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Cloud Programming

Developer Says AWS Forked His Project and Launched It As Its Own Service (twitter.com) 158

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Tim Nolet, founder and chief technology officer of Checkly, tweeted on Friday: Oh @awscloud I really do love you! But next time you fork my OS project and present it as your new service, give the maintainers a short "nice job, kids" or something. Not necessary as per the APLv2 license, but still, ya know?
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Developer Says AWS Forked His Project and Launched It As Its Own Service More

Developer Says AWS Forked His Project and Launched It As Its Own Service

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  • Most AWS services are forked from open source (Score:3)

    by ebrandsberg ( 75344 ) on Friday October 16, 2020 @09:11AM (#60614560)

    Really, this is business as usual for all cloud providers.

  • Yep, dick move (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sneftel ( 15416 ) on Friday October 16, 2020 @09:14AM (#60614580)

    I assume this space is gonna fill up with variants of "so use GPL, pick a different license if you want to demand such-and-such", which entirely misses the point. This isn't about business models or monetization or IP or about enforcing anything, it's about expecting common courtesy. I think a lot of open source projects are developed with the goal of someone saying "thanks, you really helped me out", and perhaps the stretch goal of someone saying "oh, you're the one who developed X, huh?" Courtesy costs nothing.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dmay34 ( 6770232 )

      When Tim Nolet released his product, did he provide every software developer that contributed to the OSS that he used to make his product in a similar way that he's upset at Amazon for doing to him?

      No, he didn't.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Sneftel ( 15416 )

        I'm not sure what you mean by "did he provide every software developer", but if you mean "did he credit the developers whose work he built upon", absolutely he did. Read the docs.

      • > No, he didn't

        So I noticed this right on the front page of his project site:

        This project builds on other projects (see disclaimer below) but adds extensibility, configurability and a smoother UI. ...
        Headless recorder is the spiritual successor & love child of segment.io's Daydream (link) and ui recorder (link). Headless Recorder was previously named "Puppeteer Recorder".

        Amazon took his Headless Recorder and renamed it AWS Recorder, and with no attribution.

        In virtually ever other field, people are pr

        • But in this case, the author explicitly endorses plagiarism by stating effectively "You make take, reuse, or steal my code in its entirely with no attribution".

          I modified my OSS licence to be a modified APL license. It requires an acknowledgement to be accessible. Nothing more. I wanted a thank you, which makes my public code not a gift to the world, but a loan that must repayed with a thank-you.

        • It isn't "plagiarism," you're just an old boomer asshole who thinks Bezos is some sort of hippie so you hate him.

          Calling licensing software "plagiarism" would get an F even in Remedial English.

          Can you comprehend that receiving a license to copy software gives you permission to copy that software?

          And that when you have a license to copy somebody's software to use in your business, that doesn't mean you're allowed to their trade mark to your copy of it? Because the name is different than the code, the name is

          • > receiving a license to copy software

            You actually read any sentence from the post you replied to and you still don't realize that a copyright, as in a copy right license, is a different thing than plagiarism?

            You did read at least one sentence of my post before you replied, right? If not, maybe give it a try after you come down.

            • plagiarism
                n.
              The purloining or wrongful appropriation of another's ideas, writings, artistic designs, etc., and giving these forth as one's own; specifically, the offense of taking passages from another's compositions, and publishing them, either word for word or in substance, as one's own; literary theft.

              Ethical copying is not and cannot be plagiarism, Moron.

              LURN US SUM WERDS. START WITH PLAGIARISM.

    • Re:Yep, dick move (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BrainJunkie ( 6219718 ) on Friday October 16, 2020 @09:32AM (#60614652)

      it's about expecting common courtesy

      If you really do expect giant corporations to extend you common courtesy you are incredibly naive. They'll only ever do that if they think have to to become more profitable, and I don't see a path to that.

