MariaDB CEO Accuses Large Cloud Vendors of Strip-Mining Open Source (zdnet.com)

Big cloud companies are "strip-mining open-source technologies and companies," complains Michael Howard, CEO of MariaDB. At their developer conference, Howard accused "big cloud" of "really abusing the license and privilege [of open source], by not giving back to the community." ZDNet reports: Even as MariaDB grows by leaps and bounds in enterprise computing at Oracle's expense, Howard sees Oracle and Amazon fighting against it. "Oracle as the example of on-premise lock-in and Amazon being the example of cloud lock-in. You could interchange the names, you can honestly say now that Amazon should just be called Oracle Prime...."

In the first keynote, Austin Rutherford, MariaDB's VP of Customer Success, showed the result of a HammerDB benchmark on AWS EC2... In these tests, AWS's default MariaDB instances did poorly, while AWS homebrew Aurora, which is built on top of MySQL, consistently beat them. The top-performing database management system of all was MariaDB Managed Services on AWS. "My first reaction when I looked at the benchmarks," said Howard, was "maybe there's incompetence going on. Maybe they just don't know how to optimize a DBMS." He observed that one MariaDB customer, one of the biggest retail drug companies in the world, had told MariaDB that "Amazon offers the most vanilla MariaDB around. There's nothing enterprise about it. We could just install MariaDB from source on EC2 and do as well."

He then "began to wonder, Is there something that they're deliberately crippling?" Howard wouldn't go so far as to say AWS is consciously doing a poor job of implementing its MariaDB instances. Howard did say, "And then it became clear that, however, you want to articulate this, there is something not kosher happening." Howard doesn't have much against AWS promoting its own brands... But, if AWS's going out of its way to make a rival service look inferior to its own, well, Howard's not happy about that.
ZDNet adds that "it's also quite possible that unoptimized generic MariaDB instance will simply lag behind AWS-optimized Aurora.

"That said, even in this most innocent take on the benchmark results, cloud customers would be wise to take into consideration that cloud instances of any specific software service may not be created equal."

Comments

Does anyone have a car analogy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not comprehending enough of it.

Re:Does anyone have a car analogy?

[guruevi]

Amazon basically offers 3 or 4 versions of the same car going from "you rent and maintain it yourself" to "you rent and we maintain and provide a driver for you". However it seems that if you bring your own mechanic and driver, no matter how skillful they are, their drivers and mechanics get consistently and measurably better performance out of the same car depending on the amount of money you pay to them even though they're all supposedly the same cars with the same specs.

Re:Does anyone have a car analogy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes you can't afford a mechanic or your own driver. Management gives you so little time and resources to get their projects done that you're better off having Aurora managed DB even though the performance may differ from what a database guru can achieve.

Re:Does anyone have a car analogy?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Like VW emissions tests.

I've not seen this with AWS. I'm afraid that I have seen it, repeatedly, with in-house performance tests for favored projects, especially when the developer proposing the new technology runs only small scale tests on their laptop with stripped data sets.

Re:Does anyone have a car analogy?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

out of the same car

Is that part accurate? I would have thought that this car has special modifications.

Re: Does anyone have a car analogy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone designed a car and gave the design away for free, and are butthurt that companies are building cars and selling them instead of putting a bunch of money into improving the design.

Re:Does anyone have a car analogy?

[Antique Geekmeister]

The fraud involved hundreds of thousands of vehicles tuned or modified to enable emissions controls when being tested, but turn off emissions controls when in normal use. See https://www.bbc.com/news/busin... .

Re: Does anyone have a car analogy?

[rogoshen1]

Or:
being butthurt that you go through all the trouble and hassle of securing food and water for yourself, and then some parasitic worm latches onto your small intestine, giving nothing back to you, and freeloading off of your hard work.

Re:Does anyone have a car analogy?

[higuita]

missing info for the car analogy ... if you hire their card and driver, you can not swap cars anymore, you either keep using it or have to rebuild your car and fix any dependency you may have to the old car service

Re:Does anyone have a car analogy?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I thought we were talking about databases, not about VW? Is Aurora, "which is built on top of MySQL", the *same* software ("the same car") as MySQL? Or a modified one?

Re:Does anyone have a car analogy?

[Antique Geekmeister]

I was comparing the VW fraud to database fraud and CPU benchmark fraud. Many hardware vendors can, and have fraudelently improved performance when running their own preferred software suite or hindered it when running other people's software for benchmarks.

Re:Does anyone have a car analogy?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

In that case I'm thoroughly confused how you managed to mentally jump from Amazon databases to VW diesel cars.

Re:Does anyone have a car analogy?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Oh? I thought it was clear. I was comparing the type of fraud that VW committed, when they tuned their diesel engines to provide better results when cars were tested for emissions. That's comparable to the tuning of database performance to provide false results when also performance tested. I cannot personally swear that AWS does this: it would not surprise me, and it's certainly occurred with other companies, such as CPU testing.

Re:Does anyone have a car analogy?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That's comparable to the tuning of database performance to provide false results when also performance tested.

I wasn't under the impression was that the problem was "false results" (???), but rather performance-enhancing code patches in Amazon's fork compared to the vanilla installation. That's no "false results", but rather improved top speed, if I were to use another (flawed) car analogy.

Aurora performance is awful, too

[shatteredsilicon]

I've consistently seen Aurora MySQL performance worse than RDS MySQL on writes, and overall, a carefully tuned (in a way you can't tune RDS or Aurora due to lack of access) MariaDB instance on EC2 will utterly annihilate Aurora and RDS on overall performance, for same instance sizes. Of course, a bare metal setup of the same size (same CPU cores, same RAM amount) will annihilate the EC2 instance on performance and at about half of the TCO over three years, but nobody seems to care about that these days.

Re:Aurora performance is awful, too

[phantomfive]

a bare metal setup of the same size (same CPU cores, same RAM amount) will annihilate the EC2 instance on performance and at about half of the TCO over three years, but nobody seems to care about that these days.

I think most people don't know how to set that up, and they are afraid they won't be able to scale.

Fear of not being able to scale seems like the #1 concern in SV these days, but I swear to you for the average startup there are many, many more important problems you have to solve first.

Re:Aurora performance is awful, too

[whoever57]

Fear of not being able to scale seems like the #1 concern in SV these days,

As well as scaling issues, what moving to EC2, Google Cloud or other solutions gets you is a possible reduction in system admin costs.

Of course, there is a minimum: if you only have one system admin, you probably can't reduce your system admin costs.

Re:Aurora performance is awful, too

[Antique Geekmeister]

A key factor is "possible" there. When your original sys-admin tasks have never been automated or kept in source control, the costs of shifting to a managed environment are startling. Decades of technical debt are often due in a very short period. I've particularly run into this with clients or partners who insist on optimizing their own kernels.

Re: Aurora performance is awful, too

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a winner.

The last thing that matters is raw speed for 99.9999% of startups.

This disease kills in all dotcom bubbles.

Re:Aurora performance is awful, too

[sfcat]

Fear of not being able to scale seems like the #1 concern in SV these days, but I swear to you for the average startup there are many, many more important problems you have to solve first.

Exactly. And even if they don't have scaling problems, since all the *cool* kids are working on scale issues so should they. At company I worked for recently, one that you have probably heard of and probably has your data, at peak they handle about ~12000 web requests a minute...not a second, a minute. That's 200/second, on a 50 server array. That's 4 requests a second per machine...4...not 4000, or 400...as in my phone could do it without me noticing a slowdown in performance...4. So of course they spent gobs of money moving from their custom and very modern data centers with high uptime to GCE with terrible performance, just so they could "scale". Remember, 4 requests/machine/second is the max they had to handle before. Maybe 10% of the 600 engineers they had understood just how silly this all was. But the CTO, who started as a PHP programmer at the company when it was first starting, didn't understand any of this and just let his "professional" managers run everything into the ground. Its absurd really....the software industry is now a parody of itself...

Re:Aurora performance is awful, too

[sfcat]

A key factor is "possible" there. When your original sys-admin tasks have never been automated or kept in source control, the costs of shifting to a managed environment are startling. Decades of technical debt are often due in a very short period. I've particularly run into this with clients or partners who insist on optimizing their own kernels.

Its possible for me to disappear and reappear in China due to quantum effects. Most cloud deployments end in disappointment. Then some snarky engineer from a larger company will say something about your company, "not being mature enough for the cloud". No shit...didn't stop the salespeople from that engineer's employeer from pushing their junky cloud on our management. Fuck google...my new curse for those I really don't like..."May your company switch to GCE and BigQuery"...

