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Disclosure: I work for Amazon, but I don't work directly on Redis related cloud services. I am close to the Open Source Program Office, and I care a lot about t

by _msw_ 2y ago

Disclosure: I work for Amazon, but I don't work directly on Redis related cloud services. I am close to the Open Source Program Office, and I care a lot about the people who do the hard work required to collaborate on open source projects. Madelyn Olson did the hard work for years to earn the trust of other Redis core developers to become a core maintainer, all while employed by AWS to do that work. She and other AWS developers have contributed a lot to the core Redis engine. Some may say that they too worked their asses off for the Redis community. You can read more about some of those contributions here: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/behind-the-scenes-on-aws-contributions-to-open-source-databases/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/behind-the-scenes-on...

klabb3 2y ago
I think most people are aware of the occasional contributions from the behemoths. Sometimes, entire projects. But charity is not a sustainable business model. When you provide a service offering the marginal returns go to the provider. In the B2B world, that’s a golden deal for these companies. Normally, you’d have a rev share or something like it. So it’s very understandable there’s a shift in the industry. It’s probably for the better for everyone.
- _msw_ 2y ago
  "Occasional contributions" don't earn an invitation to become a Redis core maintainer. Please stop diminishing the tireless work of FOSS maintainers.
  - klabb3 2y ago
    I’m obviously talking about corporate FOSS contributions overall, not any individual contributor. There’s also a difference being on FAANG payroll vs maintaining without financial stability, which is the reality for most FOSS maintainers.
  - arp242 2y ago
    They get paid for it. Don't try to spin this as if it's someone people working on it in their spare time out of the goodness of their heart. It's just their job. Amazon simultaneously wants to be "part of the community" but also extract the maximum amount of profit via AWS. Amazon can just do a deal with Redis to share a percentage of the profits from their Redis usage. They don't have to, but they could. But no, they insist on having it for free, and we should be grateful that benevolent Amazon with their $23 billion operating income (from AWS) deems Redis worthy for a contributor or two (which is of course entirely in their own interest). Give me a break. Amazon Inc. wants to maximize profits. Okay fair. I'm not against capitalism. But it holds others to a different standard by insisting they only (not Amazon) should be beholden to some different type of post-capitalist post-scarcity "let's all share together in community" type of model and cries crocodile tears when they model of extracting the maximum in profits while giving the minimum in return blows up in their face. You reap what you sow. Amazon needs to either hold everyone to the same standard as they have for themselves or stop whining.
    - reconditerose 2y ago
      > They get paid for it. Don't try to spin this as if it's someone people working on it in their spare time out of the goodness of their heart. It's just their job. No, you can't have this both ways. I'm the main contributor from AWS, and I've worked many times on weekends because I care about open source. I like helping people, I don't need to be paid to do it. Many of the AWS folks that made changes were normal engineers that were excited to be part of Redis. https://github.com/redis/redis/pull/10419 https://github.com/redis/redis/pull/10419 and https://github.com/redis/redis/pull/8621 https://github.com/redis/redis/pull/8621 are both examples of features someone from AWS built in their free time. We're all upset about this. Not because Redis deserves to get paid, it's that they acted like they were being good stewards of the open-source community and then they changed their mind.
      - arp242 2y ago
        I'm sure you do, but that changes nothing about the problematic nature of Amazon's relationship with a lot of projects it interacts with, which is really what this is about: "Amazon thinks that by throwing some contributions at a project offsets for depriving a project of its main revenue". Well, it doesn't. My landlord and Tesco doesn't accept code contributions as payment. This is why this keeps happening again and again with all sort of projects. You reap what you sow.
- reconditerose 2y ago
  The beef I have here is that Redis also takes credit for community work. Most of the heavy lifting came from antirez, who created and ran the project up until 2020. (It's worth conceding that Redis did compensate antirez). At that time Redis created an open governing board that took over, with a majority of contributions coming from the community during this time (~25% of contributions came from Redis engineers, ~75% from the community, including ~3% that came from me personally). They own the trademark and the repository, so they can do what they want, but I take issue with the optics that this is really AWS or GCPs or some other vendors fault that Redis decided to blind side it's development community. Redis gave some of us a heads up this was happening, but most people are finding out by a blog post that Redis dissolved the previous open-governance (a fact they barely address in the blog post). We had to drop weeks of work on the floor because we could not longer finish it.
  - klabb3 2y ago
    That’s very interesting context and doesn’t look too good on the “Redis governing board” indeed.
    - _msw_ 2y ago
