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this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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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.
You keep making the assumption that AWS == EC2, meanwhile it is just one of many services AWS provides.
I'm literally not talking about the services they provide, I'm talking about the AWS servers themselves. The physical box that lives at Amazon. To boot up it has to have an operating system. That OS is a flavor of Linux. The number of people who have not understood that in this thread is downright mind boggling.
Who cares what OS the AWS machines are running? I can't touch it, it's completely inaccessible for me and other clients. I can only touch the services which AWS provides. I wouldn't know the difference if it was running windows, since the OS is completely transparent, basically a hidden implementation detail.