Amazon’s Quiet Open Source Revolution ![rw-book-cover](https://images.idgesg.net/images/article/2017/10/cloud_computing_binary_rain_thinkstock_469846534_3x2-100740698-large.jpg?auto=webp&quality=85,70) ## Metadata - Author: [[Matt Asay]] - Full Title: Amazon’s Quiet Open Source Revolution - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #open-source - #cloud - #aws Author: Matt Asay Source: InfoWorld (article) Reference: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3694090/amazon-s-quiet-open-source-revolution.html date created: 2025-08-21 00:00 --- # Title: Amazon’s quiet open source revolution ## Table of Contents: - [🧭 Overview](#-overview) - [🧩 Context: AWS and “strip-mining” narratives](#-context-aws-and-strip-mining-narratives) - [🚀 Shift in Mentality: From Ownership to Contribution](#-shift-in-mentality-from-ownership-to-contribution) - [🐘 Case Study: PostgreSQL Contributions](#-case-study-postgresql-contributions) - [🛣️ Long Road Ahead: Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, Knative, Hadoop, Airflow](#-long-road-ahead-kubernetes-opentelemetry-knative-hadoop-airflow) - [🏁 Why This Matters: Benefits for AWS, Customers, and OSS](#-why-this-matters-benefits-for-aws-customers-and-oss) - [📚 References](#-references) ### References: - InfoWorld article by Matt Asay - Contextual references within the article: Cloud Native Computing Foundation projects, Apache Software Foundation, PostgreSQL committers list (as mentioned), Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, Knative, Hadoop, Airflow. ## 📝 Summary: The article argues that AWS has meaningfully shifted from being perceived as an open source “free-rider” to becoming a substantive contributor, driven by internal alignment with Amazon’s leadership principles like Customer Obsession and Ownership. Concrete progress is most visible in PostgreSQL, where multiple AWS engineers are now committers. While AWS still lags in top-tier contribution leaderboards for projects like Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, and Knative, the trendline is positive. Asay contends that deeper participation helps AWS deliver the “vanilla,” upstream-aligned experiences customers want, reduces technical debt, and ultimately benefits AWS, customers, and the broader open source ecosystem. ## 📖 Main Content: The author revisits the long-standing critique of AWS “strip-mining” open source—benefiting from OSS without proportionate contribution. He acknowledges the critique had “just enough smoke” to appear credible historically, given Google and Microsoft often topped contribution charts while AWS trailed. The central claim: AWS service teams have internalized that to fulfill Customer Obsession, they must also be “obsessed with open source contributions.” Previously, a strict reading of Ownership led teams to favor proprietary control, fearing exposure of internal systems, aiding competitors, or creating dependency on community bug fixes. The cost was mounting technical debt and less-than-ideal customer outcomes on managed OSS services. Evidence of change is most striking in PostgreSQL: AWS now has multiple committers—some hired, others who earned committer status (e.g., Nathan Bossart, Masahiko Sawada). Asay estimates AWS may be the third-largest corporate contributor to PostgreSQL based on aggregated employee activity. AWS still has distance to cover in projects like Kubernetes (barely top 10 in recent year), OpenTelemetry, Knative (#12), and Hadoop (just one committer), though Airflow looks stronger. The key narrative is momentum: from zero to some, from lagging to present-and-growing. The pragmatic payoff is upstream alignment—customers want “vanilla” OSS rather than forked “premium” variants, which necessitates contributing upstream to make those services “just work” at AWS scale. Asay concludes that AWS’s scale-derived resilience and operational know-how, when infused into OSS communities, benefits everyone and expands markets that AWS can serve. ### 🗒️ Notes - Historical perception: - AWS accused of “strip-mining” OSS; claim had partial plausibility because AWS lagged in contribution rankings while others led. - Prior AWS mindset: strong Ownership → reluctance to depend on communities; fear of revealing internals or empowering competitors. - Cultural/organizational shift: - Alignment to Customer Obsession necessitates active upstream contributions. - Reduces technical debt and accelerates delivering what customers actually want. - PostgreSQL case: - Significant AWS committer presence. - Named contributors: Nathan Bossart, Masahiko Sawada. - Author’s estimate: AWS possibly third-largest corporate contributor by aggregation. - Other ecosystems: - Kubernetes: AWS barely in top 10 (recent year). - OpenTelemetry, Knative: AWS around #12 in Knative; progress but room to grow. - Hadoop: Just one AWS committer; Airflow better. - Signal: shift from zero committers historically to multiple now. - Customer impact: - Customers prefer upstream “vanilla” experiences over forked/premium variants. - Contributing upstream is necessary to make services reliable and aligned. - Strategic impact: - AWS’s scale equips it to fix issues that appear only at massive scale. - This knowledge transfer strengthens OSS and can expand markets for AWS. Cited lines and anchors: - Opening context about perceptions and prior lag: [Overview](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3694090/amazon-s-quiet-open-source-revolution.html) - Cultural