If Amazon will make a product on top of open-source VictoriaMetrics, then we'll say thanks to Amazon, since this is great marketing - more people will be aware of great products provided by VictoriaMetrics!
There is close to zero probability that Amazon will pay us for this product, so there is no any sense in changing the license from Apache2 to some BSL-like license, since they never sign long-term contracts with open-source product vendors.
But if I could just go to Amazon directly,presumably they'd offer support, how do I give you money.
I just don't understand how for-profit company can develop true open source software. You can have a non profit foundation and a for profit support studio. Godot effectively does this.
Plus if you've taken VC money you can always get voted out in a few years. Or just have a nice exit. I wouldn't be mad at anyone for taking a large payday and retiring. But then the for profit company is free to change the license.
It feels more straightforward to use a proprietary or copy left license from the start.
Your company exists to make money, and I think most of us can respect that. We just don't want to start building our projects off of open source software, that converts to some other license years down the road.
If you go to Amazon directly, this is great - you continue using our products and recommending them to your friends. Probably, next time you'll become our customer. For example, if you aren't satisfied with the support from Amazon, or there are some missing features at Amazon, or if you just switch department or company.
We develop open source products, we are profitable and we have good revenue growth rate. We make money mostly on high-quality enterprise technical support for our open-source products. Some of our products have enterprise-only features [1], but most of our paid customers continue using open-source versions of VictoriaMetrics products.
There is close to zero probability that Amazon will pay us for this product, so there is no any sense in changing the license from Apache2 to some BSL-like license, since they never sign long-term contracts with open-source product vendors.