

Why Does Amazon.com Hate Open Source? - wyclif
http://www.odonnellweb.com/2012/09/why-does-amazon-com-hate-open-source/

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kevinconroy
I don't think Amazon hates open source. You're complaining that they haven't
build the same tools to support album downloads that they have on Mac and
Windows, which is a fair point. But not having a "download full album" feature
for Linux is very different from "hating open source".

You feel like a second-class citizen as a result of the music purchase
experience on Amazon while using Linux, which is completely different from
what your headline suggests. #clickbait

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simonster
> If I’m not getting the same service as the Windows or Mac user why am I
> paying the same price?

This is a silly argument. Software for smaller platforms costs more to develop
per unit revenue, since there are fewer users and software development costs
are essentially fixed.

The blog post author makes a comparison to iTunes, but iTunes won't let you do
_anything_ on Linux. By comparison, clicking each song to download it is
really not too bad.

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johnrgrace
I don't have direct knowledge, but I believe the concern is having open source
could result in having to disclose some code/ideas that are valauble because
open source was used.

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recoiledsnake
Businesses do a somewhat simple cost benefit analysis. How much does X cost
and how much revenue will X make us in the short and long run? Building
software is not cheap in companies like Amazon. A trivial piece of software
will end up costing multiple millions of dollars over the life of the product
if you factor in support and maintenance and new versions.

According to Gruber, who points it out snarkily, Amazon made only $7 million
last quarter. [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit-
corr...](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit-correction)

So, it's a question of Linux server vs. desktop Linux, the latter of which has
very less marketshare as to be a drop in the ocean of Amazon's revenues. They
figure that the goodwill loss among desktop Linux users is not worth the
effort to get their services working on Linux, since things like DRM for the
movie streaming service is usually more tricky on Linux.

They do support Android though, so it shows that it's not about Open Source
but about profitability. Many companies leveraging Open Source do not feel the
need to give back more than for just that software in question, see Apple with
no support for Open Source desktop at all, and wrapping the BSD stuff in heavy
DRM on iOS. Tivoization is another egregious example. If companies weren't
legally obligated to release some software under the GPL, they most likely
won't. Google did not release their proprietary Linux kernel for the longest
time(no idea if they have done it yet).

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wherewhenwhy
cost benefit analysis -- OP should get a copy of the songs fro friends and not
buy it from anywheree