      https://web.archive.org/web/20231030181609/https://redis.io/docs/about/governance/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231030181609/https://redis.io/... (the page is now a 404) The core team has the following remit: * Managing the core Redis code and documentation * Managing new Redis releases * Maintaining a high-level technical direction/roadmap * Providing a fast response, including fixes/patches, to address security vulnerabilities and other major issues * Project governance decisions and changes * Coordination of Redis core with the rest of the Redis ecosystem * Managing the membership of the core team It seems clear to me (speaking only for myself) that the core team didn't have a say in project governance decisions and changes here. :-(
      - throwaway290 2y ago
        If core team's pay depends on it maybe they did have a say... Developers also grow up and start families you know
- personjerry 2y ago
  > But charity is not a sustainable business model Wasn't Dwarf Fortress charity funded for a long time?
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    It was also just two guys with a moderate paycheck doing what they loved. They only hit it big when they got the game prettified and on Steam.
    - personjerry 2y ago
      Yeah but they got moderate paychecks for like a decade? Isn't that a "sustainable business model"?
- jrochkind1 2y ago
  So when cloud providers like AWS are contributing to an open source project that they also host, I wouldn't call it "charity". The self-interest is obvious. The problem is that it may not match the self-interest of other contributors. Especially when there is a "main" company that owns the IP of the open source that is not them. But note how Amazon forked ElasticSearch when it became no longer open source, to their "OpenSearch" OpenSearch is Apache-licensed. Amazon engineers maintain it. This is not charity exactly, Amazon makes money from selling hosting of it. In the "classic" age of open source, most projects were collaborations, where different people who got paid by differnet employers worked on it on company time, because their employers used it for their operatons. And were willing to pay to contribute to the software they used. Most of these were not in the business of selling software. They did not expect to make direct money from their contributions to the software. This is how apache httpd began for instance. I think some of the employers of contributors were non-profit as well. I think that's actually the only sustainable model for open source. A single company paying people to develop open source software and hoping to make money from that -- was probably never actually sustainable. If the current economic conditions don't support people working on the clock to contribute to open source software that their employers use -- because software has gotten too complex, or because companies have gotten much more stingy or unwilling to pay for such things -- then indeed we won't have much open source anymore, we'll have proprietary source-available licenses like this.
tayo42 2y ago
The work was still on the behalf of AWS and their goal to make money and out compete Redis. it seems like this thread is forgetting that? The alternate future seems to be a headline like "Redis shuts down and stops development" anyway, so how is this different? What do you think Redis should do? Continue to let the cloud providers run them out of business? And all because Amazon was gracious enough to fund 1 employee working on it? I think this thread is missing that response.
- _msw_ 2y ago
  No, the goal was to make Redis better for its community, which has positive downstream effects for everyone (users, Redis as a service providers-including Redis Ltd, etc.) And these efforts involved more than one developer. It is only that one of them happened to be a core team member (which required working in good faith for the interest of the Redis community as a whole—a “commitment to the project”). https://redis.com/blog/redis-core-team-update/ https://redis.com/blog/redis-core-team-update/
  - tayo42 2y ago
    You dodged the core part of my comment and question. Why? Amazon isn't running and charging for redis as a platform to make redis in the world a better place.
    - _msw_ 2y ago
      On the “downstream” side of this equation (managed services), the goal is to build a business that delights customers to the point where they part with their money to enjoy it. The ultimate goal there is naturally revenue and profit margin oriented, but _how_ you advance that goal matters a lot. In my experience, focusing on the customer first increases the chances of success. When such a line of business has a core component that is open source, the growth and health of the “upstream” project, its developers, and the user community is an essential component in its continued success. This is why folks on the ElastiCache team has been increasing their investments in both the upstream project code and in helping to maintain it as a “community-led” project under the previous governance structure. Those investments increased the provision of digital public goods (as open source licensed software is generally considered to be a “digital public good” even if it is not technically in the public domain). Increasing the provision of digital public goods is generally seen as in service of the public good, as it (more often than not) makes the world a better place.
redwood 2y ago
This is like seeing an employee of Philip Morris pointing out that they have employees volunteer to tell kids how smoking is not healthy or like when British Petroleum funds research on green energy... I'm sorry but you're a cog in a machine which is fine but we have structural problems at play here that can't be swept under the rug
ametrau 2y ago
> one of my colleagues unknowingly was part of Amazon’s embrace and extend phases so ah… yeah it’s not all bad.

