly exert the same level of control over it, that Microsoft has over the .NET foundation. If those 20 founding members all have some voting and veto power, then AWS can't make unilateral decisions. That's what my question was about - how is the foundation set up, and how much power does Amazon have over it? If the foundation is sufficiently independent from AWS, then we are golden.

by hooby 5y ago

moonchrome 5y ago

>Does anyone know if the foundation does grant any special "founding member" rights to AWS? Could AWS theoretically still pull some crazy stuff, like Microsoft recently did with the .NET foundation? Why does it matter ? It's Apache 2.0, they can't pin you for using it on patents or copyright. For a 3D engine it should be more realistic to fork if you don't agree with the direction.

slimsag 5y ago

Despite ~20 members in the Open3D Foundation, it's nearly impossible to find any impactful contributor that is not an Amazon employee[0] [0] https://github.com/o3de/o3de/graphs/contributors https://github.com/o3de/o3de/graphs/contributors

hooby 5y ago
That does not seem particularly unusual to me? This is a piece of formerly proprietary software, that is now being made open source. So of course almost all contributors would be employees of the former owner of the proprietary version of the software. Just like for example Doom was still 100% made by id software, at the moment of it becoming open source. How this evolves/develops remains to be seen, of course. But as of right now, I'd say that's to be expected.

Mikeb85 5y ago

> Could AWS theoretically still pull some crazy stuff They could but they won't. In my experience Amazon doesn't care about anything except wanting people to use their infrastructure. While they haven't shown Google levels of goodwill towards OSS they also have never shown MS levels of contempt.

hooby 5y ago
Well, Microsoft is contractually the ONLY founding member of their foundation, and the statutes define that the executive officer has to come from the founding member, and that every decision the foundation makes has to be approved by the executive officer. That setup gives Microsoft 100% control over the foundation. So, unless this new foundation's statutes grant special privileges to AWS - they can't possibly exert the same level of control over it, that Microsoft has over the .NET foundation. If those 20 founding members all have some voting and veto power, then AWS can't make unilateral decisions. That's what my question was about - how is the foundation set up, and how much power does Amazon have over it? If the foundation is sufficiently independent from AWS, then we are golden.