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Public Cloud Providers to Invest More in Open Source Software, and Contribute Back!
By Steven
Mih, Cofounder and CEO, Ahana
Public cloud providers like AWS are going to
make huge investments in open source software in the next year. They will do
this to differentiate themselves from the competition, and also to give back to
the community. This will benefit both the providers and the open source
software communities, as it will drive more innovation and collaboration.
As open source software becomes more
prevalent, public cloud providers such as AWS are investing heavily in its
advancement. Open source is an efficient way to rapidly deliver well-known
services to customers on their cloud platform, thereby facilitating more cloud
usage. Although beneficial for customers, certain open source providers of
projects have strongly argued that the cloud services are not playing their
part in the advancement of the project, even dubbing it "strip
mining". MongoDB is a noteworthy illustration of this issue. They changed
from a permissive Apache 2.0 license to avoid service providers from offering
services utilizing their newer releases, which broke the mining equipment as a
result. Elastic's experience with AWS was comparable--in response, AWS spawned
OpenSearch last year. This experience opened the eyes of all
stakeholders--users and developers alike. Some users had to suffer through an
even more locked-in environment due to a decrease in competitive compatible
offerings, while developers understood that 'open source' doesn't always mean
it's open forever. The events brought about by these realizations have led many
companies to look for truly open source projects, ones that they themselves can
join and partly control. For public cloud providers, this is not just a matter
of maintaining good press; they must also gain recognition in the project by
investing and contributing back to it if they wish to secure a seat at the
table. Such contributions will undoubtedly earn them considerable merit within
these communities.
The Linux Foundation Presto open source
project is an exemplary case in which AWS contributes. They offer both the
traditional clustered version of Presto, through their EMR service, and a
serverless version with Athena v2.
(https://aws.amazon.com/big-data/what-is-presto/) Moreover, they have a
dedicated committer and other developers who contribute to the Presto project
by submitting regular Pull Requests.
The balance between open source software and
public cloud providers remains central to the development of the modern
information technology landscape. Increasingly, enterprise IT departments
demand fairness and open governance when it comes to the adoption of cloud
based solutions. Open source software is a central component in this process,
enabling freedom-to-choose while also providing cost savings compared to
proprietary software solutions. Ultimately, organizations must balance the
concerns of price-performance, agility, lock-in, and governance when considering
how best to leverage open source software in conjunction with public cloud
providers.
Given this, public cloud providers are more
and more inclined to embrace and contribute back to the community. AWS is
already a major contributor to the open source ecosystem, and they will
continue to make massive investments in open source software over the next
year. By building bridges between cloud providers and open source communities,
AWS stands to benefit from increased exposure, more satisfied customers, and
most importantly, bringing value back to the community it serves.
We predict this trend to continue across all
the major cloud providers, as other public cloud providers are sure to follow
suit and make large investments in open source software, investing deep in
their development and making more contributions back to the community than ever
before. It is important that developers remain aware of this movement as open
source projects become even more closely intertwined with the growth of the
public cloud.
In an effort to remain in good standing with
the community, we anticipate that cloud vendors will increasingly opt for
open-sourcing internal projects. Donating their own projects can bolster their
market presence, and open the door for potential collaborations that align with
their broad cloud goals. For instance, Firecracker is a micro-VM technology
that was developed and made available by AWS developers to power their
serverless services like AWS Lambda. A few of the many open source projects they
provide originated from fulfilling internal requirements - take Firecracker, as
an example. Here's
their github which includes both AWS originated projects and others. We should
anticipate this trend to persist for an extended period of time as open source
software continues its takeover of the IT industry.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven
Mih, Cofounder and CEO, Ahana
Steven
brings over twenty years of experience in sales, business development, and
marketing of enterprise technology solutions to Ahana. In addition to his role of CEO, Steven is a Presto Foundation Board Member. Prior to Ahana, Steven was the former CEO of Alluxio and Aviatrix. His multifaceted go-to-market experience spans
leading additional organizations including Couchbase, Transitive, and Cadence
Design Systems. Steven started his
career as a Field Sales Engineer at AMD. Steven holds a B.S. in Electrical
Engineering from UC San Diego.