In some parts of the open source community—the loosely affiliated bands of developers who work on free software projects—Amazon Web Services is viewed as a mooch, a company that makes money from those projects without contributing enough to their advancement. It turns out executives at AWS, as the cloud computing unit of the internet retailer is known, worry about its open source reputation too.
In April, a document circulated inside AWS that quoted Francessca Vasquez, head of Americas Solutions Architecture at AWS, who wrote that several of its biggest customers—Netflix, Capital One and Intuit—viewed AWS’s backing of open source software as tepid. In the document, which was seen by The Information, she said the customers were demanding better integration between an open source tool, known as Spinnaker, and AWS’s offerings. She proposed steps AWS could take to become involved in those and similar projects.
“They have a perception that AWS is lacking in OSS contributions to support them,” said Vasquez, referring to the abbreviation for open source software.