Re: Aurora performance is awful, too

[Billly Gates]

To management they win. They want bargain basement IT costs where we are all are just putting out fires all day and not using our brains to being proactive with a good infrastructure. Opps Indian help desk is putting out the easy fires I mean . Management wants that nice bonus and a rise in the short term share price over all else

Re:Aurora performance is awful, too

[phantomfive]

Recently I saw a company with three different nosql databases (and a relational database for slower things). This was to support fewer than 1,000 users. I showed them the Amazon "How to scale to 10million users" video (it's all over youtube), and sent them a summary of the bullet points (at around 1,000 users, we should consider getting off sqlite3. By 500,000 users, we need to have performance monitoring in place). That gave the non-technical people a road-map idea of priorities, and linking to Amazon gave it authority, even if they didn't actually watch it.

Re:Aurora performance is awful, too

[Anne Thwacks]

.the software industry is now a parody of itself

Well, here you have a ring-side seat for free (as in beer), so don't complain or people will expect you to contribute for laughs (you could donate a PHP joke, but I am sure there are more than enough on Github).

Re:Aurora performance is awful, too

[Anonymous Coward]

But..... it's the cloud!!!!

Re:Aurora performance is awful, too

[matpod]

Out of curiosity, do you have benchmarks for this?

AWS customers

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

deserve everything they get.

Just manage your own damn IT infrastructure you lazy sumbitches, and then you'll get as much performances you're willing to devote time and resources to. But if you're a cheapstake cloud sucker, you get what you pay for.

Re:AWS customers

[shatteredsilicon]

They don't get what they pay for. AWS is ludicrously expensive.

Re:AWS customers

[gweihir]

In addition, and that may be even more important, you get in-house experts that have loyalty to you.

Re:AWS customers

[Anonymous Coward]

The place I worked did a wholesale forklift to an AWS VPC, and are slowly moving to AWS applications. They are saving tons of money by doing this.

* No more rackers/stackers needed.
* No more wasting time buying server hardware.
* No more server room and expensive CRACs.
* The network admin count was pared down to just a few who know AWS.
* The OS guys were shown the door, because you really just need DevOps and making containers.
* The core/edge network fabric is gone, and all the developers need are pipes to the VPC.
* No need to worry about a backup infrastructure, since CodeCommit isn't going anywhere, and Aurora does its own snapshots.
* Lambda means that you don't have to give a rat's ass about servers.
* Amazon can do a lot better with server administration than all but the best places.
* Investors love less CapEx. Moving stuff to OpEx makes one's stock look good.

Sorry, NoOps is the way of the future, get used to it, or find a buggy whip company.

Re:AWS customers

[phantomfive]

Lambda means that you don't have to give a rat's ass about servers.

Whenever someone talks about how they use Lambda, you know their setup is messed up.

Re: AWS customers

[Anonymous Coward]

Written by someone who has never worked in AWS and seen a bill 5x what was budgeted for because someone clicked the wrong button and AWS doesnt give a shit even though you never used that resource.

Re:AWS customers

[jtara]

It is the easy choice for management, because "everybody uses AWS".

I've had to constantly defend my decision to use IBM Cloud as backend for an educational app. Because "everybody else" uses AWS. And this is in a primarily academic setting and background (spinoff from a project originally developed at a major U.S. university). We faced some issues with learning curve and the fact that you can't easily find consultants with IBM Cloud experience, and the "everybody" argument came up. It was eventually resolved, we got over the learning curve, and IBM has great support if you are willing to pony-up a modest $200/month for support.

It boggles my mind that so many small/medium/large businesses in retail, wholesale, transportation, distribution, etc. are trusting their data and IT to and funding a company that is out to put them out of business. AWS is the ONLY real money-maker at Amazon. Their online retail operation is FINALLY making a 2% profit!

IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure are the RATIONAL choices right now if you want to use "big cloud" for critical infrastructure. We did not go with Azure because we do not have a Windows-based infrastructure, not into ASP, etc. etc. Though I realize that Azure has more Linux servers than Windows and offers the same open-source Linux-based solutions as the other cloud services. I think Azure would be a FINE choice for any company that is already bought-in to the Microsoft infrastructure, as they offer many unique services that would allow companies with in-house Windows-based server to move some or all to the cloud.

Neither IBM nor Microsoft is interested in putting your retail business out of business.

Re:AWS customers

[raftpeople]

Too true! I also have no sympathy for people that complain about cpu performance,if you're a cheapskate and just buy Intel, then you get what you paid for. If you put in some time and resources, you can create an ASIC specific for your workload that will outperform pretty much anything.

Re:AWS customers

[jtara]

The place I worked did a wholesale forklift to an AWS VPC, and are slowly moving to AWS applications. They are saving tons of money by doing this.

Oversimplification.

The place I worked 2008-ish (the console-gaming part of a large international corporation) did this. They had a problem that when a new console game came out, it might be a huge hit or a flop. They either wound-up scouring sales channels in desperation trying to get more servers STAT, or else have depreciating assets collecting dust.

So, they moved game backends to AWS. For a while.

Subsequently - I've heard - they've built their own internal cloud.

And thus saving another ton of money.

I'd imagine they still use AWS for peaking, unexpected successes, etc.

This is a smart way for larger organizations to use cloud services. (Not that this is the very smartest of organizations.... there WAS that thing with the Koreans...)

Re:AWS customers

[phantomfive]

IBM has great support if you are willing to pony-up a modest $200/month for support.

What do you get for that?

Re:AWS customers

[Grand Facade]

"It boggles my mind that so many small/medium/large businesses in retail, wholesale, transportation, distribution, etc. are trusting their data and IT to and funding a company that is out to put them out of business."

This right here is the crux of the biscuit.

I don't trust my personal info to the cloud, why in the fuck would a corporation allow the fox to run the chicken coop?

Ask Cisco what happened when they outsourced hardware production.

That apple hanging in Bezos' tree just waiting to be plucked is too big of a temptation, it's not an if it's a when.
Problem is by the time it is discovered it will be too late Bezos will have already sniffed and slurped, game over.
And Bezos will be sitting pretty, the corps will line up to service him so he will allow them to manage what will then be his companies.

The bean counters that started all this won't care, they have inflated their parachutes and moved on.

Re:AWS customers

[Anonymous Coward]

If you never use Azure, how do you know it's the rational choice? It might be a complete, unworkable mess as far as you know.

Re: AWS customers

[Billly Gates]

It's not us on slashdot. It's those pesky executives who see those Amazon Build advertisements in every airport. They then see the cost savings by firing IT and having Microsoft and Amazon do the job for them

They want to get their bonus by cutting costs. Poor performance? Ha, you're IT. That's your problem not theirs for being smart

Re:AWS customers

[Fnkmaster]

Why? For large memory-requiring jobs and places where the latency of occasional cold start cases isn't acceptable, Lambda isn't the right tool. For periodic batch jobs, components in workflows, or response handling logic where some latency variability is acceptable, it's a great tool and saves a lot of costs over having dedicated but grossly underutilized EC2s.

Re:AWS customers

[phantomfive]

For periodic batch jobs, components in workflows, or response handling logic where some latency variability is acceptable, it's a great tool and saves a lot of costs over having dedicated but grossly underutilized EC2s.

I don't think you've done a cost analysis on this. Just get yourself a $10 a month EC2 server and you're fine, and not locked into AWS.

Re: AWS customers

[Anonymous Coward]

Just manage your own damn IT infrastructure you lazy sumbitches, ...and if your not compiling everything by hand, you deserve what you get. work harder not smarter!

Re: AWS customers

[phantomfive]

Just manage your own damn IT infrastructure you lazy sumbitches, ...and if your not compiling everything by hand, you deserve what you get. work harder not smarter!

I'm not talking about managing your IT infrastructure......I literally said put it on AWS. Just keep your deployment consolidated and organized, not scattered through a bunch of different non-portable tools.

You have to be vicious about keeping your deploy tools simple, because if you don't, it will quickly become unmanageable.

Re:AWS customers

[UnknownSoldier]

So the cliche has been updated? :-)

from: Nobody gets fired for buying IBM
to: Nobody gets fired for buying AWS

Re:AWS customers

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe this gets a Technical Account Manager [TAM] assigned to your account which you can escalate issues.

Re:AWS customers

[Anonymous Coward]

My fear about cloud providers is the same fear that companies have had about the mainframe. Once locked into the architecture, the cloud provider can jack rates up as they please, and companies will pony up the dinero, because they know that their whole business will be halted. It took a decade of open systems and such for businesses to get away from the mainframe and onto commodity equipment.

Now, it seems businesses who freed themselves of one set of shackles want to put on an even tighter set of shackles and have themselves even more at the mercy of a cloud provider.

Do I trust the IBM cloud? Two years ago OpenStack was poised to be the AWS killer. Now only a few shops run it, usually places which have a lot of cheap man-hours (universities, non-profits, etc.) I wonder if the IBM cloud can even pass certification, be it FISMA, HIPAA, CJIS, MPAA, FERPA, FedRamp, or even the GDPR. If there is no documentation which makes auditors happy, a business is risking their existence, and people are risking prison by using it.

