I've got an alternative history of Amazon's switch to Linux and creation of AWS that I heard from an open source project they coopted and practically destroyed. Keep in mind this story is 2nd hand and the open source developers were BITTER, but Amazon is famous for this:
https://twitter.com/DanRose999/status/1347677573900242944
I joined this other project that was started by a guy who sold cluster servers to big secret government agencies, and he was working with an open source team that had a project similar to Beowulf en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_c… but would be closer to Chef or Puppet.
This project was small, maybe 4 developers, and what they wrote did very nice automated provisioning of machines, which you could then use in a cluster. When I started working with them though they were JEEERRRRKS. Wow, they were absolute turds.
I talked to the guy running the project and a few of the team members and the reason they were such jerks is they found out Amazon had used their project to build AWS, and because of the GPL SaaS loophole, Amazon never contributed anything back.
Sound familiar?
Sound familiar?
IIRC, their story was some Amazon devs were hanging out secretly in the IRC asking for help and setting things up. Eventually they get found out, and the team thought they'd made it. Amazon is going to say they used it, maybe hire them, then AWS goes live and nothing. Silence.
You might be thinking, "If those FLOSS guys are jerks they deserve it." I'm going to counter with Amazon at the time was a multi-billion dollar company, and they were doing the classic BS of begging for free support and giving zero credit or code back, and that's exploitation.
This is just one project that Amazon and all of the FAANGs screw over this way. It used to be that if you wrote a project a huge company used you received:
1. Code back
2. A job
3. Recognition for promotional purposes
The FAANGs figured out they don't have to honor this.
1. Code back
2. A job
3. Recognition for promotional purposes
The FAANGs figured out they don't have to honor this.
Think about this Amazon situation. What if Amazon had announced that, thanks to this project, they were able to save X billions a year and start their own new AWS business?
That project's team could then seek investment to turn pro, or at least find work more easily.
That project's team could then seek investment to turn pro, or at least find work more easily.
Instead, Amazon has a history of straight up exploiting open source, and then turning around and pretending that 95% of their tech isn't borrowed from better programmers working for free. They won't even give credit, and completely steal others work:
https://twitter.com/tim_nolet/status/1317061818574082050
In this (yet another case) Tim Nolet figured out that they literally rebranded his project and started selling it, giving him zero credit at all, then the glorious thing after is this poor guy in charge of open source has to find out through Twitter: 
This is the real Amazon. They're a source code Robber Baron at best:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_ba…
When I read threads like this where Amazon employees are bragging about how great they are I just see under the surface how they exploit open source and usually give nothing back.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_ba…
When I read threads like this where Amazon employees are bragging about how great they are I just see under the surface how they exploit open source and usually give nothing back.
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