What do the data tell us about the relationship between cloud vendors — specifically, Amazon and commercial open source vendors?

Like many platform operators, Amazon has a love-hate relationship with those hosted on its platform. This is particularly true for open-source software creators, who see their products on offer on Amazon’s cloud on terms they are not happy with.

It’s a complicated relationship, which touches upon many aspects of technology, law, and social norms. The issue started becoming more pronounced and entering our turf on Big on Data, as Amazon Web Services (AWS) started offering top open-source data management products on its platform.

Vendors developing those open source products started accusing AWS of strip mining, i.e., reaping the benefits of the products, without contributing back to their development. Google stepped in to show there is another way of doing business with open source in the cloud. The New York Times stepped in and made this talk of the town.

This is huge, as much as it is complicated. Let’s try to unpack it.

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