Sorry, but the price of new servers is a lot cheaper than bail money and a defense lawyer.

Re:AWS customers

[Actually, I do RTFA]

It boggles my mind that so many small/medium/large businesses in retail, wholesale, transportation, distribution, etc. are trusting their data and IT to and funding a company that is out to put them out of business.

What shocked me the most was Netflix moving to the AWS cloud.

That said, I understand why people want to use AWS. It's easy to find people who understand it, or claim to understand it at least. It can do pretty much anything you want. That said, I find it pretty hard to figure out how to do pretty much anything on it.

Re:AWS customers

[bn-7bc]

yes but no capital expenditure only opex, which seems to be wery popular withe the CEOs/CFOs out there, I'm no expert on this so don't ask me why, well I could du a Trump (sorry fro bringing him up) and just make s**t up, but for some reason I don't like doing thet

Re:AWS customers

[Luthair]

It boggles my mind that so many small/medium/large businesses in retail, wholesale, transportation, distribution, etc. are trusting their data and IT to and funding a company that is out to put them out of business. AWS is the ONLY real money-maker at Amazon. Their online retail operation is FINALLY making a 2% profit!

Their retail side has intentionally not made a profit and has sunk the money back into infrastructure growth.

It boggles my mind that so many small/medium/large businesses in retail, wholesale, transportation, distribution, etc. are trusting their data and IT to and funding a company that is out to put them out of business. AWS is the ONLY real money-maker at Amazon. Their online retail operation is FINALLY making a 2% profit!

Read the terms of service

Firebird is still better

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never understood the obsession with MySQL/MariaDB and Postgress.

Firebird (aka Interbase) has always outperformed and out-featured the others especially with very large data sets. To this day it beats everything else yet it languishes in obscurity.

Re:Firebird is still better

[TheRealMindChild]

Firebird (aka Interbase) has always outperformed and out-featured the others especially with very large data sets. To this day it beats everything else yet it languishes in obscurity.

That is a flat out lie. There is a reason the only people using that garbage are the same folks still using Delphi

Re:Firebird is still better

[Anonymous Coward]

We use it in production because it outperforms everything else.

Re:Firebird is still better

[phantomfive]

We use it in production because it outperforms everything else.

Do you have benchmarks?

Re:Firebird is still better

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but I can't publish due to NDA. All I can say is: Try it yourself. We went through a huge wide-ranging process (money as no object) to determine what to use for our data mining systems and Firebird dominated in our tests. These are 20TB and larger datasets made mostly of binary data.

Re: Firebird is still better

[phantomfive]

OK, I'll keep it in mind.

Re:Firebird is still better

[TheRealMindChild]

Yes but I can't publish due to NDA

Dumbest shit I have heard all day. Firebird is a relic with no direction and no discernible advantage over *ANY* other RDBMS. Its SMP support is still "being worked on". It doesn't even have a reasonable mechanism for multiple processes to communicate with one another. Spin locks were how concurrency was done for the longest time.

Like I said, the only people still using it are legacy folks or the suckers still paying Embarcadero for their crummy "platform".

Re:Firebird is still better

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Firebird is a relic with no direction

...which just released the first beta of the fourth version...OK.

and no discernible advantage over *ANY* other RDBMS

No discernible advantage, like basically zero configuration, making it suitable for hassle-free embedding into application products?

Its SMP support is still "being worked on".

As opposed to all the other software which will never ever change its architecture again? Software that isn't being worked on is software that is dead.

Open source

[Kohath]

These guys keep saying "open" and then they keep complaining about what others do with the source. Open means you don't get to control what other people do.

Re:Open source

[ConfusedVorlon]

That's hardly fair; For example; GPL is open source, but explicitly designed so that people who use it are under certain circumstances required to contribute back to it.

The way the GPL is written; Cloud providers like Amazon don't have to contribute back to the project - but that's probably not what people wanted when they came up with the GPL.

e.g. it's probably a legal bug, not a legal feature

there are a bunch of different licences, I'm just using GPL as an example here.

Re:Open source

[drinkypoo]

Open means you don't get to control what other people do.

Open means standards-based. That's the sense in which it was used by every Unix vendor everywhere.

Re:Open source

[Wycliffe]

Open means you don't get to control what other people do.

You're wrong. Pretty much every open source software out there has an actual license attached which controls what people can do. One of the more common, GPL, was designed so that anyone can use it but if you sold a derivative that you have to open source the derivative too. This worked well when people were primarily selling software. The problem is that now places like google and amazon are selling services not software and as their derivatives are technically not being sold, they are not required to release the source to them. The GPL probably needs to be updated to include SaaS or at least IaaS but this is easier said than done because companies like Netflix and many other companies are also SaaS and also likely use custom GPL software that isn't exposed at all to the public. The goal of the GPL isn't "if you make money we want some of it" but rather "If you make improvements, you need to open source them so we can back port them". The GPL is basically saying "No Closed Source Forks". By that definition, Google, Amazon, and are plenty of others are in clear violation. The simplest solution is probably to rewrite the GPL explicitly so that it does say "No Closed Source Forks" and make it a requirement that all Forks are publicly available on something like github.

Re:Open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but it doesn't say that. Google and Amazon have better lawyers. You can try to weaponize the GPL if you want, but I think they will take it to court if the terms are changed.

Open source is a minnow swimming with sharks. Shoulda coulda woulda, but they didn't

Re:Open source

[Antique Geekmeister]

Which of Amazon's components are GPL licensed that Amazon does not publish source code for? I'll acknowledge that their virtualization servers probably use customized kernels, but it's not clear to me that they don't publish those kernel sources back to the Linux kernel community in order to support compatibility. What software are you thinking of, specifically?

The GPL license is fairly unusual in preventing the kind of "strip mining" of open source software: that is why it is referred to as "free software", not "open source". Apache, Perl, and Python licenses are open sources, and have been known to encourage proprietization and "strip mining" of such licenses. As an example, that kind of strip mining was attempted by Citrix when they bought Xen, and seems to have collapsed when faced by the CentOS Xen user community.

Re:Open source

[omnichad]

OpenSolaris wasn't any closer to standards than Solaris.

Re:Open source

[HiThere]

OK. But personally, seeing the potential for this kind of action is what caused me to prefer the AGPL, or at least the GPL3 license.

Of course, I'm a proponent of free software rather than open source.

Re:Open source

[Vairon]

Nowhere within the GPLv2 license used by MariaDB does it discuss, require or suggest contributing back to the original authors. Please take a few minutes to read or re-read the GPLv2 license. It will only take you a few minutes. Even if you think you've read it before; read it again. https://mariadb.com/kb/en/libr...

The license only covers copying, distribution and modification. It makes this explicitly clear. The essence of the license is that you have the right to use, modify and distribute the software. If you distribute the software or derivative works of the software then you must bestow the same rights on those for whom you distribute the software to.

Re:Open source

[HiThere]

Yes, but that's the AGPL license, which isn't at the root of most code for two reasons:
1) It's too recent, and
2) Corporations don't like it.

There's also the GPL3 license which addresses other problems, but to address *this* problem you would need to use the AGPL. And, IIUC, GPL2 code cannot be relicensed to AGPL by anyone except the original author(s).

Re:Open source

[phantomfive]

Which of Amazon's components are GPL licensed that Amazon does not publish source code for?

MySQL is the obvious example here, since that's what the story is about. They took the source, added some nice clustering mods, and didn't give it back. Now the CEO of MySQL is upset about that.

Re:Open source

[Anonymous Coward]

GPLv2 does not require them to give back.
GPLv2 only requires them to include source code or an offer of source code to those they distribute it to.
I've seen no evidence they distribute the software to anyone outside of Amazon.

Re:Open source

[Registered Coward v2]

Which of Amazon's components are GPL licensed that Amazon does not publish source code for?

MySQL is the obvious example here, since that's what the story is about. They took the source, added some nice clustering mods, and didn't give it back. Now the CEO of MySQL is upset about that.

Unless Amazon distributed the code they are under no obligation to provide their code and its modifications. Even if they did they are only obligated to provide it to whomever they distributed the code; not the broader community. MySQL may not lie Amazon modifying code, running it on their own servers and selling a service based on it but they are out of luck when it comes to getting the code base.

Re:Open source

[F.Ultra]

No one claimed that Amazon was _required_ to give back. This is just _complaining_ that they don't.

Re:Open source

[drinkypoo]

OpenSolaris wasn't any closer to standards than Solaris.

Correct, since Solaris was already standards-based. Solaris 1.x/SunOS4 is BSD and X11 for Sun, plus NIS and Openlook. Solaris 2.x/SunOS5 is SVR4 for Sun, plus NIS+ and CDE, as well as the assorted BSD command-line utilities [optionally but typically] placed in /usr/ucb for back-compatibility with shell scripts designed for SunOS4. Bill Joy said in 1985 that Unix would eventually be dominated by an Open Source Code model, and Open Systems was a common marketing term meaning "standards-based" which dates from the 1980s.

