The End of Remote Work, According to Amazon

Presented by GOTO Market Institute

Hey SaaS Sentinel reader. Welcome back. This week, Amazon is bringing an end to remote work, startups are experimenting with a new alternative to open source licensing, and an AI startup from Berkeley is creating a big buzz amongst VCs. Here’s what’s happening in SaaS this week.

• Amazon is ending their remote work arrangements and calling employees back to the office full-time

• A new software licensing model called "fair source" is emerging as an alternative to “open source”

• One of the most anticipated AI startups from UC Berkeley's prestigious labs just emerged from stealth mode with new funding

Amazon Waves Goodbye to Remote Work

Amazon is ending the pandemic's flexible remote work arrangements and calling employees back to the office full-time.

Starting in January, the ecommerce giant will require all corporate staff to commute into work 5 days a week. Employees were previously only asked to come in 3 days a week minimum.

In a memo to staff, CEO Andy Jassy made it clear that the days of working from home a few days a week will be over. He wrote that even two remote days "will also be true moving forward."

Assigned desks will also return to offices like Amazon's Seattle and Virginia headquarters that did away with them.

…so what does this mean for the future of remote work?

According to Gemma Dale, a senior lecturer in Liverpool John Moores University's business school, rigid mandates like these risk damaging employee morale, spurring talent departures, and setting off a chain reaction among other large employers. 

However, if Amazon's return-to-office push succeeds, more companies may shift their remote policies in the same direction.

Curious what other organizational experts predict about the future of remote work? You can read the full article below.

Read more.

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The Rise of "Fair Source" Software Licenses Among Startups

A new category of software licenses is emerging as an alternative to open source, dubbed "fair source." It aims to blend the ethos of open collaboration with the commercial interests of proprietary licensing.

The fair source movement has some big-name backers already, like $3 billion developer tools startup Sentry. Other adoptees so far include GitHub co-founder Scott Chacon's new venture GitButler and startup toolkit maker Keygen.

These companies argue that open source licenses place too many limits on potential business models. This is because, according to Chad Whitacre, Sentry’s head of open source, “Open source isn’t a business model — open source is a distribution model, it’s a software development model, primarily. And in fact, it places severe limits on what business models are available, because of the licensing terms.”

So, in short,  fair source licenses include stipulations like delayed open sourcing, allowing a window of IP protection before the code goes fully open to the community.

However, critics counter that "fair source" contains fuzzy terms around restricting commercial use and centralized control by the licensor. Plus, nothing stops those terms from changing down the road.

But the concept reveals a desire for more shades of gray between fully open and fully proprietary approaches in the software industry.

Rather than "open core," we can expect more startups to adopt these "fair core" licenses as they try to balance their own business incentives with community collaboration.

Read more.

Hot UC Berkeley AI Startup Letta Comes Out of Stealth with $10M

One of the most anticipated AI startups from UC Berkeley's prestigious labs just emerged from stealth mode with new funding.

Letta announced $10 million in seed funding led by top VC firm Felicis Ventures. The company, founded by Berkeley PhD students, aims to help AI agents maintain memory and user data over time.

This capability is thanks to Letta's open source MemGPT project. MemGPT went viral on Hacker News prior to its official release—it mitigates an issue where large language models like ChatGPT can't store historical conversations.

Letta's commercial cloud service will offer memory management for AI bots as a hosted platform. Plus, it already has bluechip angels like Google AI lead Jeff Dean as backers.

The startup will compete with the likes of LangChain and OpenAI in the red-hot AI agent infrastructure market. But Letta is positioning itself as an open alternative to OpenAI's black box approach.

The company represents the thriving ecosystem emerging from UC Berkeley's Sky Computing Lab. Other successes from Sky Lab include the popular Gorilla LLM and programming language SGLang.

With top tier pedigree and funding, Letta is the Berkeley startup to watch. You can learn more about this Berkeley startup in the full article below.

Read more.

Parting Thoughts

Well, that’s the tech news for this week. Hit reply and let us know—did you learn something from today’s newsletter?

Until next time!