Had Amazon really been interested in truly changing their ways, as Microsoft has proven time and again, and delivering a truly, valuable and much-needed open source community — they could have started like Microsoft and Google by open sourcing some of its own proprietary technology. Goodness knows that open source cloud has seen its share of difficulty from Solaris, to CloudStack, and even OpenStack. Why not open source parts of YOUR core business? Makes me doubt the real motivations behind your “Open Distro.” It’s really easy to offer someone else’s technology for free, I suppose.
And that’s why I understand Redis, MongoDB, and other companies like InfluxData who found themselves having to change their licenses or close source some premium features to be able to build a sustainable business, and protect themselves from such cynical and hostile corporate behavior.
Preaching open source to a vibrant open source company with deep roots in the OSS values — that has been fully transparent about their needs to monetize and maintain a stellar product, and make dubious claims about its authenticity is simply disingenuous. This is Amazon seeing someone’s shiny toy, and just wanting it for themselves. MINE MINE MINE. This is called a fork.
And this is the dark side of open source. It is the adverse effect we would like the world of open source to be devoid of, as it will have destructive effects on everything that has been built and may be conceptualized and innovated under the auspices of open source.
Giancarlo Angulo's Blog