by _msw_ 2y ago

klabb3 2y ago

I think most people are aware of the occasional contributions from the behemoths. Sometimes, entire projects. But charity is not a sustainable business model. When you provide a service offering the marginal returns go to the provider. In the B2B world, that’s a golden deal for these companies. Normally, you’d have a rev share or something like it. So it’s very understandable there’s a shift in the industry. It’s probably for the better for everyone.

_msw_ 2y ago
"Occasional contributions" don't earn an invitation to become a Redis core maintainer. Please stop diminishing the tireless work of FOSS maintainers.
- klabb3 2y ago
  I’m obviously talking about corporate FOSS contributions overall, not any individual contributor. There’s also a difference being on FAANG payroll vs maintaining without financial stability, which is the reality for most FOSS maintainers.
- arp242 2y ago
  They get paid for it. Don't try to spin this as if it's someone people working on it in their spare time out of the goodness of their heart. It's just their job. Amazon simultaneously wants to be "part of the community" but also extract the maximum amount of profit via AWS. Amazon can just do a deal with Redis to share a percentage of the profits from their Redis usage. They don't have to, but they could. But no, they insist on having it for free, and we should be grateful that benevolent Amazon with their $23 billion operating income (from AWS) deems Redis worthy for a contributor or two (which is of course entirely in their own interest). Give me a break. Amazon Inc. wants to maximize profits. Okay fair. I'm not against capitalism. But it holds others to a different standard by insisting they only (not Amazon) should be beholden to some different type of post-capitalist post-scarcity "let's all share together in community" type of model and cries crocodile tears when they model of extracting the maximum in profits while giving the minimum in return blows up in their face. You reap what you sow. Amazon needs to either hold everyone to the same standard as they have for themselves or stop whining.
  - reconditerose 2y ago
    > They get paid for it. Don't try to spin this as if it's someone people working on it in their spare time out of the goodness of their heart. It's just their job. No, you can't have this both ways. I'm the main contributor from AWS, and I've worked many times on weekends because I care about open source. I like helping people, I don't need to be paid to do it. Many of the AWS folks that made changes were normal engineers that were excited to be part of Redis. https://github.com/redis/redis/pull/10419 https://github.com/redis/redis/pull/10419 and https://github.com/redis/redis/pull/8621 https://github.com/redis/redis/pull/8621 are both examples of features someone from AWS built in their free time. We're all upset about this. Not because Redis deserves to get paid, it's that they acted like they were being good stewards of the open-source community and then they changed their mind.
    - arp242 2y ago
      I'm sure you do, but that changes nothing about the problematic nature of Amazon's relationship with a lot of projects it interacts with, which is really what this is about: "Amazon thinks that by throwing some contributions at a project offsets for depriving a project of its main revenue". Well, it doesn't. My landlord and Tesco doesn't accept code contributions as payment. This is why this keeps happening again and again with all sort of projects. You reap what you sow.
reconditerose 2y ago
The beef I have here is that Redis also takes credit for community work. Most of the heavy lifting came from antirez, who created and ran the project up until 2020. (It's worth conceding that Redis did compensate antirez). At that time Redis created an open governing board that took over, with a majority of contributions coming from the community during this time (~25% of contributions came from Redis engineers, ~75% from the community, including ~3% that came from me personally). They own the trademark and the repository, so they can do what they want, but I take issue with the optics that this is really AWS or GCPs or some other vendors fault that Redis decided to blind side it's development community. Redis gave some of us a heads up this was happening, but most people are finding out by a blog post that Redis dissolved the previous open-governance (a fact they barely address in the blog post). We had to drop weeks of work on the floor because we could not longer finish it.
- klabb3 2y ago
  That’s very interesting context and doesn’t look too good on the “Redis governing board” indeed.
  - _msw_ 2y ago
    https://web.archive.org/web/20231030181609/https://redis.io/docs/about/governance/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231030181609/https://redis.io/... (the page is now a 404) The core team has the following remit: * Managing the core Redis code and documentation * Managing new Redis releases * Maintaining a high-level technical direction/roadmap * Providing a fast response, including fixes/patches, to address security vulnerabilities and other major issues * Project governance decisions and changes * Coordination of Redis core with the rest of the Redis ecosystem * Managing the membership of the core team It seems clear to me (speaking only for myself) that the core team didn't have a say in project governance decisions and changes here. :-(
    - throwaway290 2y ago
      If core team's pay depends on it maybe they did have a say... Developers also grow up and start families you know
personjerry 2y ago
> But charity is not a sustainable business model Wasn't Dwarf Fortress charity funded for a long time?
- theshrike79 2y ago
  It was also just two guys with a moderate paycheck doing what they loved. They only hit it big when they got the game prettified and on Steam.
  - personjerry 2y ago
    Yeah but they got moderate paychecks for like a decade? Isn't that a "sustainable business model"?
jrochkind1 2y ago
So when cloud providers like AWS are contributing to an open source project that they also host, I wouldn't call it "charity". The self-interest is obvious. The problem is that it may not match the self-interest of other contributors. Especially when there is a "main" company that owns the IP of the open source that is not them. But note how Amazon forked ElasticSearch when it became no longer open source, to their "OpenSearch" OpenSearch is Apache-licensed. Amazon engineers maintain it. This is not charity exactly, Amazon makes money from selling hosting of it. In the "classic" age of open source, most projects were collaborations, where different people who got paid by differnet employers worked on it on company time, because their employers used it for their operatons. And were willing to pay to contribute to the software they used. Most of these were not in the business of selling software. They did not expect to make direct money from their contributions to the software. This is how apache httpd began for instance. I think some of the employers of contributors were non-profit as well. I think that's actually the only sustainable model for open source. A single company paying people to develop open source software and hoping to make money from that -- was probably never actually sustainable. If the current economic conditions don't support people working on the clock to contribute to open source software that their employers use -- because software has gotten too complex, or because companies have gotten much more stingy or unwilling to pay for such things -- then indeed we won't have much open source anymore, we'll have proprietary source-available licenses like this.

