I think you make a solid distinction between two very different types of software, though I'm not sure I agree with your examples, specifically. If Linux didn't have the wide-spread usage and network of distributions that it currently does, there would be very little difference between it and Elastic, HC or Mongo. When it was originally gaining popularity, the general feeling of the technology world was that it was crazy to give away an operating system.
The "Public good software" you refer to is much better represented by things like Capital One's Cloud Custodian, or the massive number of software libraries in NPM, PYPI, and all over GitHub.
> Software made by startups that are precious to HN. In this case, building a business on top of them is "freeloading" and it's deeply immoral. Examples: Elastic, HashiCorp, Mongo
I don't believe it's nearly as cut and dry as this post claims. The companies who are "freeloading" are usually undertaking massive efforts to be able to run the software in a very different environment than it was originally designed for. Building a hosting solution like AWS, with the high availability solutions they offer, is an incredibly complex problem, and they're adding significant value on top of the original software. Without solutions like DocumentDB and OpenSearch, many companies would not be able to build the solutions that they have built with AWS. Additionally, if we take this stance, are these companies not "freeloading" on the open source contributors' efforts?
One could argue that cloud providers' contributions to upstream could be more significant, but how much of what AWS has developed would be useful to anyone who isn't running at their scale, and using the same solutions for the physical layer?
I see two real problems, here:
* A lack of foresight on the part of the companies who originally built their businesses based on software with overly permissive license (Elastic is probably a good example, as they decided to pivot to SaaS _after_ they built a company on the premise of open source software). If they wanted to control other peoples' use of the software to the extend that they are complaining about now, they should not have chosen MIT/MPL/BSD/Apache licenses.
* Changes in leadership which result in a major change in business model which is no-longer in line with the original goals of the companies (I believe HC probably falls in with this bunch). In this case, the new leadership has effectively "bought" something without doing their due diligence. They thought they had all of the keys to the kingdom, but they didn't understand that what they were buying.
In either case, it's not the fault of those who saw an opportunity to build on the work of others. The moral of the story is: don't give away your core intellectual property if your business model depends on monetizing it.
The "Public good software" you refer to is much better represented by things like Capital One's Cloud Custodian, or the massive number of software libraries in NPM, PYPI, and all over GitHub.
> Software made by startups that are precious to HN. In this case, building a business on top of them is "freeloading" and it's deeply immoral. Examples: Elastic, HashiCorp, Mongo
I don't believe it's nearly as cut and dry as this post claims. The companies who are "freeloading" are usually undertaking massive efforts to be able to run the software in a very different environment than it was originally designed for. Building a hosting solution like AWS, with the high availability solutions they offer, is an incredibly complex problem, and they're adding significant value on top of the original software. Without solutions like DocumentDB and OpenSearch, many companies would not be able to build the solutions that they have built with AWS. Additionally, if we take this stance, are these companies not "freeloading" on the open source contributors' efforts?
One could argue that cloud providers' contributions to upstream could be more significant, but how much of what AWS has developed would be useful to anyone who isn't running at their scale, and using the same solutions for the physical layer?
I see two real problems, here:
In either case, it's not the fault of those who saw an opportunity to build on the work of others. The moral of the story is: don't give away your core intellectual property if your business model depends on monetizing it.