openstack team mailing list archive

[Bryan Taylor <btaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/15/2011 07:58 AM, Jay Pipes wrote:
> There is a well-defined trademark policy for OpenStack:
>
> http://www.openstack.org/brand/openstack-trademark-policy/
>
> What is being used for "OpenStack Satellite" is simply the Word Mark,
> which is liberally applied to refer to the OpenStack project
> ecosystem. IANAL and all that, but I think the following is likely
> true:
>
> a) Projects/products listed under the OpenStack Satellite umbrella may
> not use the OpenStack *trademark* unless that project/product has
> applied for permission to use the trademark
> b) Satellite can use the OpenStack logo as long as the word Satellite
> is more prominent than the name OpenStack
This works to get started. Maybe if things come together we could make 
an OpenStack Satellite logo that means something precise.
> > I'd see the
> > criteria as something like: works with openstack or actively working towards
> > it, open source, unencumbered by patents or other nonsense.
> Perhaps somebody who remembers could pipe up, but I know that
> discussion about whether or not proprietary products should go into
> Satellite came up at the summit session. What was the decision reached
> there? I just cannot remember.
I recall this very specifically. We said it has to be open source. Free 
to use was not even enough. I don't recall the exact reasoning we said 
at the time, but I can think of a couple for this to be true: a) use of 
the logo and Satellite resources is a form of subsidy and we want 
something in return b) we don't want deployers to become dependent on a 
good tool in Satellite and then be unable to fork it if it's abandoned 
c) we don't want proprietary software to gain popularity via an 
openstack association and then go evil or get bought and start charging. 
There are probably many others.

I don't actually have a problem with proprietary software in the 
OpenStack ecosystem, but if you go that route, you have to stand alone. 
I think "OpenStack Compatible" for something that passes an OpenStack 
controlled API test suite is the right way to accommodate this.
> However, after re-reading the OpenStack trademark policy, it seems
> pretty clear to me that if we wish to use the term "OpenStack
> Satellite" as the name of this umbrella, that Satellite absolutely may
> not contain products primarily designated as commercial solutions.
Makes sense. Unless it's open source, there's no way to prevent the bait 
and switch.
> >   - Identify resources available to participating projects
> >
> > What do you mean here? Are you referring to resources in the sense of
> > online source control and bug tracking, etc?
> >
> > Those are reasonable examples. The SourceForge stuff comes to mind. Maybe a
> > mailing list or wiki. Maybe somebody would donate a slice of a cloud
> > environment to test against, etc...
> Sure. I think a lot of that stuff will happen in a grass-roots fashion
> once the main site is up and going.
>
> To be clear, the resources of the OpenStack project infrastructure
> team at Rackspace (which is a support organization for OpenStack core
> projects) is not going to be an official resource for Satellite
> projects. Our mission is to provide support for core projects around
> source control, patch queue management, project management, CI and QA.
> I'm sure some of us will provide assistance to Satellite projects, but
> it would not be in an "official" capacity. Just want to be clear, so
> folks have the right expectations! :)
The main OpenStack team should use all its resources to make a kick-ass 
cloud engine. That's the only expectation I have.

But I definitely will go ask Rackspace for various resources to support 
the initiatives my teams work on for Satellite. I think you are right 
that this will arise naturally. I see governance around these resources 
arising naturally as a light weight way to define the "house rules" to 
avoid a tragedy of the commons.

> That said, I'll bring this up at the PPB meeting next Tuesday and see
> if I can get some guidance.
I think you and Chris have convinced me that we don't need a lot to get 
started.

I'm just projecting out my hope/vision for where this could go, and I 
think the key is to let it happen naturally. I'm imagining a community 
of dashboards, control panels, infrastructure automation, deployment 
tools, command line utilities, language binding libraries, alternate 
implementations, elastic appliances, and whole support services (usage, 
billing, incidents, CMDBs, etc...) with their own APIs all sucking down 
every working change from the OpenStack core and giving a rich set of CI 
feedback (both directions). My hope is that "OpenStack Satellite" comes 
to denote not just "works with OpenStack" but something that's verfied 
high quality. Basically it's the basis of a distro of tooling that's 
keeping up with the OpenStack core.
> Your other points I agree with :)
>
> Cheers!
> -jay