      So yes, if you expect to get some credit for your FOSS project you'll need to select a license that obligates those giant corporations to give it to you. They might still disregard that if they think the cost of disregarding will be less than its value, but at least you'll have a chance.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sneftel ( 15416 )

        As a developer employed by a giant corporation, I routinely and publicly credit those whose work I build upon, and consider it a moral obligation. As I said, courtesy costs nothing.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bws111 ( 1216812 )

          You mean you are allowed to make public statements on behalf of the 'giant corporation'? Bullshit.

    • Dude, when was the last time you sent a thank you note to the author of any open source project? That is not common practice (although maybe it should be).

      • That is not common practice (although maybe it should be).

        Now count the number of contributors to any major open source project.

      • I sent a thank you note to Monty when I first cut my teeth on MySQL 20 years ago. I've been stuck with Oracle since though - no thank you notes to Larry.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by godrik ( 1287354 )

      I agree, there is a difference between legality and custom.

      If you are going to use a library in a bigger service it is one thing. But fork and rename is something else.

      That being said, check twitter and you'll see that a PR person from AWS reached back to him saying he is looking into it. So you know, maybe something good will come out of it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      If 'common courtesy' was a real thing we wouldn't have laws, contracts, and licenses.

      I sometimes solicit businesses for donations to a non-profit I am involved with. I guess you think I should publicly thank those that donate (common courtesy), right? Well, it turns out that about half of them do not want to be publicly thanked for whatever reason. Moral of the story: 'common courtesy' isn't. If you have expecations, let the other party know. Don't make them guess.

    • I assume this space is gonna fill up with variants of "so use GPL, pick a different license if you want to demand such-and-such", which entirely misses the point. This isn't about business models or monetization or IP or about enforcing anything, it's about expecting common courtesy. I think a lot of open source projects are developed with the goal of someone saying "thanks, you really helped me out", and perhaps the stretch goal of someone saying "oh, you're the one who developed X, huh?" Courtesy costs nothing.

      oh come on, Amazon doesn't owe him anything beyond what the license requries, and making some kind of ethical test out of this is non-sense.

      Clearly this guy regrets that he didn't make the virtual "fist pump" part of his choosen license, or that he really is trying to extort some kind of renumeration from the huge Amazon. He didn't get paid, he feels slighted and out of control of "his" work, even though he decided to give it away long before Amazon ever saw it. Most of the FOSS licenses out there requri

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Naive children. The GPL e itâ(TM)s because big business will legitimately harvest ideas, improve them, spend the money and PR resources to popularize them, then take the profits. This is the way life works.

      This why if I use an open license, I use a non comercial one. I get yelled at for not being open enough by the naive children.

  • The developer used open source software to create his product. He then released his additions to it through the same license that he got it from. Then he complains that Amazon used his software in the same way he used someone else's.

    I'm having trouble having too much sympathy for him. (This is probably a smart PR move on his part to get some attention. In which case I tip my hat in approval.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sneftel ( 15416 )

      Read the tweet again. The developer didn't complain that Amazon used his software in the same way he used someone else's.

    • Re:Small developer uses OSS. Complains that it's O (Score:4, Informative)

      by lastman71 ( 1314797 ) on Friday October 16, 2020 @09:22AM (#60614612)

      Except he gives attribution to the original author. He just asks to Amazon the same courtesy.

      • Does APLv2 actually not require attribution?

      • If he wanted attention/attribution he should have picked a different license, one that requires attribution.

        But then he would have based his software on non-gpl code. Oh noes!!! Or created it all from scratch.

        He has no reason to complain. He could have based off FreeBSD-licences code and used the same basic license but added an advertising clause reuniting the software to give credit to him. Or even made the result closed source.

        Guess FreeBSD gives more freedom to developers than the GPL.

  • I could have GPL'd my code, but I wanted people to "steal it" and make tons of modifications to it, get money from it and not give anything back... and now I'm mad!!

  • Ethics (Score:2, Funny)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 )
    Isn't it well ascertained that Amazon is not an ethical company? Isn't this completely unsurprising and therefore 'not news'?
    • What is unethical about complying with the original owner's license terms?
      • Isn't it part of the license agreement that you give visible credit for the source of the work? If not, then I guess 'unethical' is not the right word. It just flies in the face when a company with the resources of Amazon have to lean on individual developers to get through the day. I guess maybe "incredibly cheap and disrespectful" would be a better term.

