this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Except AWS runs on Linux...
If AWS decides tomorrow to pull a Unity, can you fork it and keep your business running? Or do you need to rebuild an entire deployment infrastructure?
Running your server on someone else's hardware isn't the same thing as using not using open source?
AWS's servers themselves run on an Amazon-modified flavor of Linux. I'm pretty sure this version already is a fork of CentOS or RHEL.
If you choose to use AWS, you can choose a variety of Linux flavors to run.
If you choose to leave AWS and you have to find a new hosting provider or need to procure hardware to host it yourself, that has nothing to do with the provider being open source or not. Them forking their versions of Linux really only affects Amazon internally, they're not giving their internally used version out to everyone for use. They have Amazon's Linux 2 which they do give away to everyone to use, but why would you use it when there's more open versions of Linux available?
Once again, this seems mostly like people confusing using open source software and using hardware that someone else owns. Open source isn't about who owns the hardware, that's a private property issue. That's more akin to setting up your business on Amazon's lawn and then getting frustrated when Amazon isn't mowing their lawn and your business can't be seen from the road. Honestly, that's what you get for setting up shop on someone else's property where they already have their own shop.
Except most people running their services on AWS are not using just the EC2 instances. I would even go as far as saying no one in their sane mind uses AWS just for EC2, at which point you are probably tied to the services you use. If Amazon goes full Unity, and you are lucky it's things that have alternative implementations like S3, if it's something like sagemaker you're fucked.
Y'all are fundamentally talking about different things and are failing to see why they are different.
Vendor lock in from proprietary software is not the same thing as vendor lock in from using vendors hardware.
Both are bad, but they are not the same, and conflating the two is misunderstanding the point. Just like the original meme misunderstood the point.