Re:Open source

[phantomfive]

Unless Amazon distributed the code they are under no obligation to provide their code and its modifications.

That's not the answer to the question that was asked.

Re: Open source

[Billly Gates]

Don't expect your product to be successful if companies never use it

Re:Open source

[Registered Coward v2]

They took the source, added some nice clustering mods, and didn't give it back. Now the CEO of MySQL is upset about that.

But is the point. Unless Amazon distributes the code they can do what they want with it and not provide any source, MySQL CEO be damned.

Re:Open source

[dryeo]

And, IIUC, GPL2 code cannot be relicensed to AGPL by anyone except the original author(s).

Actually the copyright holders Some projects make you sign over your code before they'll add it to the original project. Which does make re-licensing much simpler.

Re:Open source

[Antique Geekmeister]

That is an interesting point. MySQL's server license is available at https://github.com/mysql/mysql... . It is a _peculiar_ license. It refers to itself in some places as GPLv2, which seems nonsensical with the various other confusing and inconsistent components outlined in the same license. It also deliberately conflates the phrase "free software" with "open source software".

They are not the same thing, legally nor in common English language. The FSF published a good essay on this at https://www.gnu.org/philosophy... .

Re:Open source

[phantomfive]

Make your point on a thread where it's relevant. There are other places in this story where people made that same point.

Re:Open source

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why you have the AGPL. It's MariaDB's fault for not using AGPL.

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/5003/agplv3-source-redistribution-when-does-it-apply-to-my-code-for-a-server-side-ja

Maybe the guy is actually objecting to it principally and altruistically.

Or maybe the case is like this:

MariaDB should be making money offering customised tweaking services as support. If they were to use the AGPL they would have to opensource the platform specific tweaks in every customer's case and that would break their business model (customers don't like their tweaks publicised for free)

When Amazon does that because the GPL gives them that freedom, MariaDB cries out.

What MariaDB should ideally do is offer a MariaDB "tweaked" cloud, but since AWS also offers a bunch of other cloud functions than just DB that leaves MariaDB a non-competitor.

They could still make money tweaking MariaDB for AWS servers - varying code depending on instance types, like Percona does.

Re:Open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone already wrote this point downthread, so ignore this.

Re:Open source

[Solandri]

The confusion is because there's two types of open source. The unrestricted kind, where the source is released and anyone can do anything they want with it (BSD, older GPL). And the kind that obligates you to comply with certain limitations or requirements if you wish to use it (mainly, contribute code you write using the open source code back to open source, e.g. newer GPL). The summary (I haven't read TFA) just lumps them all together as "open source" when the distinction actually matters here.

It is not a bug, it's a logical requirement. If you believe that information wants to be free, then you by definition support the unrestricted free kind of open source, which includes the right of users to freely pillage it in this manner. (Calling it "strip mining" is overboard though, because that implies the resources are removed - code doesn't disappear when it's copied). If you believe that free code requires some sort of restrictions on it to keep the restricted-open source ecosystem functioning, well then your rationale is not really much different from the people advocating proprietary pay software. You're just trading favors instead of money.

(And e.g. means "for example." You probably meant i.e., or "that is.")

Re:Open source

[Registered Coward v2]

Make your point on a thread where it's relevant. There are other places in this story where people made that same point.

You said

MySQL is the obvious example here, since that's what the story is about. They took the source, added some nice clustering mods, and didn't give it back. Now the CEO of MySQL is upset about that.

and I pointed out in reply he has no leg to stand on based on the GPL terms. It seems my reply is relevant to thread if your comment is as well

Re:Open source

[phantomfive]

What was the question being answered?

Re:Open source

[cheesybagel]

This is precisely the problem Afero GPL aims to solve.

Re:Open source

[omnichad]

You're obfuscating your reply with trivia. Why did they add the word Open to Solaris if it was already standards-based? Care to guess?

Re:Open source

[drinkypoo]

You're obfuscating your reply with trivia. Why did they add the word Open to Solaris if it was already standards-based? Care to guess?

Because they didn't understand that Open meant standards-based, because the meaning had been deliberately obfuscated by douchenozzles with delusions of grandeur.

Re:Open source

[Anonymous Coward]

You misunderstand it seems.

They're not complaining about this in some kind of moral or ethical way. It's not about ownership, even if some arguments in this realm are.

They're saying the exact same code should perform the exact same way on the exact same hardware and that's not what appears to be happening... and that it's really easy to come up with a story where AWS are degrading the performance of one type of product to make another, more premium product, look better in comparison.

And then they maybe rely on hardly anyone actually doing any benchmarking, and the benchmarking that is done being limited in distribution.

Re:Open source

[omnichad]

They, a longtime Unix vendor, didn't know. But of course you're here to tell them.

Re:Open source

[drinkypoo]

They, a longtime Unix vendor, didn't know. But of course you're here to tell them.

They named it to jerk off the ignorant in hopes of a resurgence of interest in their OS. It didn't work, because their hardware support was piss-poor. Now we have ZFS on Linux, so nothing of value was lost.

Re:Open source

[omnichad]

They were trying to convince the ignorant that it was basis t on standards?

Re:Open source

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The thing was, open-source wasn't prepared for the rise of cloud services. It allowed a lot of people to, using SaaS, improve and monetize OSS without giving back. It was a failure to imagine when the GPL2 was written.

Imagine if you could get the source to the AWS services because you use them. That would be a different story, and the OSS people would be happy. But because they never ship you a binary, just rent you access to it, it's a loophole in the spirit of OSS.

Re:Open source

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I'm not sure how renting access to the software isn't the exact type of behavior intended under "distribution". I mean, I get that legally it's not, but it seems that it ethically and intentionally is.

Re: Open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of those leading open source projects these days are latecomers who don't believe much in free software. They really want community-based proprietary.

Re:Open source

[_merlin]

GPL doesn't require all forks to be public. It only requires that you offer to provide source to anyone who you provided with a binary. You cant stop them from redistributing the binary/source, but that's a separate issue. It's a common misconception that GPL requires all forks to be published, but it actually isn't true.

Re:Open source

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure how renting access to the software isn't the exact type of behavior intended under "distribution".

There may be a subtle distinction hiding in there which makes a difference. To wit, they are not renting access to the software itself, but rather to the functionality it provides. Case in point, one never gets access to the actual software, only to the service provided by it.

I mean, I get that legally it's not, but it seems that it ethically and intentionally is.

Probably not. That's likely the reason why there are other licenses explicitly targeting the use of the functionality provided by the software. Licenses explicitly not picked by the MariaDB team.

Re:Open source

[ConfusedVorlon]

Exactly.
And arguably, that's a 'bug' in the GPLv2

Re:Open source

[Thad Boyd]

It was also written in 1991, with no conception that software would be run entirely on a server and therefore avoid the copyleft restrictions by not being copied or distributed. And unlike the GPLv3, it didn't permit software originally published under v2 to be forked under a later version of the license (meaning the MariaDB devs are stuck with v2 because that's what MySQL was published under; they can't, for example, switch to the Affero GPL).

These are, as ConfusedVorlon noted above, "legal bugs, not legal features"; they're unintentional oversights on the part of the GPL's authors.

Re:Open source

[Thad Boyd]

The GPL is basically saying "No Closed Source Forks". By that definition, Google, Amazon, and are plenty of others are in clear violation.

But contracts aren't governed by what they basically say, they're governed by what they actually say.

The simplest solution is probably to rewrite the GPL explicitly so that it does say "No Closed Source Forks" and make it a requirement that all Forks are publicly available on something like github.

That's not simple at all; it would apply to minor changes made for personal use, which was never the GPL's intent. (And don't let RMS hear you recommending that people use Github.)

As noted below, the GPL has been updated to cover software that's accessible on a public server; that's the Affero GPL. But the GPLv2 was not written to be forward-compatible with later GPL revisions, so GPLv2 software can't be forked and then published under the Affero GPL (though I believe GPLv3 software can).

Amazon not doing anything

[Anonymous Coward]

That MariaDB wouldn't do.

Re:Amazon not doing anything

[HiThere]

Considering the origin of the company promoting it, I think you're right.

He's Not Wrong, But...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not wrong. They are taking all they want and giving back little to no value.

But, you'd have to be an utter moron to not see that GPL allows, perhaps even encourages, that business model.You'd have to be an utter moron to take a CEO position at a GPL software company and not realize what you're getting into.

Maybe the problem isn't that other companies are doing what the GPL allows. Maybe the problem is within MariaDB. How many CEOs have they had in the past year? The company is a train wreck.

Re:He's Not Wrong, But...

[Fnkmaster]

In fact... this kind of service has always been held up as a shining example of how businesses are *supposed* to make money off of GPL.