shift tied to leadership principles: [Shift in Mentality](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3694090/amazon-s-quiet-open-source-revolution.html) - PostgreSQL committer growth: [PostgreSQL Contributions](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3694090/amazon-s-quiet-open-source-revolution.html) - Contribution standings in K8s/Knative/Hadoop/Airflow: [Long Road Ahead](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3694090/amazon-s-quiet-open-source-revolution.html) - Closing benefits: [Why This Matters](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3694090/amazon-s-quiet-open-source-revolution.html) ## 📖 References: - Matt Asay, “Amazon’s quiet open source revolution,” InfoWorld, 2023-04-24. https://www.infoworld.com/article/3694090/amazon-s-quiet-open-source-revolution.html - Mentioned ecosystems: CNCF, Apache Software Foundation, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, Knative, Hadoop, Airflow. ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1) Original idea: AWS once lagged in OSS contributions, making “strip-mining” accusations seem plausible; now, teams realize Customer Obsession requires upstream engagement. Paraphrase: Although past criticism that AWS exploited open source without giving back had some basis in the contribution data, the company’s stance has evolved. AWS product groups increasingly recognize that truly serving customers means investing in and collaborating with the upstream projects they run. 2) Original idea: PostgreSQL involvement surged—many AWS employees are committers; some were hired with status, others earned it—possibly making AWS the third-largest corporate contributor. Paraphrase: AWS’s footprint in PostgreSQL has grown remarkably. Numerous engineers at the company now hold committer rights—some recruited with that credential, others achieving it through active participation—suggesting AWS may rank among the top three corporate contributors when tallying employees’ work. ## 📰 Newsletter: This week in Web Dev and Open Source: From “free rider” to force multiplier, AWS is upping its upstream game. Matt Asay chronicles a quiet, consequential shift at Amazon Web Services—service teams are embracing contributions to cornerstone projects like PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, and OpenTelemetry to deliver the upstream-aligned experiences developers want. The payoff? Less technical debt, more reliability, and a healthier OSS ecosystem. If you’re learning web development, watch how cloud providers’ upstream work shapes the SDKs, managed services, and tooling we use daily. Community highlights: - PostgreSQL momentum: Multiple AWS engineers are now committers, signaling real investment in the database so many of our apps rely on. - Observability wins: Participation in projects like OpenTelemetry promises better end-to-end tracing for modern stacks. New and notable for WordPress folks: - Keep an eye on managed databases and observability integrations—upstream alignment means fewer surprises in production. - Explore how your stack benefits when providers contribute upstream rather than ship forks. Read more in Amazon’s quiet open source revolution by Matt Asay. Thought-provoking, concise - Summary: After years of getting a free ride from open source projects, the company is developing its own obsession with contributing. - URL: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3694090/amazon-s-quiet-open-source-revolution.html ![cloud computing binary rain](https://images.idgesg.net/images/article/2017/10/cloud_computing_binary_rain_thinkstock_469846534_3x2-100740698-large.jpg?auto=webp&quality=85,70) Thinkstock Something has changed at Amazon Web Services (AWS) with regard to its formerly fraught relationship with open source. Though it was always incorrect to [lambast AWS for “strip-mining” open source](https://go.skimresources.com/?id=111346X1569476&isjs=1&jv=15.3.0-stackpath&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.infoworld.com%2Farticle%2F3658854%2Fthe-new-aws-no-more-dumpster-fires.html&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F12%2F15%2Ftechnology%2Famazon-aws-cloud-competition.html&xs=1&xtz=360&xuuid=2c216cfe0e7030452ba3d627fea9e672&abp=1&xjsf=other_click__contextmenu%20%5B0%5D), as Daisuke Wakabayashi did in *The New York Times*, there was just enough smoke in that “strip-mining” fire to make the accusation seem somewhat credible. After all, a quick perusal of top open source projects with the [Cloud Native Computing Foundation](https://devstats.cncf.io/), the [Apache Software Foundation](https://projects.apache.org/projects.html), or just about anywhere would have shown that Google [tended to top the open source contribution charts](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3669851/is-open-source-leadership-helping-google.html), with Microsoft a strong second. AWS was off in the distance, likely congratulating itself on relieving customers of the “[undifferentiated heavy lifting](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/framework/cost-dp.html)” of managing open source by themselves. ###### [ [The best open source software of 2022](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3676829/the-best-open-source-software-of-2022.html) ] Well, that was then; this is now. Service (product) teams at AWS finally seem to be getting the message