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Comment by DannyBee | Hacker News Reader

"The entire article is FUD – the license is rather clear in indicating that as a condition of using AWS you promise not to bring IP lawsuits against Amazon, the duration bit is only too long if you don't read that clause all the way to the end, etc."

It really isn't FUD, actually, despite the attribution.

First, You promise not to bring IP lawsuits against Amazon or it's customers, actually. Second, in fact, yes, if Amazon uses your open source (in some way that is a violation of the license), and you use AWS, you can't sue them.

Which is what the parent asked, and in fact, the clause specifically prohibits.

(Whether I like these clauses or not is another matter).

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The reason I disagree with your interpretation is due to the end of the sentence: “regarding any Service Offerings you have used”. The agreement currently has these definitions:

    “Service Offerings” means the Services (including associated APIs), the AWS Content, the AWS Marks, the AWS Site, and any other product or service provided by us under this Agreement. Service Offerings do not include Third Party Content.

    “Service” means each of the web services made available by us or our affiliates, including those web services described in the Service Terms.

I'm definitely not a fan of the broad wording which Amazon uses but I would find it hard to believe that any company large enough to consider bringing a legitimate IP suit against Amazon would have trouble finding a lawyer who can come up with an argument that e.g. the open-source project which they're suing over is not part of the web services Amazon's agreement covers but rather just a component which Amazon chose, along with many other people, to use to build that service.

You can make this argument, for sure. You will almost certainly lose ;) I've seen cases where wording similar to this has been used. It was found to cover the pieces that provide the services, exactly because it is worthless as a protection otherwise. (If I can get an injunction against you stopping you from running a critical piece of your service , you won't be able to provide the service)

A lot of this would depend on the exact nature of the dispute. If this hypothetical open-source project was, say, an XML parser it'd be hard to claim that it was integral to AWS rather than an interchangeable component any more than, say, Intel hosting a microsite on S3 would give Amazon the rights to all of their processor IP. On the other hand, an AWS deployment tool or compute optimizer developed in a private beta that'd be a much harder case since Amazon could quite reasonably argue a privileged business relationship.

Right now we have one case which hasn't been settled and which apparently did involve a business partner. I think we'd need n > 1 or at least a final ruling before making the kind of sweeping claims presented originally.

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