Re: He's Not Wrong, But...

[Anonymous Coward]

One, actually. Train wreck - how?

Re:He's Not Wrong, But...

[Anonymous Coward]

No if I can download some package and have it run just as fast on service X as the same package supposedly provided by service X.......you're right. Value add is integration and support.

The way you are not supposed to make money off of open source is to leverage your monopoly as the worlds Data Center and make changes to make your own proprietary stack faster but not contibute back so the package I download will run just as fast.

Its legal because the GPL is pre-SaaS era...but its not ethical in the least. And violates the spirit of what people wanted when they chose to contribute to a GPL'd project.

If MariaDB Cared

[phantomfive]

If MariaDB cared they should have used the AGPL. This has been an issue with open source for a long time now. Solutions are available, and you need to think before using the license.

1) BSD - if you want your code to be used as many places as possible (even if you don't know about it)

2) GPL - If you want to get paid when people use your code, either by keeping it free (redistribution/returning modifications), or by dual-licensing.

3) AGPL - When you want to close the loophole here.

And we can also add that the GPL3 closes the tivo and patent loopholes. Decide what you want, and choose the right license, otherwise you'll end up whining like Michael Howard.

Re:If MariaDB Cared

[jythie]

Ah the GLPv3.... it closed the tivo loophole and opened the cloud one because the people who wrote it worked for server companies but played with embedded devices.. so naturally the license protected their professional freedom and hobbyist freedom, but not the other way around.

Re:If MariaDB Cared

[phantomfive]

You're being too emotional about it. "Choose the right tool for the job," that's all that matters. If you don't want people to use the tivo trick, then use GPL 3. If you don't care, then use GPL 2. Figure out what your needs and desires are, and choose the correct license.

Of course, if you don't like the GPL3 then you're a freedom hating corporate tool, but that's just my opinion and irrelevant. You're free to be a cocksucking whore. That's your choice and there's nothing wrong with that.

Re:If MariaDB Cared

[HiThere]

The problem is that the GPL3 and the AGPL are different licenses, and it you want both protections you are in a bit of a bind. For my purposes I actually prefer the AGPL, but, IIUC, only (some) GPL2 code can be relicensed under GPL3, and none under the AGPL, so you've got the keep lots of code in separate modules.

Re:If MariaDB Cared

[Florian Weimer]

They used the AGPL for the server, but also told their users that it would not affect client code (the applications the users write). As a result, it was rather unclear whether you would even have to distribute modified server sources if you offered a public database service using the software.

Furthermore, the AGPL is only a deterrent against competition if the competition needs to modify the source code and does not want to share the modifications (assuming the the source code disclosure obligation actually kicks in at all). Neither of the cited organizations is vehemently opposed to sharing source code, so I do not think the AGPL (even applied as intended, which the original authors of the database software did not do) actually deters commercial competition here. It probably would not have prevented revenue seeping towards third parties offering services related to the software, either.

Re:If MariaDB Cared

[phantomfive]

The problem is that the GPL3 and the AGPL are different licenses, and it you want both protections you are in a bit of a bind.

What do you get from GPL3 that you don't get from AGPL? The AGPL is just GPL3 with an extra clause, right?

Re:If MariaDB Cared

[phantomfive]

Furthermore, the AGPL is only a deterrent against competition if the competition needs to modify the source code and does not want to share the modifications

Amazon modified MySQL quite a bit to make it run on a cloud in a cluster, but didn't return the changes. That's what the MariaDB people are upset about.

Re: If MariaDB Cared

[reanjr]

MariaDB is a fork of MySQL. They had no choice but to continue using a compatible license.

Re:If MariaDB Cared

[hholzgra]

If MariaDB cared they should have used the AGPL. This has been an issue with open source for a long time now. Solutions are available, and you need to think before using the license.

MariaDB can't change the license of the server, at least not without consent of the upstream copyright holder. That being Oracle ... well ...

Re:If MariaDB Cared

[HiThere]

One thing you get with the GPL3 that you don't get with the AGPL is that a lot of GPL2 code can be relicensed as GPL3 code.

Re:If MariaDB Cared

[zaphirplane]

a) MariaDB is forked from mysql, they just can't go and re licence it.
b) MySQL (the old mariaDB) used to troll forums with made up accounts about how great they are
c) the people behind mariadb sold mysql for a lot of money, then forked mysql and established a new company. They have zero moral legs to stand on

Re:If MariaDB Cared

[Anonymous Coward]

The *GPL* licenses are licenses you choose if you like to eat things you pick off your feet. Those of you who like the *GPL* licenses and have yet to pick something off your foot and eat it are just in the closet.

I don't see problem here

[Anonymous Coward]

He is complaining that they are not giving back? The problem is that sustainable software engineering process and coding for profits are 2 mutually exclusive things. So I don't understand what he is complaining about. Everybody is doing what ever they want. Do they have to share their profits or he wants to get back crap-ware they created based on his pristine open source project development standard?

They are fast to commit and get business results and he is good in long term quality and engineering excellence.
They make a lot money and he just makes them to meet his objectives.

They consider that what is done in open source project is more than enough and they are ready to merry with it. He believes that primary project objective is still somewhere there and it is not a right time to commit.

Re:I don't see problem here

[phantomfive]

They aren't following the spirit of the GPL. They are being anti-social: taking from the labors of others, and not contributing back.

There is no law against being anti-social, so they are free to do it.

Re:I don't see problem here

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'spirit' of the GPL? What is this - poetry class?

Re:I don't see problem here

[phantomfive]

The 'spirit' of the GPL? What is this - poetry class?

No, it's Slashdot, didn't you notice? Enjoy your stay, get an account.

Re:I don't see problem here

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-social entities are usually shunned and marginalized. This is not happening here.

Re:I don't see problem here

[raynet]

The spirit of GPL is to allow the user to do anything, Amazon in this case is the user.

Re:I don't see problem here

[phantomfive]

The spirit of GPL is to allow the user to do anything,

That's not really true, anything but deny others their freedom. Amazon made changes to mysql and didn't release them to the public. (Legally they don't have to, of course).

Re: I don't see problem here

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the open source developers I have met qualify as "anti social". :)

Likewise for corporate ones. Social people don't become developers.

Re: I don't see problem here

[Anonymous Coward]

_Using_ open source software and not contributing to it is a problem?

Re:I don't see problem here

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you considered taking a swig of some hydrochloric acid?

Re:I don't see problem here

[phantomfive]

Yeah, I don't really go stronger than citric acid honestly.

Re:I don't see problem here

[DRJlaw]

They aren't following the spirit of the GPL. They are being anti-social: taking from the labors of others, and not contributing back.

The GPLv2 allows you to take from the labors of others without giving back. It's right there in the preamble:

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have.

This was not some failure of Stallman and Moglen to consider and incorporate a term into the GPL -- it is an intended feature. The GPLv3 section 2 is even more explicit:

You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains in force.

But you're not happy with that. Instead, you invoke a fictional "spirit of the GPL" in order to take away the freedom to change the work unless the recipient meets additional conditions, something that is expressly forbidden by GPLv2 section 6 and GPLv3 section 10:

You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.

and

You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License.

So no, you are not following the spirit of the GPL. You have decided to unilaterally change the GPL into the AGPL, which it is not and cannot be. MariaDB has decided that now that it has obtained the benefits and usage base afforded by selecting the GPL, it wants to retroactively place its code under AGPL-like terms without consequence. You're both the ones being anti-social by failing to follow through on the principles and promises that you purport to follow. Now go away, hypocrites.

Re:I don't see problem here

[phantomfive]

If you want to argue the spirit of the law, you should look into the intentions of the people who created the law, not the final words that came out. There is an entire philosophy section on the GNU website that you should look into. We already agree that the GPL allows them to do this, Amazon has followed the letter of the law.

Secondly, it's as if you didn't even read the GPL. Why did you ignore the stated intentions? Right at the top, the intentions are stated:

the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users.

The stated intention is to make sure the users can share and change free software. MariaSQL/MySQL is free software, and so are the changes Amazon made, changes which they've hidden. The intention is clearly that Amazon's users could share and make changes to this hidden code. Therefore you must admit that Amazon is not following the stated intention of the license, they are not following the spirit of the law.

Re:I don't see problem here

[DRJlaw]

If you want to argue the spirit of the law, you should look into the intentions of the people who created the law, not the final words that came out.

I have. You're arguing that Stallman and Moglen made the same mistake not once, but twice, years apart, and after seeing exactly how the GPL v2 operated.

From your own link explaining the four freedoms:

A program is free software if the program's users have the four essential freedoms: [1]
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Notice that freedoms 0 and 1 are separate from freedoms 2 and 3.

Secondly, it's as if you didn't even read the GPL. Why did you ignore the stated intentions? Right at the top, the intentions are stated.

This part? "To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it."

