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Could everyone take a moment here and reflect on their hostile attitude towards an open source author who just wants to be treated fairly (in a moral sense)?

My guess is that none of the people who are lecturing and gloating have ever written anything substantial. Shame on you.



Not hostile.

Just pointing out the hypocrisy of embracing "openness" and "free software" that anyone could use freely, then getting mad when someone does use it.

Also it's funny to see the FOSS crowd rediscover the need for intellectual property, having denounced it when it was applied in the opposite direction.


Thank you for saying what I could not articulate.


Yeah part of the social contract for open source is people get appreciation, respect, and visibility in exchange for their contributions ..


The license does not require that.


says who?


I am baffled by the comments as well.


Is describing people who disagree with you as "[never] have ever written anything substantial" a fair treatment?

You're basically implying people who do not subscribe to you philosophy as lazy and/or unproductive.


I have, but all of it was behind commercial licenses, because there is idealism and then there is the real world.

As for the author, it sucks, but companies, moral and law, don't stand on the same side of the balance.


> open source author who just wants to be treated fairly

How is it not treated fairly in a moral sense?

I don’t think many comments are hostile. The title is entirely clickbait, and for generating PR for the author.


People do not like being publicly shamed for not adhering to some vague and not-generally-accepted obligation.


The issue here is HN loves Amazon. That's why you are seeing the hostility. If it was Google doing that, I can guarantee you the HN response would be radically different.


He used a permissive license so that everyone, including Amazon, can use his code without any strings attached. Presumably because he wants his software to spread far and wide. This is the typically stated reason why people use permissive licenses, isn't it?

Therefore, shouldn't he be thanking Amazon for spreading his software?


Acknowledgment is included also. He probably expects an blogpost from AWS thanking him specifically?

That’s pretty much unrealistic, given how many pieces of oss a project uses.




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