Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor: Open Source Devs

Re:Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Compet... by Twirrim on Thursday April 25, 2019 @10:52PM (#19754457)

This may be taking it to an absurd exaggeration but the very cynical part of me thinks step 1 and 2 could well be phrased:

Step 1: Launch company to take advantage of the countless hours of free labour provided by the open source community around your project, hoping to get rich in an IPO.

Step 2: Be shocked when Amazon also takes advantage of the countless hours of free labour provided by the open source community around your project to get rich, only they also throw a bunch of expensive developer time at it to make it really shine.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Compet... by dman on Thursday April 25, 2019 @11:08PM (#19754517)

You will be surprised how little user contributions most open source projects receive. I have a few friends who are maintainers of key projects in the Python OSS ecosystem, most of them are struggling with burnout.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Compet... by Twirrim on Friday April 26, 2019 @01:21AM (#19755037)

The kinds of projects that spawn full companies or have that on their future path tend to be ones with a more active community contributing to the project.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Amazon Has Gone from Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Compet... by dman on Friday April 26, 2019 @11:59AM (#19758893)

I highly encourage you to setup some time to talk to maintainers of open source projects that you think are doing well. Ask them how they are doing and how much help they receive.

[ Parent | on HN ]