The one that makes distribution optional, and separates the freedom to modify from the freedom to distribute as well?

The stated intention is to make sure the users can share and change free software...

But somehow cloud service providers don't qualify as users.

The intention is clearly that Amazon's users could share and make changes to this hidden code.

It is not. Neither the philosophy nor the preamble nor the license itself demands that anyone distribute their modifications. This has been an open feature ever since the licenses were publicly released. and only now are certain licensors (that have the ability to change their licenses to the Affero GPL but do not) and other members of the community (who oddly enough do not fork the project under the Affero GPL, probably because the fork would be rejected out of hand) seeking to impose additional restrictions.

Therefore you must admit that Amazon is not following the stated intention of the license, they are not following the spirit of the law.

I must not. It is not the stated intention of the license, the very existence of the Affero GPL demonstrates that it is not the intention of the license, and the license certainly is not the law.

If these licensors are violating the "spirit of the GPL," then show me any authority at the FSF that has adopted that accusation as their own. I'll wait...

Re:I don't see problem here

[DRJlaw]

If you want to argue the spirit of the law, you should look into the intentions of the people who created the law, not the final words that came out.

Fine. The intentions, as stated here 12 years ago:

The GNU General Public License permits making a modified version and letting the public access it on a server without ever releasing its source code to the public.
The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community. It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server.

If you picked a non-Affero GPL license, you were warned. You either intended or were willfully blind to the foreseeable result.

End of story.

Re: I don't see problem here

[phantomfive]

Are you drunk? Your comment is not clear and focused.

Re: I don't see problem here

[DRJlaw]

Are you drunk? Your comment is not clear and focused.

How is this for clear and focused:

GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 3, 19 November 2007

Premable

...The GNU General Public License permits making a modified version and letting the public access it on a server without ever releasing its source code to the public.

The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community....

The person seeing a non-existent "spirit of the GPL" is the one who's not focused.

"License and privilege of open source"? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

...really abusing the license and privilege [of open source], by not giving back to the community...

Look, FOSS people, you all _intentionally_ gave away your software, screaming "use FOSS; it's free as in beer as well as free as in speech" for the past twenty plus years. It's pretty damned hilarious for you folks to be bitching about people who came for the "free as in beer" part now.

Admit it. Nobody ever gave a hoot about "free as in speech".

hobbyists denounce wmd stripe lining of our sky

[Anonymous Coward]

cease fire stand down..

Agree

[Anonymous Coward]

The open source community is founded by a group of volunteers. They choose, of their own free will, to create stuff without pay and give it away to the rest of the world.

Their reward is the feeling of accomplishment, meaning, and having made a difference. And that's it!

In some cases, their work serves as a means of obtaining separate paid labor, which is ok too.

But this notion that the recipients of open source software have some sort of moral obligation to "give back to the community" is utter folly. The open source community is not some sort of socialist utopia! There is no contract, implicit or otherwise! Those who use free software can do so, without ever giving back, guilt-free, because that's what "free" means!

What a bait and switch! "Oh this is totally free!" And then, the moment it is accepted, "Now you have to give back!"

Utter bullshit.

Re:Agree

[jtara]

The open source community is founded by a group of volunteers. They choose, of their own free will, to create stuff without pay and give it away to the rest of the world.

That's a naive statement.

FOUNDED... yes... in some cases.

But on an ongoing basis, most big/useful open source projects are funded primarily by corporate sponsors, who contribute money, talent, or both. Many companies contribute in-kind services, by assigning personnel either part or full-time to open-source projects.

Another similar funding model is having a corporate parent that does consulting, hand-holding, hosting, etc. while opening the source for all. Yet another is the spin-off project that a parent organization needs for their own purposes, but is unrelated to their primary business. By open-sourcing, they get extra eyes on the project to find bugs, round-out capabilities, discover new use cases, etc.

FEW important open-source projects are purely or even primarily volunteer indie projects!

Unfortunately, this means that open source projects often have to kowtow to their corporate sponsors, and can suffer a sudden loss of talent and viability when they are "cut off" by a corporate sponsor.

A good example of this is jQuery Mobile, which the jQuery Foundation still refuses to declare dead. Adobe pulled the plug years ago, it is Dead, Jim! A distant memory in the rearview mirror, but a ghost repo and ghost website remains, sitting there snagging unwitting third-world developers who think that it is still A Thing.

Re:Agree

[cheesybagel]

I guess you never read the GPL.

Re:Agree

[Anonymous Coward]

it's wonderful that people can project feels-based logic onto 3rd parties and then complain that they're not following said feels-based logic, don't you think? :)

Those damn pinko communist hippies should know that their naive, strawman economic solution will force them into starvation because it's obviously not cogent. :')

Open Source does not require anyone to give back

[Anonymous Coward]

Bascially, all your "customers" are required to do is share the source if they share binaries (in the case of the GPL 2.0) or not remove the license information (in the case of BSD-like licenses). If you can't live with that, don't publish under those licenses.

WUT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I want to edit a table in MariaDB when I have 3D modeling programs?
--
Rocketman - Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan - William Shatner Trailer

Re:WUT?

[omnichad]

MariaDB is better at modeling joins. It's important, though not a primary key. Even if you're starting with a 3D model, MariaDB can still do a table scan if your table isn't optimized.

Re: WUT?

[Anonymous Coward]

AWS is putting Nitro in the fuel tanks of their company fleet.

Been saying this for a while myself.

[Anonymous Coward]

You need the AGPL for the daemons, and an updated LAGPL for core network libraries. To ensure the library itself, even if used on the backend, is source-available, while also allowing proprietary webapps to build atop it so that it gets commercial interest and backing.

The next generation of successful open source is going to be AGPL/LAGPL, and the MIT/BSD supporters are going to be reminded once again why developer-libre+closing source is diametrically opposed to end-user libre, and of communal benefit.

Re: Been saying this for a while myself.

[reanjr]

Lol. Most of us write software because someone is paying us to. As devs, we have a huge amount of influence over what licenses get chosen at our employers. MIT/BSD isn't going anywhere. In fact, the MIT license is experiencing a renaissance over the GPL.

Here's what's great about the MIT license: it provides freedom for the code. If I wanna use that code in an app I develop on the side, I can do that. If I wanna use that code at my next employer, I can do that. If I wanna wrap it up into a paid-for support contract, I can do that, too. I have ultimate freedom over the code I wrote.

GPL and other related locked down licenses restrict my freedom to use the software I wrote. That's stupid.

Re: Been saying this for a while myself.

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL and other related locked down licenses restrict my freedom to use the software I wrote. That's stupid.

That's only the case if you don't hold the copyright.
But GPL is of course about restricting the rights of people to make free code non-free. People who choose the GPL know that and want it.
Because proprietary software is a bad thing, and can't die soon enough.

Re: Been saying this for a while myself.

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL is dead. Most new projects use a real free license.

Re: Been saying this for a while myself.

[reanjr]

Sure, but most of us do not own the copyright to most of our work.

The idea that MIT/BSD users don't understand the implications of those licenses and one day they will see the light of the GPL or Apache license is laughable.

DOS aint done til Lotus wont run!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats old is new again.

Why is it a huge surprise that competitors would offer a crippled version of your product?

Why do you morons not put a clause in the license that corporations can not offer your software as a public service without consulting you for proper install, setup, tuning, etc?

I love you open source kids, but so naive.

Wah! I give my shit away to competitors but they offer a bad version of my software!!!

Lmao!

Open USED to mean standards-based.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now standards have been abandoned (every try to set up SIP trunking?),
and open means "Maybe there's a free version".

Re:Open Source does not require anyone to give bac

[Wycliffe]

Bascially, all your "customers" are required to do is share the source if they share binaries (in the case of the GPL 2.0) or not remove the license information (in the case of BSD-like licenses). If you can't live with that, don't publish under those licenses.

The problem is that places like Amazon *ARE* "sharing the binary" as a service but then not sharing the modified source. The GPL was written when the primary way of sharing software was via binaries not services.

MariaDB CEO Accuses....

[jtara]

Fixed it for you:

"MariaDB CEO Accuses Oracle and AWS of Strip-Mining Open Source"

Can we at least get the title right? The article said NOTHING about "large cloud vendors". Only Oracle and AWS specifically.

Re:MariaDB CEO Accuses....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's more like, "MariaDB CEO accuses MariaDB of performing poorly on benchmarks."

Re:MariaDB CEO Accuses....

[Anonymous Coward]

Only because Percona doesn't have enough clients to bother with.

Re:MariaDB CEO Accuses....

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly, and relevant to the topic at hand, Microsoft explicitly announce they are Platinum Sponsors of the MariaDB Foundation, a claim backed by the foundation itself on their homepage. This is possibly part of why they're drubbing in AWS and not Azure -- Microsoft are simply contributing back (financially at least, maybe technically) to the project.

