Open Stack

On 14/11/12 13:19, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Mark McLoughlin wrote:
>> >   We see the term "Core OpenStack Project" in section 4.1.b of the
>> >   bylaws as being solely related to trademark guidelines. We would be
>> >   happy to see the term "Core" fall into disuse and for the Foundation
>> >   to simply maintain a list of projects required for trademark usage.
> I'm not sure we should recommend that the "Core" term falls into disuse.
> If the BoD wants to keep using "Core" as meaning "part of the
> coordinated release AND required for trademark use" (which is what the
> bylaws say, emphasis is mine), then I'm perfectly OK with it.
>
> What I think we actually want is to redefine "OpenStack projects" as
> being "Services + Library + Gating + Supporting" (instead of Core +
> Library + Gating + Supporting), with "OpenStack Services" being the
> projects sharing the same release cycle. Have incubation be the trial
> period to prove you can become an official OpenStack Service. Then let
> the BoD pick which of those "OpenStack projects" they want to consider
> "core" for trademark use.

I've been thinking more about the trademark part, and it seems to me 
like we've been treating it as more of an issue than it is. I think 
everybody agrees that just using, say, Oslo in your project should not 
enable you to call your project OpenStack - therefore we place Oslo in a 
category (Library projects) that does not automatically confer rights to 
the trademark, even though Oslo is part of OpenStack. You can come up 
with a similar story for all of the Library, Gating and Supporting projects.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that none of that is even 
remotely controversial.

(The Board may want at some point to create some sort of certification 
program; any such program will likely be enforced using trademarks; and 
any such proposal *will* be controversial. That's entirely a matter for 
the Board, and it's unrelated to the trademark provisions in the bylaws 
that we're discussing.)

In trademark terms, then, "Core" is all the remaining projects in 
OpenStack that haven't been put into an excluded category 
(Library/Gating/Supporting).

In my opinion it makes no difference if this category is called "Core", 
or "Services", or "Fred", or "Wibble". The dictionary definition of the 
word "core" is irrelevant because in this context "Core" is not defined 
in the dictionary, it's defined in the bylaws. And the current 
definition appears to be "everything that's left in OpenStack after you 
take out Library, Gating and Supporting projects". (I'm assuming 
throughout that Incubated projects are not considered part of 
OpenStack.) There might be a slightly more descriptive label we could 
use than "Core" (I vote for "Wibble"!), but changing the bylaws is 
fiendishly difficult and there's no need to do it if we accept that 
"Core" means only what the bylaws say it means.

What I'm suggesting here is that trademarks are not so much "an issue 
that can be punted to the Board" as just a non-issue. I don't think 
there's any need to create another category that's excluded from the 
trademark because there is already broad agreement on what is excluded 
from the trademark (Library, Gating and Supporting projects) and why.

What *is* an issue is deciding which projects should become part of 
OpenStack and which should not:
  * There is a school of thought that adding relevant, well-integrated 
projects with an existing strong community to OpenStack strengthens the 
broader OpenStack community.
  * There is another school of thought that adding projects to OpenStack 
dilutes access to shared resources for the existing projects and thereby 
weakens the OpenStack project.
  * These are both valid viewpoints, but it's *very* difficult to find a 
compromise between them. That may mean people have to pick a side.
  * It's pretty important that the Board and the TC come to some common 
understanding about this, because the TC decides which projects are 
incubated but the Board has final say over which eventually become part 
of OpenStack.

So it seems to me that the second paragraph of Mark's motion gets to 
the, ahem, core of the question:

>   We would like to take an inclusive but measured approach to accepting
>   new OpenStack projects. We should evaluate any given proposed project
>   on a well defined set of criteria like whether it embraces our values
>   and processes, is useful to OpenStack users, well integrated with
>   other projects and represents a sensible broadening of the scope of
>   OpenStack.

cheers,
Zane.