[ipaddr]

Competition would mean Amazon creating their own software. Taking software others made and using your monopoly eco-system and scale to drive the original creator out of the game kills the product.

Many support breaking up Amazon so others could compete not killing small entities and growing Amazon.

[skinfaxi]

> Taking software others made and using your monopoly eco-system and scale to drive the original creator out of the game kills the product

They took software that others gave away for free without restriction and did what they wanted with it. It took time but the community figured out this exploit path and patched it in subsequent license versions.

[wvh]

One could argue it was not given away for free, but with a silent expectation of reciprocity. Using open-source is a gentleman's agreement to be respectful towards the project, a good citizen, not to abuse and potentially contribute.

But you're right communities are now having to concoct a wild-growing collection of semi open-source licenses to protect themselves from abuse by a few big players.

[mschild]

Form a legal standpoint, you're correct.

From a moral/ethic one, its still shit.

You're legally allowed to do a whole lot of things. You can still be called an asshole for doing them.

[jeremyjh]

They knew what they were doing. They released OSS to build traction and a community. In some cases, the community contributed quite a lot to the quality of the software - even if not a lot of code. It never would have gained any traction or interest from enterprise buyers without that. Then that valuable software they had already given away was used to build a business that couldn’t create enough value on top of it.

The only people with any justification for hurt feelings are the community contributors.

[tedivm]

AWS literally paid for developers for the redis project, including the salary of core members. It's not like they didn't contribute back to the community.

[jeremyjh]

They pay for a lot more open source work than that as well, but they also don't get to make any special claims for doing that. None of it is charity - it is simply in the collective interest of a lot of tech companies to commoditize and share the costs of infrastructure software. Even shaming freeloaders is uncalled for and against the ethos of OSS, which is sort of implied in making your statement.

[rpdillon]

It's not just Amazon, it's also smaller providers like Dreamhost, which I've been using for 20 years. I feel like people are in favor of killing the hosting ecosystem so that we can support businesses that didn't have a working plan to monetize their open source offering.

[ThrowawayR2]

That's a risk they knowingly chose to accept when they opted for FOSS licensing. It's not as if people hadn't asked "Well, what if another party tries to fork our open source code for profit?" all the way back when FOSS was starting to gain traction in the 1990s.

[pessimizer]

OSS licensing.

Free Software was designed to avoid this, and has become stricter as the technology changed. Open Source was deliberately designed to thwart this. The entire intention of it was to allow businesses to resell work that was done for free. When you fork Free Software, your fork is also Free Software.

[pabs3]

Free Software licenses don't restrict profit making, even the AGPL wouldn't stop Amazon from using the same strategy to beat those OSS companies in the market.

[disgruntledphd2]

Yes, but at the very least, Amazon would need to contribute their code back, so it's not a complete loss.

[pabs3]

That is incorrect, the FSF licenses would require Amazon contribute code forward to their users, not back to the project.

Also, Amazon were already contributing code back when these companies changed their licenses, the companies don't care about code contributions, just money.

[streetfighter64]

Those greedy software companies only care about money, unlike the gracious Amazon that's all about code contributions... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon

[MaxBarraclough]

> OSS licensing. Free Software was designed to avoid this

This is pretty much a distinction without a difference. There are licences that qualify as one but not the other (per the FSF and OSI's determinations), but none are in widespread use.

> When you fork Free Software, your fork is also Free Software.

That would be copyleft. [0] Not all Free Software licences are copyleft licences.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft

[kikimora]

Original creator business model relies on extracting free labor from community. It backfired and they changed the license. They abuse contributors by betraying their trust and changing the license after AWS abused their business model. No good guys here.

[andrepd]

There's a lesson there then, isn't there? Use GPL

[jlokier]

The GPL has no effect on this issue. For service providers like AWS, who provide the service not the software, the GPL doesn't require them to do anything differently than with more permissive licenses.

[somenameforme]

++

I think the GPL has become somewhat obsolete because of this causing it create to completely nonsensical scenarios. For instance I can't comply with the GPL and add vanilla Stockfish (the currently strongest chess engine, licensed under GPL) to a chess app released on the Apple store, yet somebody can slightly modify the engine, keep all those modifications proprietary, and sell access to the engine on the same App store, without source access, so long as the computer is done through a middle-man server instead of being done locally.

The GPL no longer suffices to maintain the spirit of intent of the GPL. Like a peer comment mentioned it seems (??) that AGPL is their update to resolve this.

[pocksuppet]

Some courts [which?] have read things into open source licenses that aren't actually there, usually on the side of the user because that's obviously what the people who wrote the licenses intended. It's not impossible that GPL could force Amazon to give out their software.

[andrepd]

AGPL, it is implied.

[dmantis]

AGPLv3 does.

[temp8830]

*AGPL

[pocksuppet]

Use AGPL or SSPL or make a better worded version of SSPL