(And, yes, IBM are also listed as a sponsor to the MariaDB foundation, albeit Gold and not Platinum)

It also helps that Microsoft are a lot more up front about what is MariaDB - "Azure Database for MariaDB" is straight up a hosted MariaDB and Azure don't try to hide that (in fact, quite the opposite, they advertise that). (There's also PostgreSQL, MySQL and several SQL Server options). I take one look at "Amazon Aurora" and I would have assumed it was built from scratch!

I also wonder why the Amazon service is so much higher performance than just rolling your own on a VM - at a guess, it's lots of tweaking and/or spreading over many nodes or something.

There is no cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember: there is no cloud, just other people's computers. In this case it is Amazon's computers.

And Amazon will rip you off if they can get away with it. Why is Bezos so filthy rich? Exactly.

STAY AWAY FROM ALL OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody, anywhere in the World, can modify open source software!
Do you seriously think, it never occurred to any hackers/groups, to intentionally add hard to detect bugs, to commonly used open source software, to use as secret backdoors to any target computer system?

Anybody, who care about computer/internet security, should/must absolutely stay away from all open source software!!!

Not to mention, open source software is a really big threat against job security of all programmers, who are working for a wage!!!
(Think of a future that, all proprietary software, sooner or later, getting replaced w/ open source!!!)

Amazon's RDS storage is intentionally crippled.

[rMortyH]

Amazon's RDS offerings are really convenient, from the perspective of making snapshots and setting up replication. But, I have never been able to push their default 'SSD' storage past 60MB/s. (PostgreSQL and Mysql) That's terrible. That's less than USB 2, and even some SD cards can do that! Our on-prem can do 180MB/s on spinning rust and around 550MB/s on (obsolete) SATA SSD. If you want anything better on RDS you have to REALLY pay a premium for IOPs and transfer, or pay a premium for way more ram and a ton of caching, in addition to external caching in the rest of your stack. I have not used Aurora on RDS, so I don't have a comparison, but I have my suspicions. It would be pretty easy to just give you a few more MB/s and make it look a whole lot better. Luckily in our case we could optimize things enough that storage performance didn't matter too much. But RDS storage performance is so pitiful that it's seriously worth considering putting your DB on a bare metal box somewhere with NVME storage and just put up with the network latency and get 50 times the storage performance (and more ram and cpu while you're at it ) at a fraction of the price.

Re:Amazon's RDS storage is intentionally crippled.

[Anonymous Coward]

some SD cards

Amazon's RDS is probably an array of returned SD cards.

Re:Amazon's RDS storage is intentionally crippled.

[Anonymous Coward]

it's seriously worth considering putting your DB on a bare metal box somewhere with NVME storage and just put up with the network latency and get 50 times the storage performance (and more ram and cpu while you're at it ) at a fraction of the price.

This is pretty true for any enterprise use compared to AWS.

AWS is the darling amongst web developers, clueless about infrastructure. They're oblivious to the fact that they are paying 10X what they should be. But ma webscale...

Re:Amazon's RDS storage is intentionally crippled.

[Anonymous Coward]

60MB/s. That's terrible. That's less than USB 2,

That's about double of USB2.

USB2 does 480 Mbit/s which is nominally 48 MB/s [1] but in the real world it's more like 20-30 MB/s because USB2 is terrible.

(Compare Firewire400: the nominal 400 Mbit/s delivers a solid 40 MB/s.)

[1] 8 bits of data, 2 bits of parity. That's the standard used pretty much everywhere.

It's why I won't OpenSORES my code

[Anonymous Coward]

It's why I won't OpenSORES my code (for https://it.slashdot.org/commen... ): Google EFast (malware ver. of Chrome) can happen.

* Other packages also HAVE been "bushwhacked" e.g. PYTHON https://www.bleepingcomputer.c... & https://www.bleepingcomputer.c... NODEJS https://securityintelligence.c... & OTHER Javascript packages https://www.bleepingcomputer.c... + https://www.bleepingcomputer.c...

APK

P.S.=> However, I won't say "stay away from open source" - only to be CAREFUL of OpenSORES (pun intended per examples above)... apk

Wrong! AWS wants MariaDB to win.

[Anonymous Coward]

If he is implying that AWS is crippling RDS MariaDB compared to Aurora, he is totally wrong. If he has some ideas on how the default settings in RDS MariaDB can be improved he should reach out to AWS. AWS Aurora is very different offering, in it's cloud storage layers, in it's failover mechanics so it is focused on providing a more enterprise ready solution than an average customer could build on EC2.

Re:Open Source does not require anyone to give bac

[91degrees]

There's no real legal backing for sharing as a service though. And the GPL requires legal restrictions on making a copy to have teeth. If you don't accept the licence, that's fine. You don't get to distribute the software because that's a copyright violation

Copyright doesn't really cover running software on someone else's machine. You might consider it "public performance" but I imagine that would be seen as something of a stretch in court. The FSF really needs a better mechanism if it wants to prevent this.

Re: Amazon's RDS storage is intentionally crippled

[Billly Gates]

It's not that they intentionally cripple it to rip you off. It's that you are using a shared resource. Performance needs to be consistent for everybody including those on the same server your Tennant is on. Azure is the same way with Office 365 Exchange. If an executive has 1 TB of archives in Outlook God help you! The networking is throttled on Azure so any PowerShell commands are useless

Re:Open Source does not require anyone to give bac

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you might need to take them to court to prove "sharing the binary" via a web service counts. There's a pretty big difference between handing someone a "request for work" (aka an API call) and them taking it and doing the work with their own tools (their servers), and giving them the "Method" to do the work (aka, the binary) and having them do the work themselves with their own tools.

Once again proves the superiority of BSD lic

[Billly Gates]

I don't think it's ethical to be the police and tell users what they should or should not do on their computers.

For example if we use PHP should we be forced to hand over the sourcecode of our work to the PHP foundation because we used their product? No. It's ours. Worse if we are paid or you have investors it's unethical to contribute as they paid for your features and product.

Stuff is not free and won't be developed if people can't use it to make money or feel free to use it without being sued.

No one is forcing anyone to stop FOSS by BSD. Freebsd is still around and so is FreeNAS, Juniper, and Pfsense. Pfsense contributes too! They sell the switches and routers still but you can build your own just fine. GPL can be toxic which forced Apple not to use it as an example from their lawyers

Re:Once again proves the superiority of BSD lic

[iggymanz]

how does this situation "prove the superiority of BSD"? Amazon could do the same thing if maria were BSD licensed.

Amazon isn't prevented from what they're doing by maria's GPL 2 license. These are just whiners. Whining stops nothing.

Giving back?

[quonset]

The guy's complaining about "giving back", but I'm 100% certain there are people working on MariaDB who haven't "given back" to the artists who produced the music and movies they listen to and watch.

The old saying about leading by example holds true. If you want someone to abide by your licensing agreements and "give back" to the community, you have to start with yourself and your employees (or the equivalent version). If you think it's acceptable to ignore all the copyright laws and licensing which comes with music and videos, then it's acceptable for everyone else to ignore any licensing requirements on your software.

Re:Giving back?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did you make up this thing you're "100% certain" about?
Not that anyone is claiming cloud vendors are in violation of licensing agreements, but since you completely made up without evidence the idea that the whiners are infringing copyright, what sort of evidence would you take for you to accept that someone has the right to whine about violations of licensing agreements?

Re: Giving back?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is violating his license, he is flat out just whining, and it hurts open source.

There's no such thing as "spirit of the GPL"

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL states "You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without conditions..."

How the hell can you violate that by merely using code in any possible way?

They aren't following the spirit of the GPL. ...

Huh?!?! "without conditions is pretty damn explicit.

Kohath is a simplistic moron.

[Anonymous Coward]

" Open means you don't get to control what other people do." = Not the actual fact, Kohath is a simplistic moron.

Re:"License and privilege of open source"? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like you think all of us "FOSS people" are the same. That's rather naive. In fact, that's very naive IMHO.

I am confused

[Anonymous Coward]

If you didn't want people to use your software that way, why explicitly license it to allow them to?

use AGPL

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing there are historic reasons they used GPLv2 but this strip mining (internal use by cloud companies without giving back) is the whole point of the AGPL. I expected to see mariadb under the MIT license and was planning to rip them a new one because kissing up to companies is the main reason many people use BSD style licenses. So maybe mariadb can't do anything about it's situation but if you are writing Free Software today use AGPL, unless you are a mac-using whore of corporations.

Re: use AGPL

[Anonymous Coward]

AGPL isn't free software, free software does not restrict the rights of end users.

MSDOS vs DRDOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 3.1 had code that checked which version of DOS it was running on.
IF DRDOS, then crash randomly.

Allowed MS to claim MSDOS was more stable.

Apparently nothing really changes in IT.

Maybe 2019

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe 2019 will be the year the "open source community" finally takes an economics class. Your stuff is popular because it's free. People aren't going to pay you unless they have to. Why do you expect anything different?