        • The GPL is a distribution license - it doesn't kick in until you distribute the binary. Running on a server is not distributing.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dskoll ( 99328 )

            True, but the work in question is a Chrome extension, which has to be distributed to be used.

          • The GPL is a distribution license - it doesn't kick in until you distribute the binary. Running on a server is not distributing.

            Under GPL v2 this is correct. Under GPL v3 please read the license carefully before running a service with modified code!

            • The GPLv3 doesn't get to define what triggers "distribution", copyright law does. That has not changed and cannot change, no matter how much legalese you write.

        • It just flies in the face when a company with the resources of Amazon have to lean on individual developers to get through the day. I guess maybe "incredibly cheap and disrespectful" would be a better term.

          The part that you don't understand about software licenses is that most of the licenses require this, but this is the license that specifically does not.

          When you're selecting this license, that is what you selected that was different from MIT/BSD licenses. It is why this license is popular.

          It is absurd to claim that the exact reason for the license to be different than other licenses is not ethical to choose. It is itself unethical, as it makes the difference a false choice.

          If choosing the thing for being d

    • Isn't it well ascertained

      Who is it that does the ascertaining, and who is it that chooses the ethics? Where do ethics come from? Is it the same as your moral values, or would Amazon have had to agree to something for it become an ethical requirement?

      that Amazon is not an ethical company?

      Is that how ethics works? You weigh an actor, to determine if They are fundamentally An Ethical Entity or an Unethical Entity? Or does it actually apply to behaviors, rather than individual people or entities?

  • This is feature of the APL (Score:5, Informative)

    by NaCh0 ( 6124 ) on Friday October 16, 2020 @09:34AM (#60614660) Homepage

    The Apache software license allows anyone to take your project and release closed source versions of it.

    There is no obligation for the forked project to share their closed source modifications back with you, the copyright holder. This is a feature of the Apache license.

    The obvious next question is how do you prevent this from happening?

    There is a well known solution. It is called the GPL. If he licensed his project as GPL, he would have the right to obtain the source code distributed by forked projects. He also would have achieved his goal of letting organizations keep private changes in house as long as they don't distribute their modified versions.

    More open source developers need to know this and choose carefully.

    • No, you don't automatically get the right to the modified sources.

      The GPL is a distribution license. If you never distribute the software, you don't have to show your source.

      Running on a server and sending the output to a client in no way qualifies as distributing either the binary or the source, so the GPL doesn't apply. You have no right to the source, an acknowledgement, nothing.

      So next time write software that can't run client-server, or use sources that aren't GPL - problem solved.

      And if it can

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by godrik ( 1287354 )

      The Apache software license allows anyone to take your project and release closed source versions of it.

      More open source developers need to know this and choose carefully.

      I would think that most developer are aware of that. I think that the "open source" community has played the game of "bad commie Stallman who does not want you to make money" for so long that developers have internalized that GPL is bad and that APL or 2 clause BSD is what you want.

      • No. In embedded we use Apache 2 license because there is no way in Hell we're going to release technical information about the ingredients in The Sauce.

        In the open source community, we use the Apache 2 license because it is compatible with both GPL and MIT/BSD. It is the only common license that everybody can use. Proprietary, secretive industrialists? Can use. GPL commies? Can use. MIT/BSD academics and socialists? Can use. Everybody can use it. Nobody is excluded, nobody is hated.

        If you thought GPL was ba

    • Yes, exactly. In embedded almost all the code we use is Apache licensed.

      If we use BSD or MIT code, we end up with a bunch of a license declarations on the back page of the manual PDF. It wastes paper when clients print the manual, and exposing them to the legalese makes them worry about if they need to talk to their lawyer. Clients do not enjoy thinking about lawyers. This makes it absolutely critical to only use Apache 2 licensed open source in products. Otherwise, everybody is going to pay for a commerc

    • The obvious next question is how do you prevent this from happening?

