M3O – An open source AWS alternative | Hacker News Reader

M3O – An open source AWS alternative

github.com

19 pointsasim16 comments

The title is misleading. This project isn't open source, rather "source available". I get that the underlying packages from github.com/micro/* are FOSS, but m3o isn't: https://github.com/m3o/m3o/blob/8a533e3ab/LICENSE

Also, the title could be prefixed with a Show HN.

If you look at the situation with Elastic and AWS, licensing has become something of a difficult situation. The entirety of the system is built on open source services and infrastructure. The pieces we've built around dev UX and self hosting we're still trying to figure out what to do with. Likely most of it will be moved to open source licenses. But it does not stop anyone from hosting it right now as long as they're not attempting to sell it as a service.

> Likely most of it will be moved to open source licenses.

As OP said, the title is misleading as it is not open source now.

Looks like an interesting project, why muddle the message by making an obviously false claim up front?

I can honestly see why you would do this, but I’m not sure the over all ecosystem would benefit from this.

Consider the user’s perspective. If they’ve decided to be locked into your stack and your company dies (/becomes prohibitively expensive/etc), they can still host the stuff themselves on premise - a welcome step out, but also quite expensive. There are reasons they wanted cloud hosting in the first place, after all. They can not get another cloud service.

You may be able to somewhat work around this problem by doing a deal like the Qt Company has with KDE: If you can’t meet certain criteria, the code will be released under an open license.

The idea here is we can potentially partner with existing cloud providers who do not have the breadth of services AWS offers. People don't want to be locked in, they want to know they can still take the services with them but you're right they also don't want to manage it themselves anymore. I think this is where there's prime opportunity to work with the Hetzners, OVH's, Linode's of the world.

I honestly think the vendor lock-in argument is overdone. I don't really care that I cannot move from GCP to AWS. I picked my vendor and don't see myself moving. Some companies are looking at hybrid solutions, still using vendor tech and relying on that is not something that is outright avoided, rather often embraced due to decrease in operational overhead.

The VPS "cloud" is the more cost optimizing, DIY group, which I know less about the motivations and market for.

How is this license merely "source available" ? After reading it it sounds extremely permissive. For example:

> The licensor grants you a copyright license for the software to do everything you might do with the software that would otherwise infringe the licensor's copyright in it for any permitted purpose.

> Your license to distribute covers distributing the software with changes and new works

> The licensor grants you an additional copyright license to make changes and new works based on the software for any permitted purpose.

> The licensor grants you a patent license for the software that covers patent claims the licensor can license, or becomes able to license, that you would infringe by using the software.

> Any purpose is a permitted purpose

m3o developers have since adopted Apache License v2 which is FOSS, but the previous Polyform-based license wasn't.

From "What is polyform", https://archive.is/1YxES

> PolyForm is not...

> Open source or free software. There are plenty of existing open source licenses. PolyForm is not a substitute for them, but an alternative for those who want to license source code under limited rights.