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Why IBM doesn’t agree with Google’s Open Usage Commons for the Istio project

developer.ibm.com

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Re: Why IBM doesn’t agree with Google’s Open Usage Commons for the Istio project

#21

Post by ForHackernews »

Zafira wrote: post #16
Google234 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please elaborate on what this has to do with this dispute about how to open source the trademark?

My understanding is that there is a faction in Google that believes that making Kubernetes freely available as it did was a massive strategic mistake on the part of Google[1], tantamount to giving away the crown jewels. With this in mind, my impression is that there is a strong suspicion that Google is trying to find a way to continue to control the direction and ability to monetize Istio (and future projects if this…

That's interesting because there's also a vocal contingent who believes Google giving away Kubernetes was a punji trap that the rest of the tech world has falling into.

Is k8s an amazing force multiplier or an unmanageable white elephant? Can it be both?

Re: Why IBM doesn’t agree with Google’s Open Usage Commons for the Istio project

#22

Post by Zafira »

londons_explore wrote: post #17

This is entirely about the use of the trademarks/names. If enough people are upset about it, they can fork the project and take it in their own direction under their own governance. To me, this is a non-issue. The people doing the work on the project are setting the projects goals and rules, and if you want to do work on the project, nothing stops you, either under their governance/name, or your own.

If you look at the CNCF, they now offer Kubernetes certifications. This is worth a lot of money. This is probably one part of what is driving this.

Re: Why IBM doesn’t agree with Google’s Open Usage Commons for the Istio project

#23

Post by a012 »

maffydub wrote: post #20
deanCommie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I generally believe in Google's altruism in their open source contributions, that good faith does not carry forward to any of their open source initiatives when it comes to Google Cloud. Maybe I'm cynical, but it seems pretty obvious to me that Google embraces OSS with Istio, Kubernetes, etc only out of necessity and being a distant 3rd in the Cloud race, and this is their attempt at some sort of differentiator…

I suspect Google felt they got burned with Kubernetes - doing a lot of the initial development, donating it to the CNCF and then not profiting much from it (e.g. still being distant 3rd in cloud).

Do they? I see their GKE and then now with Anthos thingy got a lot of attention.

Re: Why IBM doesn’t agree with Google’s Open Usage Commons for the Istio project

#24

Post by sg1234 »

Disclaimer: i work for Google Cloud and use istio daily.

I don't think this matters to practitioners, it's a solution to fix trademark issues.

Open Source Licenses (like Apache under which istio is released) doesn't solve the trademark (TM) issue, they are vague around this topic, so the use of the name/logo/mascot to release any sort of managed or supported solution based on an OSS tool becomes a hurdle, a lot of money is at stacks here (imagine if k8s was still under the control of Google, AWS or Azure will never be able to launch something called Kubernetes engine because there is a risk Google will sue them).

The problem with CNCF and why istio was not transferred to that org is that CNCF acts as a mediator, so any decision around trademark takes soo much time and effort because CNCF has to get the blessing of everyone or build something neutral (like the k8s certification), and it's in their best interest that things are complicated as they can make money out of that.

The OUC was created to solve the TM issue and allow decisions to move fast, the usage guidelines haven't changed and will likely not change.

I do have to admit that myself i don't understand why no one from IBM is in the initial board of OUC

Re: Why IBM doesn’t agree with Google’s Open Usage Commons for the Istio project

#25

Post by polotics »

ForHackernews wrote: post #21
Zafira wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that there is a faction in Google that believes that making Kubernetes freely available as it did was a massive strategic mistake on the part of Google[1], tantamount to giving away the crown jewels. With this in mind, my impression is that there is a strong suspicion that Google is trying to find a way to continue to control the direction and ability to monetize Istio (and future projects if this…

That's interesting because there's also a vocal contingent who believes Google giving away Kubernetes was a punji trap that the rest of the tech world has falling into. Is k8s an amazing force multiplier or an unmanageable white elephant? Can it be both?

K8s is a perfect weapon to drag internal IT Ops into the cloud: once good ops has been commoditized, then the economies of scale kick in and any non-enormous IT systems operator will eventually realize they can be a pure-play no-fixed-costs service provider. The only challenge is of course that good ops is not the same thing depending on scale, so hype is essential to bring the plebs into accepting maximal complexity of highest-scale ops.

Re: Why IBM doesn’t agree with Google’s Open Usage Commons for the Istio project

#26

Post by [deleted] »

sg1234 wrote: post #24

Disclaimer: i work for Google Cloud and use istio daily. I don't think this matters to practitioners, it's a solution to fix trademark issues. Open Source Licenses (like Apache under which istio is released) doesn't solve the trademark (TM) issue, they are vague around this topic, so the use of the name/logo/mascot to release any sort of managed or supported solution based on an OSS tool becomes a hurdle, a lot of mo…

[deleted]

Re: Why IBM doesn’t agree with Google’s Open Usage Commons for the Istio project

#27

Post by biggestlou »

sg1234 wrote: post #24

Disclaimer: i work for Google Cloud and use istio daily. I don't think this matters to practitioners, it's a solution to fix trademark issues. Open Source Licenses (like Apache under which istio is released) doesn't solve the trademark (TM) issue, they are vague around this topic, so the use of the name/logo/mascot to release any sort of managed or supported solution based on an OSS tool becomes a hurdle, a lot of mo…

No one from IBM is on the board because Google wants to control the project and apparently has no interest in governing it in conjunction with non-Google entities

Re: Why IBM doesn’t agree with Google’s Open Usage Commons for the Istio project

#28

Post by pjmlp »

a012 wrote: post #23
maffydub wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect Google felt they got burned with Kubernetes - doing a lot of the initial development, donating it to the CNCF and then not profiting much from it (e.g. still being distant 3rd in cloud).

Do they? I see their GKE and then now with Anthos thingy got a lot of attention.

What matters is sales, not attention.

Re: Why IBM doesn’t agree with Google’s Open Usage Commons for the Istio project

#29

Post by pjmlp »

polotics wrote: post #25
ForHackernews wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting because there's also a vocal contingent who believes Google giving away Kubernetes was a punji trap that the rest of the tech world has falling into. Is k8s an amazing force multiplier or an unmanageable white elephant? Can it be both?

K8s is a perfect weapon to drag internal IT Ops into the cloud: once good ops has been commoditized, then the economies of scale kick in and any non-enormous IT systems operator will eventually realize they can be a pure-play no-fixed-costs service provider. The only challenge is of course that good ops is not the same thing depending on scale, so hype is essential to bring the plebs into accepting maximal complexity…

Depends pretty much on the stack.

With Java and .NET, or now serverless middleware, I never felt the need for something like k8s, as there were already solutions to deploy a bunch of EAR/WAR/DLLs into some cloud based server, including having cloud based DB servers like Amazon RDS.

Taken to an extreme, I don't care where and how those packages are executing, k8, jails, containers, bare metal,...

Re: Why IBM doesn’t agree with Google’s Open Usage Commons for the Istio project

#30

Post by Legogris »

biggestlou wrote: post #27
sg1234 wrote: post #24

Disclaimer: i work for Google Cloud and use istio daily. I don't think this matters to practitioners, it's a solution to fix trademark issues. Open Source Licenses (like Apache under which istio is released) doesn't solve the trademark (TM) issue, they are vague around this topic, so the use of the name/logo/mascot to release any sort of managed or supported solution based on an OSS tool becomes a hurdle, a lot of mo…

No one from IBM is on the board because Google wants to control the project and apparently has no interest in governing it in conjunction with non-Google entities

Not saying you're wrong, but do you have any source for this or is it just a guess? There are several other plausible explanations.
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