      No, the obvious question is, "Why are people willing to pay someone for your software project, when you are literally giving it away for free?" Ponder that and you'll eventually realize that what AWS is making money off of is the support for setting up and maintaining the service your project provides. Not your project itself.

      Preventing it from happening by releasing under GPL just means your software won't get as much widespread usage

  • Wrong play man (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday October 16, 2020 @11:02AM (#60615120)

    Should Amazon have revealed where the project came from?

    Probably.

    However that is the wrong play. You can be snide and complain about this, but who really cares.

    Instead, you should leverage the hell out of this and claim that Amazon is working with you on whatever it was they have released, maybe even renaming your open source project to the Amazon name.

    You can an instant resume boost by being the guy who supplied Amazon a framework they are deploying, maybe even a lot of contracting work out of it.

    The best thing is, it's not even unethical because you are an expert on it, and Amazon really did choose you even if they didn't let you know.

    This is the play of the future, leave honeypot open source items for others to use, then take social clout from them whenever they do so. Press releasing, corporate logos on your about page, the whole nine yards.

    • Instead, you should leverage the hell out of this and claim that Amazon is working with you on whatever it was they have released, maybe even renaming your open source project to the Amazon name.

      So instead of complaining that you're too dumb to chose the correct license for your project you think the programmer should commit actual fraud?

      Lying on your resume doesn't get you a job outside of politics.

    • The Amazon project page has this at the bottom:

      "Credits: CloudWatch Synthetics Recorder is based on the Headless recorder. "

      So...

  • Valuable lesson (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Friday October 16, 2020 @11:02AM (#60615122) Homepage

    Something I learned early on based on observing other people:

    "Don't overestimate your own altruism. If you really want reciprocation, and it'd ruin your day not to have it, make sure to have an explicit, binding agreement, or don't do it."

    I've seen people go to great lengths to make others big favours, and end up angry, bitter and burnt out when they weren't thanked enough.

    By this I don't mean that one should be a dick, but one should be in touch with their own nature and limits. If you know that deep down you'd be really angry if a favor wasn't reciprocated, then for your own good either refuse to do it, or make sure to agree on what you'll get in exchange before doing it. Don't do big favours hoping people will guess what you want. This doesn't mean you can't do favours without strings attached, you just have to make sure that if something goes wrong, you're okay with it.

    And I think this especially applies to things like software licensing, that are attached to many hours, if not months or years of hard work. If you really want credit or contributions, don't put the APL on it and hope people will do what you've not required of them just to be nice. Use the GPL, GPL3, or even AGPL. Everybody will be better off in the end, and if somebody wants to use your work and feels the license is too onerous, there's always dual licensing.

    • ... end up angry....

      You know, some people use gifts to manipulate other people. In fact, some folks go so far as to expect gratitude for doing me some favor or giving me something I neither asked for, nor wanted. And they're angry when their manipulation tactics don't work.

      It seems a bit strange to me that public officials must be warned against accepting gifts. Why, oh why, would I even bother to listen to your opinion when you've already given me what I want!? It's like reverse bribery in which a p

  • Remedy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Friday October 16, 2020 @11:21AM (#60615226)
    Choose another license, or make your own.

  • I doubt I'd have ever heard of this project OR Amazon ripping it off if it wasn't for their behavior prompting this story. So, yes, dick move, Amazon, but also, bad publicity, Amazon. This will be in the back of my head (admittedly, with a lot of other things) when I decide on a cloud space provider soon. I'm one sale. But there's thousands of "me" seeing this.

  • Alternate headline: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday October 16, 2020 @12:52PM (#60615710)

    Developer upset that he chose the wrong license for his project now that someone with money is involved.

  • Credits have been added (Score:3)

    by stevel ( 64802 ) on Friday October 16, 2020 @03:44PM (#60616336) Homepage

    The Amazon blog post [amazon.com] announcing the service now has at the end:

    Credits: CloudWatch Synthetics Recorder is based on the Headless recorder [github.com].

    I don't know when it was added.

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