alt Hacker NewsThe S3 API doesn't work like normal filesystem APIs.
Part of it is that it follows the object storage model, and part of it is just to lock people into AWS once they start working with it.
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Apart from all these other products that implement s3? MinIO, Ceph (RGW), Garage, SeaweedFS, Zenko CloudServer, OpenIO, LakeFS, Versity, Storj, Riak CS, JuiceFS, Rustfs, s3proxy.
The API has sort of become a standard. There are many providers providing S3 API-compatible storage.
What kind of vendor lock-in do you even talk about. Their API is public knowledge, AWS publishes the spec, there are multiple open source reference client implementations available on GitHub, there are multiple alternatives supporting the protocol, you can find writings from AWS people as high in hierarchy as Werner Vogels about internals. Maybe you could say that some s3 features with no alternative implementation in alternative products are a lock-in. I would consider it a „competitive advantage”. YMMV.
> part of it is just to lock people into AWS once they start working with it.
This is some next-level conspiracy theory stuff. What exactly would the alternative have been in 2006? S3 is one of the most commonly implemented object storage APIs around, so if the goal is lock-in, they're really bad at it.
I'm 100% aware of how S3 works. I was questioning why the S3 API is needed when the service is using local storage.