> ...for those open source companies that still harbor magical beliefs, let me put this to you as directly as possible: cloud services providers are emphatically not going to license your proprietary software. I mean, you knew that, right?
MongoDB Inc cannot make Amazon pay commercial license fees. That is not a thing that will happen. They have a lever in front of them with two positions, one of which is "large cloud companies might use your software for free", and the other is "large cloud companies will not use your software at all". They didn't like the first option, so they gave the lever a yank, but they're not going to like the second option, and there is no third option.
The way out is not to try and build a business on the assumption that people who have no interest, requirement or reason to give you large amounts of money will inexplicably do so anyhow. :)
This thread already has people eyeing up DocumentDB's pricing and comparing it favourably to MongoDB's competing Atlas service, and it's almost unthinkable to suggest that Atlas can compete on price with Amazon. The way to win this game is not to play; the rules are not in your favour.