Retarded btich APK is afraid of what we will find

[Anonymous Coward]

The real reason retarded bitch Alexander Peter Kowalski won't open source his string sorter is that then everyone would see just how shitty his code is. While not officially confirmed how bad it is one can infer the quality given that it took him over 14,000 lines of code write it. This is for a program that downloads lists of strings, sorts them, and writes them to a file.

Want cheese with that Whine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does open source projects like MariaDB want cheese with their whine?

What a bunch of cry babbies.

Registered /.ers disagree w/ you #1/5

[Anonymous Coward]

Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017

Your premise that hostfiles are a good way to deal with advertising and malvertising is quite valid - by JazzLad April 20, 2016

his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015

his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015

I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015

that APK guy, I use his host file by rogoshen1 Tuesday March 03, 2015

I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

* SEE SUBJECT & TELL US: How does EATING YOUR WORDS taste?

APK

P.S.=> You're already VASTLY OUTNUMBERED but many more are coming (you haven't done better)

Registered /.ers disagree w/ you #2/5

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk has the answer for that - really... kill automatic updates by adding a hosts file entry setting updates.steam.com or whatever to 127.0.0.1. You have to find the right hostname for each software you want to block updates on by raymorris (2726007) on Friday July 06, 2018

APK your posts on this and the hosts file posts, and more, have never been in error and/or bad advice by BlueStrat (756137) on Wednesday June 21, 2017

I support APK's stand on the hosts file and can't see why it's not used more than it is. My hosts file is 144247 lines long (4,332 Kb) it & a firewall serves me very well - by Trax3001BBS (2368736)

ABP is insufficient as a solid hosts file does everything APK reminds us about fast turtle September 17 2013

You need APK's hosts file - by Teun (17872) on Wednesday August 06, 2014

APK

P.S.=> You EATING YOUR WORDS != GOOD NUTRITION... apk

Registered /.ers disagree w/ you #3/5

[Anonymous Coward]

APK is totally right on this count. Adblock Plus on Firefox mobile is a dog on older, or lower end, phones. A hostfile based adblocker makes for a much better experience in this context. Of course, your phone has to be rooted, which isn't the case with Firefox + adblock." - by chihowa on Saturday May 16, 2015

APK solution STILL relevant Thud457 June 11 2015

In a footnote, I would like to note that I find your hosts file admirable - by vel-ex-tech (4337079) on Tuesday November 24, 2015

APK's monolithic hosts file is looking pretty good at the moment - by Culture20 on Thursday November 17

you're right about hosts files - by drinkypoo (153816) on Thursday May 26

APK, I know people give you a lot of shit regarding hosts, but please don't ever stop - by nasredin (958927) on Friday June 12, 2015 @03:34PM

APK

P.S.=> Are you ENJOYING the taste of EATING YOUR WORDS yet?... apk

Registered /.ers disagree w/ you #4/5

[Anonymous Coward]

APK is kinda right... I've given up on JS based adblocking and gone to blackholing in /etc/hosts, just like it was back in the 90s. The computational load has gotten intolerable for any ad-blocking using JS. I've tried his hosts file generating software. It works. - by bmo (77928) on Thursday October 15, 2015

get around to 'installing' a hosts file list, not sure which one, likely the one from someonewhocares.org. If it works as well as what I used for a while about ten years ago, I'll be happy. And grateful to APK for the lesson and the reminder. - by kermidge (2221646) on Wednesday March 27

I actually went and downloaded a 16k line hosts file and started using that after seeing that post, you know just for trying it out. some sites load up faster. - by gl4ss (559668) on Thursday November 17

dammit MS, you proved APK right about something by lgw

APK

P.S.=> Your words YOU'RE EATING: You choking on them yet?... apk

Registered /.ers disagree w/ you #5/5

[Anonymous Coward]

(APK) is still right a hosts file really does work. It even blocked a some of the video ads that were inserted into a stream OrangeTide February 10 2016

the Host File Engine performs exactly as promised - by mmell (832646) on Thursday February 16, 2017

I do use APK's host file on all my systems at home by OrangeTide December 01 2017

I've never tried to belittle (APK's work), I've flat out said it's good - by BronsCon (927697) on Thursday February 11, 2016 @06:48PM (#51491263)

* Toss on 100,000++ users worldwide too!

APK

P.S.=> You still haven't said how EATING YOUR WORDS tastes? apk

Now that you're EATING YOUR WORDS, lol... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Let's see YOU do BETTER bigshot! Dozens of registered /.ers just put you in your place (the shithole where you belong as you STALK me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous like the WORM you are).

* How does EATING YOUR WORDS taste?

(Like your FOOT in your MOUTH ramming them back down your CHICKEN-NECK scrawny throat SPICED by the BITTER TASTE of SELF-defeat? Yes, lol!).

APK

P.S.=> My program does a LOT more than what you say but then you've never written a damn thing @ all, let alone of NO WORTH (like you) - the results of it give users more speed/security/reliability & anonymity online - you've done a program that does better? Prove it... apk

Re:"License and privilege of open source"? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're one that supports the various GPL licenses, you are all the same: deluded hypocrites.

Retarded bitch APK fails again

[Anonymous Coward]

And here we have retarded bitch Alexander Peter Kowalski continuing his unending failure. None of those out of context quotes say anything about the quality of your 14,000+ line string sorter's code. Also if you were to include the full quotes instead of tiny snippets they would paint a very different picture of you and your work. Face it your work is shit and you are just a loser who lives in a $1 house in the slums of the dump a city of Syracuse.

Re:Retarded bitch APK fails again

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody says anything good about you. There's nothing good about a psychotic stalker loser like you is why and you know it. You're so jealous of apk.

Aurora is installed with a forklift

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a reminder that Aurora is installed with a forklift in AWS data centers (i.e. it's not just software).

Re:"License and privilege of open source"? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

A hypocrite is somebody who only pretends to believe what they are saying. There are people who support various GPL licenses, who contribute to them, and don't ask for anything in return. And they don't all complain when others use them to make a profit either. Look at some of the followups by 'FOSS people' to the original post here on slashdot. They aren't all saying 'right on brother'. Maybe 'FOSS people' are deluded, but they are not all hypocrites.

It's Not A Bug

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a feature of FOSS. Complaining about it is just shaking your fist at the wind.

"Michael Howard steps out on to lawn. 'You damn clouds, get off my lawn!'"

Seriously, expecting everyone to 'play fair', understand and respect the FOSS culture, and sing Kumbaya together is just too much. I know that a lot of FOSS advocates think this way but it is an attitude ripe for a hearty mocking.

And ConfusedVorlon (below) falls perfectly into the conceptual trap, with an ernest description of the various licenses (yawn!). As though the enormous range of human attitudes, motivations and belief systems will be neatly and tidily encapsulated and controlled by the simple selection of the correct license!

It's like listening to the Architect explaining the perfection of his first system to Neo, and his disgust and dismay at needing to insert an imperfection to accommodate the nasty human beings. The system exists to serve the nasty human beings, not the other way around.

Pot, meet kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering MariaDB is a fork of MySQL, whose IP is owned by Oracle, I'm not sure they're in the best position to talk. I even like using MariaDB, and agree that Oracle is evil - but the thing with open source is that everyone is free to use it how they like. At least Google and Microsoft contribute quite a bit to various open source projects... AWS, perhaps not as much.

Retarded bitch APK's pretend friend is here now

[Anonymous Coward]

Now retarded bitch Alexander Peter Kowalski's pretend friend is here now to defend him. Too bad your dumb ass keeps getting stomped into the dirt so you have to hide like the bitch you are. No one is jealous of you because no one wants to be a loser who has to fake support for themselves while living in a $1 dump of a duplex in the slums of the shit hole city of Syracuse. If you aren't APK then you are an even bigger loser and retard than he is as he is hiding because he knows all the criticisms are valid and true. He can't address anything and has to deflect because he is nothing but a failure.

Re:Retarded bitch APK's pretend friend is here now

[Anonymous Coward]

You're outnumbered by quoted registered users of slashdot liking and using apk's work praising its efficacy. You did better work than apk? Prove it big talker.

What a standard

[Actually, I do RTFA]

So if anyone who works on your IP in any sense has ever violated anyone else's IP, you have no right to complain. So when those MariaDB people pirated Black Panther, the fact that one guy who worked at some point in his life listened to music he downloaded illegally makes the whole movie fair game? Cause that's stupid and your point is stupid.

As usual, Stalman was right.

[Anonymous Coward]

GPLv3 or die in a cloud fire.

MySQL golden age

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun 3/03/2019 9:41 am. I think this is the same guy whose MySQL license terms were so amusingly destructive (see my antique diatribe http://owenlabs.org/rant.htm#badsql).

Asking Question and Sharing Knowledge

[alphadata]

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