tayo42 2y ago

The work was still on the behalf of AWS and their goal to make money and out compete Redis. it seems like this thread is forgetting that? The alternate future seems to be a headline like "Redis shuts down and stops development" anyway, so how is this different? What do you think Redis should do? Continue to let the cloud providers run them out of business? And all because Amazon was gracious enough to fund 1 employee working on it? I think this thread is missing that response.

_msw_ 2y ago
No, the goal was to make Redis better for its community, which has positive downstream effects for everyone (users, Redis as a service providers-including Redis Ltd, etc.) And these efforts involved more than one developer. It is only that one of them happened to be a core team member (which required working in good faith for the interest of the Redis community as a whole—a “commitment to the project”). https://redis.com/blog/redis-core-team-update/ https://redis.com/blog/redis-core-team-update/
- tayo42 2y ago
  You dodged the core part of my comment and question. Why? Amazon isn't running and charging for redis as a platform to make redis in the world a better place.
  - _msw_ 2y ago
    On the “downstream” side of this equation (managed services), the goal is to build a business that delights customers to the point where they part with their money to enjoy it. The ultimate goal there is naturally revenue and profit margin oriented, but _how_ you advance that goal matters a lot. In my experience, focusing on the customer first increases the chances of success. When such a line of business has a core component that is open source, the growth and health of the “upstream” project, its developers, and the user community is an essential component in its continued success. This is why folks on the ElastiCache team has been increasing their investments in both the upstream project code and in helping to maintain it as a “community-led” project under the previous governance structure. Those investments increased the provision of digital public goods (as open source licensed software is generally considered to be a “digital public good” even if it is not technically in the public domain). Increasing the provision of digital public goods is generally seen as in service of the public good, as it (more often than not) makes the world a better place.

redwood 2y ago

This is like seeing an employee of Philip Morris pointing out that they have employees volunteer to tell kids how smoking is not healthy or like when British Petroleum funds research on green energy... I'm sorry but you're a cog in a machine which is fine but we have structural problems at play here that can't be swept under the rug

ametrau 2y ago

> one of my colleagues unknowingly was part of Amazon’s embrace and extend phases so ah… yeah it’s not all bad.