[NoahZuniga]

Well, many developers publish their code not because they want to specifically make a successful open source project, but because they made something that was useful to themselves, and like the idea behind open source. In that case it makes more sense to do a copyleft license because it will legally require all derivatives to also follow that open source idea.

[jaredklewis]

Yea I think stuff like this is great and will have some impact around the edges. Perhaps particularly in the realm of end-user software, like a window tiling manager.

But once we start talking about the kind of software large corporations (like AWS) will have an interest in, projects have to be successful to be useful. Software requires maintenance so the maintainers need to be able to devote their time to maintaining and improving the project. So this will select for projects that are successful enough that the maintainers can focus on it fully (either because some company hires them to work on their own project, they can charge high consulting fees because of their association with the project, or whatever).

I think "the code" (the thing covered by copyright) in most cases is not as valuable as "the project:" the leadership, the contributors, the users, the norms and practices, the commitment to ongoing maintenance, and so on. So just lots of individuals all putting pieces of their code out there with GPL probably doesn't make a lot of impact (though there is nothing wrong with it), because most users don't want "code" they want a "project" they can rely on.

[swiftcoder]

> once we start talking about the kind of software large corporations (like AWS) will have an interest in

I'm not sure why someone who is spending their limited free time building software to give away for free would want Amazon as a downstream consumer

Do you enjoy spending your nights and weekends dealing with CVE reports, while a high-6-figure BigTech engineer nags you that they need it fixed?

[jaredklewis]

We definitely agree on this point. Different licenses select for different things.

It is an annoying problem to have, but if your goal is to be able to support yourself by working on your open source project full time (not saying this has to be or should be everyone’s goal), then having big tech engineers nagging you is probably a good problem to have.

[swiftcoder]

Honestly haven't seen many open-source maintainers convert a BigTech downstream into recurring revenue. I'm sure it does happen, but its far from the norm

[Aurornis]

If your project gets adopted by Big Tech then your market rate as an engineer just went way up.

It’s a huge badge of honor and a rare accomplishment. You’re thinking too directly if you can’t imagine how having your OSS project adopted by Big Tech isn’t a career boost.

[zelphirkalt]

Maybe it can happen, but ask the people maintaining open source projects long term, how much it helped them pass silly leetcode interviews, which companies insist must be done, even if you have a golden track record.

[swiftcoder]

Maybe in specific fields this is true, but a lot of folks in Big Tech view open source as where developers who couldn't hack the interviews end up (they also hold a pretty similar view of startup engineers, unless they are ex-FAANG)

[Aurornis]

> I'm not sure why someone who is spending their limited free time building software to give away for free would want Amazon as a downstream consumer

Are you kidding? This is the dream scenario for many open source projects: Getting adopted by a major company is a claim to fame like none other.

> Do you enjoy spending your nights and weekends dealing with CVE reports, while a high-6-figure BigTech engineer nags you that they need it fixed?

Then don’t? You don’t have to do anything. It’s fine to ignore it you want.

Practically speaking, Amazon engineers aren’t going to sit around and hope the maintainer fixes the thing that unblocks them. If they actually need it, they’ll fix it. They might fork it. They might try to recruit the person.

But nothing obligates you to do anything. This hand-wringing about the idea that someone might find the project useful enough to identify issues and report them is rather ridiculous. Just ignore it if that’s prerogative.

[swiftcoder]

Having been upstream of this problem (I was engineer at Amazon for ~5 years), they will typically not do any of those things.

The amount of paperwork they have to jump through just to send you a patch makes it not worthwhile. They might fork in extremis, but to do that they first have to justify to management that it's worth ongoing effort to support. Hiring a maintainer really only happens for truly foundational projects like the Xen hypervisor.

What they will do is use the public nature of the CVE process to pressure you to patch with the SLA - and that's generally pretty effective. Only a few open source groups (for example, the npm team) have enough public clout to reject CVEs without reputation damage.

[account42]

AWS doesn't seem to have an issue with using copyleft software.

[eadmund]

Which copyleft software does AWS use? Linux, certainly. And MariaDB/MySQL (but also the BSD-like PostgreSQL). I was under the impression that it typically avoids GPL software when there is a BSD- or MIT-licensed alternative.

[bigstrat2003]

> In that case it makes more sense to do a copyleft license because it will legally require all derivatives to also follow that open source idea.

That is a matter of opinion. I have put out some open source stuff under the form you mentioned, and it's always BSD or another permissive license. I view it as quite wrong to force my moral choices upon others, so I give others the freedom to use whatever license they like. In my case, that is what makes sense because of my own moral convictions.