that to deliver on “[Customer Obsession](https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles),” Amazon’s foremost leadership principle (or even other principles like Ownership, Deliver Results, etc.), they really need to be obsessed with open source contributions too. #### Weird, but true I’ve [mentioned before](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3682150/aws-is-changing.html) that AWS seems to be changing its mentality around ownership. AWS’ number 2 leadership principle has led some AWS service teams to assume the only way to truly care for customers was to own all aspects of the experience. This made it difficult to engage open source communities because it seemed to imply Amazon would be at the mercy of the community to fix bugs, etc. Some AWS service teams were reluctant to contribute lest they reveal too much about how their systems run or enable competitors with bug fixes or features that differentiated Amazon’s own services. In the process, they piled up technical debt, making it harder to give the customer what they really wanted: an easy way to run [Apache Spark](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3236869/what-is-apache-spark-the-big-data-platform-that-crushed-hadoop.html), or MySQL, or [insert open source project here]. While I was working at AWS, I [saw this begin to change](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3658854/the-new-aws-no-more-dumpster-fires.html), if slowly. Now it seems to be accelerating quickly. Take, for example, [PostgreSQL](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3605138/the-shifting-market-for-postgresql.html). A few years back, AWS was regularly criticized (rightly so, I’d argue) for free-riding on PostgreSQL. The company made lots of money managing PostgreSQL for customers but gave little back. Now, however, the [PostgreSQL committer page](https://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/) is filled with AWS employees. Some of these people were already committers and were hired by AWS to work on PostgreSQL (and presumably AWS database services such as RDS and Aurora), but Nathan Bossart, Masahiko Sawada, and others earned that distinction through their contributions. I’d hazard a guess that AWS is now the third-largest corporate contributor to PostgreSQL if you aggregate the contributions of its employees to PostgreSQL. I’m not at all downplaying the value of others’ contributions. Rather, I’m pointing out the astonishing increase in AWS’ involvement. [Nominations are open for the 2024 Best Places to Work in IT](https://survey.researchresults.com/survey/selfserve/53b/s00643290501?ctry=1&ver=8) #### The long road Let’s remember that the open source spadework is not done. For example, AWS makes a lot of money from its Kubernetes service but still barely [scrapes into the top 10 contributors](https://k8s.devstats.cncf.io/d/9/companies-table?orgId=1&var-period_name=Last%20year&var-metric=contributions) for the past year. The same is true for other banner open source projects that AWS has managed services for, such as [OpenTelemetry](https://opentelemetry.devstats.cncf.io/d/5/companies-table?orgId=1&var-period_name=Last%20year&var-metric=contributions), or projects its customers depend on, such as Knative ([AWS comes in at #12](https://knative.devstats.cncf.io/d/5/companies-table?orgId=1&var-period_name=Last%20year&var-metric=contributions)). What about Apache Hadoop, the foundation for AWS Elastic MapReduce? AWS has [just one committer](https://hadoop.apache.org/who.html). For Apache Airflow, the numbers are better. This is glass-half-empty thinking, anyway. The fact that AWS has *any* committers to these projects is an important indicator that the company is changing. A few years back, there would have been zero committers to these projects. Now there are one or many. All of this signals a different destination for AWS. The company has always been great at running open source projects as services for its customers. As [I found while working there](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3608648/the-real-value-of-open-source-in-the-cloud.html), most customers just want something that works. But getting it to “just work” in the way customers want (i.e., the vanilla version of an open source project, not some forked, “premium” version) requires that AWS get its hands dirty in the development of the project. Engineering teams weren’t traditionally incentivized to do that; apparently they are now. All of this is good for AWS, good for its customers, and good for open source. It’s hard to overemphasize just how differently AWS runs, given its scale. At scale, things break and AWS has learned how to fix them. If we can get more of that know-how infusing open source projects, it benefits everyone and, I’d argue, creates much bigger markets where AWS can sell its services. Related: * [Open Source](https://www.infoworld.com/category/open-source-tools/) * [Amazon Web Services](https://www.infoworld.com/category/amazon-web-services/) * [Software Development](https://www.infoworld.com/category/application-development/) * [Cloud Computing](https://www.infoworld.com/category/cloud-computing/) * [IT Strategy](https://www.infoworld.com/category/it-strategy/) Matt Asay runs developer relations at MongoDB. The views expressed herein are Matt’s and do not reflect those of his employer. 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