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> It's other people's software, so it's very rich of Bitnami to accuse anyone of freeloading when their only contribution is adding config options to software
by darkwater 1y ago
> It's other people's software, so it's very rich of Bitnami to accuse anyone of freeloading when their only contribution is adding config options to software
I'm not going to defend a corporation but this sentence feels very entitled. They were providing it for free, you could use it. They are not going to provide it for free anymore, you migrate to something else or self-maintain it and say "thank you for the base work you did I can use now"
- throw__away7391 1y agoWhen a project is abandoned, when updates are slow, when features people want are not being released, when tracking upstream dependency updates are delayed, sure, you are not entitled to anything and I’ll be the first one to say get off your butt and contribute. In the other hand when you engage with the community for years under an OSS/free context then once the community has invested in your project, learning it, creating learning resources for it, integrating it into their own projects, and you never communicated your intention to “wait until it gets big then then pull the rug” it feels like a disingenuous bait and switch. The reason it feels that way is because it is a disingenuous bait and switch. This is even more so the case when you built your project on top of other projects. I have no problem using a paid product or service or paying for support on a OSS product, but will never pay one of these bait and switch scams a dime, no matter how much engineering effort it takes.
- darkwater 1y agoI understand the sentiment and where it comes from, and I'm not saying it's a good decision from Broadcom (I think it is a bad one indeed!). But still, this risk is part of the game. Even if it was full opensource and with a broad community, it was still a single vendor, not even a non-profit umbrella like the Apache or Linux Foundation. So, the risk of trusting a single vendor was there. The good thing of it being opensource is that someone else (company, community, foundation or whatever) can step in, fork it, and maintain it from now on, unlike what happens with proprietary software or SaaS.
- chris_wot 1y agoIt’s Broadcom. Don’t use anything from them unless you can’t avoid it. Same applies to Oracle.
- spydum 1y agoThe problem is when they acquire software or services you have dependended on for decades, hard to change some of that stuff. However, I agree: if this does happen to you, move very fast to put some distance between you and this company. They will bleed you.
- ownagefool 1y agoAye, It's a bit like saying you can't sell your code, because you wrote it in someone elses software. Writing a decent Dockerfile isn't hard, and keeping it maintained and working with new versions is still work and it's past the wheelhouse of very many people. It's entirely reasonable to want paid for that effort. That said, it's not work I personally value enough to put my hand in my pocket, and that's a fair take too.
- cthor 1y agoVendor lock-in is a thing. Switching costs are a thing. They know this. That's the whole business model. They're expecting that the cost of switching to outweigh the cost of the subscription. I get that this business model is fashionable amongst wannabe rent-seekers, but it's still antisocial and should be shunned.
- darkwater 1y agoEvaluating the risks of vendor lock-in is a buyer's task, unless it is a protected market or there is a monopoly abuse involved. In this case, nobody forced (generic) you to use Bitnami's Docker images, you probably just thought "how convenient, always updated and easy to pull, one less thing to worry about". Which is fine, but it's always a bet on what will happen in the future.
- cthor 1y agoYes, yes. And a person who's pick-pocketed may well do better to protect their pockets. This does not absolve the thief. Reasonable people can disagree about the degree to which vendor lock-in is antisocial or the degree to which there even is vendor lock-in here. But telling victims of such behavior to just suck it up and price it in only serves to distract from and abet actors abusing positions of power to rent seek and create low trust environments. It's not a systemic solution and it's not a serious engagement with the criticism levied.
- darkwater 1y ago> Yes, yes. And a person who's pick-pocketed may well do better to protect their pockets. This does not absolve the thief. Freedom of roaming without having to worry about pickpockets it's one thing. Deciding that you go with the opensource offering of a company because it's convenient for you is another. I know it's just one example but the entitlement here is _the key_. You are entitled to go to whatever zone of a city and it's not right to blame the victim in that case. You are not entitled to have part of the business decisions of a company you were a "client" without paying a dime or signing any binding contract. You would be entitled to that if they were breaking some opensource license, for example.
- patmcc 1y agoI think it's perfectly fair for them to say "we're not doing this any more". The sketchy part is deleting the public registry at docker.io/bitnami rather than just no longer updating it. Why can't docker.io/bitnami become the 'legacy' registry, receive no future updates, so at least folks who don't hear this news won't have pulls suddenly fail? edit: like if I have a package on NPM and I want to stop offering it, I think it's shitty to just delete it. That breaks builds.