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"Occasional contributions" don't earn an invitation to become a Redis core maintainer. Please stop diminishing the tireless work of FOSS maintainers.

by _msw_ 2y ago

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.
    - jpc0 2y ago
      > My landlord and Tesco doesn't accept code contributions as payment Your landlord and Tesco aren't an open source project. If for instance I get paid $X to specifically work on Redis by Y. The open source project now has effectively a full time engineer they aren't paying for, one that likely would not be a full time engineer for redis otherwise. You cannot have "Amazon engineers contribute to redis" and "Amazon pays redis $X every month" and Amazon is only an example here, it could be Costco or IKEA or whatever. So your argument is that instead of having OSS contributions from some of the best engineers in the world, redis (and other now OSS software) should compete with FAANG to pay those engineers. Guaranteed one of the FAANG companies would just develop the tools internally instead if paying redis.
      - darkwater 2y ago
        > You cannot have "Amazon engineers contribute to redis" and "Amazon pays redis $X every month" and Amazon is only an example here, it could be Costco or IKEA or whatever. Wouldn't be better for both Redis, community and OSS movement if 1) Redis was fully OSS 2) AWS has a deal with Redis Labs were they share some X% of the revenue of their income for managed Redis (ElastiCache) 3) Redis Labs with that revenue can hire more maintainers 3a) Redis Labs with that revenue can pursue a competitive offering to ElastiCache (booom!) 4) AWS can still hire their developers and try to make them core maintainers to steer Redis development into implementing features they want/need It's really impossible for me to paint AWS as the good citizen here and Redis Labs as the villain. EDIT: I also wonder what history would have been if antirez started or moved to an AGPL3 licensing early on.
- _msw_ 2y ago
  There is no spin here. There are people that work for Amazon that work on FOSS projects out of the goodness of their heart, just like folks who are independent developers, or folks who work for startups, or folks who are just getting started. When a FOSS maintainer tells you they sometimes do work on the weekends for the love of the community [1] you believe them. The evidence (with timestamps!) is there for all to see in the pull requests and commit history. [1] https://twitter.com/reconditerose/status/1770697315671535707 https://twitter.com/reconditerose/status/1770697315671535707
  - LightFog 2y ago
    Without denying the good intentions and inputs of the individuals going above and beyond to contribute - AWS as a whole contribute peanuts to these projects relative to what they make from them - they have it in their power to make these projects sustainable via healthy revenue sharing but don’t.
    - _msw_ 2y ago
      You write as if you have all the facts, but I doubt you do. There are services with varying partnership terms, and there have been services launched with an intent to build long term mutually beneficial relationships that help ensure FOSS projects are well resourced. “AWS, working with Grafana Labs, will be contributing licensing revenue and code to help make Grafana even better, not just for the AWS service, but also for open source users and Grafana Cloud customers.” https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/how-aws-and-grafana-labs-are-collaborating-to-improve-grafana-for-all/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/how-aws-and-grafana-...
      - LightFog 2y ago
        You are right - I don't have the details on Amazon's agreements with FOSS projects - have you made them public? All I have to go by are AWS's huge profits and the continuing struggles of FOSS projects involved with AWS to develop sustainable business models.
    - cowsandmilk 2y ago
- 8note 2y ago
  Why pay redis though? Vs "the community" How much does redis pay those aws engineers for their contributions?
- theshackleford 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. I know devs doing exactly this today. Devs who when the actions of their employer would have forced them to diverge from being able to do so, stuck to their convictions so much that they chose to terminate that employet contract so they could continue to do exactly that "in their spare time out of the goodness of their heart." I will fully admit that I am not that kind of individual, I lack the capacity to contribute meaningfully in that way, but there are certainly many out there in our industry who are.

"Occasional contributions" don't earn an invitation to become a Redis core maintainer. Please stop diminishing the tireless work of FOSS maintainers.

by _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.
  - jpc0 2y ago
    > My landlord and Tesco doesn't accept code contributions as payment Your landlord and Tesco aren't an open source project. If for instance I get paid $X to specifically work on Redis by Y. The open source project now has effectively a full time engineer they aren't paying for, one that likely would not be a full time engineer for redis otherwise. You cannot have "Amazon engineers contribute to redis" and "Amazon pays redis $X every month" and Amazon is only an example here, it could be Costco or IKEA or whatever. So your argument is that instead of having OSS contributions from some of the best engineers in the world, redis (and other now OSS software) should compete with FAANG to pay those engineers. Guaranteed one of the FAANG companies would just develop the tools internally instead if paying redis.
    - darkwater 2y ago
      > You cannot have "Amazon engineers contribute to redis" and "Amazon pays redis $X every month" and Amazon is only an example here, it could be Costco or IKEA or whatever. Wouldn't be better for both Redis, community and OSS movement if 1) Redis was fully OSS 2) AWS has a deal with Redis Labs were they share some X% of the revenue of their income for managed Redis (ElastiCache) 3) Redis Labs with that revenue can hire more maintainers 3a) Redis Labs with that revenue can pursue a competitive offering to ElastiCache (booom!) 4) AWS can still hire their developers and try to make them core maintainers to steer Redis development into implementing features they want/need It's really impossible for me to paint AWS as the good citizen here and Redis Labs as the villain. EDIT: I also wonder what history would have been if antirez started or moved to an AGPL3 licensing early on.
_msw_ 2y ago
There is no spin here. There are people that work for Amazon that work on FOSS projects out of the goodness of their heart, just like folks who are independent developers, or folks who work for startups, or folks who are just getting started. When a FOSS maintainer tells you they sometimes do work on the weekends for the love of the community [1] you believe them. The evidence (with timestamps!) is there for all to see in the pull requests and commit history. [1] https://twitter.com/reconditerose/status/1770697315671535707 https://twitter.com/reconditerose/status/1770697315671535707
- LightFog 2y ago
  Without denying the good intentions and inputs of the individuals going above and beyond to contribute - AWS as a whole contribute peanuts to these projects relative to what they make from them - they have it in their power to make these projects sustainable via healthy revenue sharing but don’t.
  - _msw_ 2y ago
    You write as if you have all the facts, but I doubt you do. There are services with varying partnership terms, and there have been services launched with an intent to build long term mutually beneficial relationships that help ensure FOSS projects are well resourced. “AWS, working with Grafana Labs, will be contributing licensing revenue and code to help make Grafana even better, not just for the AWS service, but also for open source users and Grafana Cloud customers.” https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/how-aws-and-grafana-labs-are-collaborating-to-improve-grafana-for-all/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/how-aws-and-grafana-...
    - LightFog 2y ago
      You are right - I don't have the details on Amazon's agreements with FOSS projects - have you made them public? All I have to go by are AWS's huge profits and the continuing struggles of FOSS projects involved with AWS to develop sustainable business models.
  - cowsandmilk 2y ago
8note 2y ago
Why pay redis though? Vs "the community" How much does redis pay those aws engineers for their contributions?
theshackleford 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. I know devs doing exactly this today. Devs who when the actions of their employer would have forced them to diverge from being able to do so, stuck to their convictions so much that they chose to terminate that employet contract so they could continue to do exactly that "in their spare time out of the goodness of their heart." I will fully admit that I am not that kind of individual, I lack the capacity to contribute meaningfully in that way, but there are certainly many out there in our industry who are.