Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

developer.ibm.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 114 posts

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

#51

Post by ForHackernews »

harpratap wrote: post #43
tracker1 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit of both. In the end, I appreciate it and have been an advocate for the use of k8s. The harder part is actually hiring or developing in-house skills to manage the cluster(s). Not every company can afford a 6-7 figure consulting contract for a couple small clusters.

I never understood why a small company wants a completely in-house developed platform. Wouldn't it be more economical to directly use Cloud offerings? Or in case you need on-prem wouldn't it be wiser to just pay for offerings like OpenStack, CloudFoundry, DataDog, New Relic, GKE-on-prem and the likes?

> OpenStack, CloudFoundry, DataDog, New Relic, GKE-on-prem and the likes

All of these are pretty pricey.

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

#52

Post by koffiezet »

fcantournet wrote: post #39
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).

Google did profit massively from kubernetes, moreso than any other big company (Hello Red Hat lol) It was (for better and for worse) the #1 reason to adopt GCP for our main cloud platform, and we're not alone. It's has seen immense adoption that it wouldn't have had if it hadn't been in a neutral foundation. The work was definitely not done by Google alone (~30%). IS GCP "still" #3 ? Yes. Is it because they didn't ge…

> (Hello Red Hat lol)

I think you underestimate the revenue OpenShift is generating... If I see the support contract bills of my clients, holy crap, you could host a ton of stuff on GCP for that.

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

#53

Post by otterley »

At the project’s inception, there was an agreement that the project would be contributed to the CNCF when it was mature.

If this is true, the authors could be sued for breach of contract (what the damages would be, I'm not sure). However, I suspect that this agreement was verbal or implicit and wasn't actually written anywhere.

As they say, a verbal agreement is worth the paper it's printed on.

Get your promises in writing, folks.

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

#54

Post by koffiezet »

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…

> 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)

Sorry, but that's the nature of standardisation, and the price you pay if you want to show you're really vendor-neutral. For me, actions like these make Istio go from the almost de-facto default choice for a service mesh, to suddenly wanting to consider other stuff.

> and it's in their best interest that things are complicated as they can make money out of that.

I don't really see how money would be an issue here? CNCF is a non-profit, Google is not.

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

#55

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

jka wrote: post #40

It looks like the Open Usage Commons organization handles trademarking, so roughly speaking (I'm not a lawyer) they set and enforce rules under which other entities may use their hosted project names and brand identities. When GCP's container engine launched[1] in 2014 it was initially referred to by the anagram 'GKE' yet corresponded to the name 'Google Container Engine'. After achieving CNCF certification in Nov 20…

FWIW, the GKE acronym (also?) came about because GCE is GCP's core VM offering, Google Compute Engine.

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

#56

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

Lutzb wrote: post #19
josefx wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand: IBM collaborated with Google on Istio. Google just handed the control over the Istio trademark to its Open Usage Commons group without notifying the Istio community. IBM is understandably unhappy with that.

Based on the blog post its even worse. IBM and Google agreed to hand over the Istio trademark and project to the CNCF when Istio reached a certain maturity. Now it seems that Google unilaterally decided to not honor the agreement and keep the project and trademark by handing it over to their own organisation. disclaimer: work for IBM, but not on istio.

There appears to be no record of such an "agreement" other than IBM's claim. If there was, IBM would probably be doing more than writing snippy blog posts.

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

#57

Post by zekrioca »

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…

> and it's in their best interest that things are complicated as they can make money out of that.

Care to supply some evidences for such claim?

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

#58

Post by koffiezet »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #56
Lutzb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the blog post its even worse. IBM and Google agreed to hand over the Istio trademark and project to the CNCF when Istio reached a certain maturity. Now it seems that Google unilaterally decided to not honor the agreement and keep the project and trademark by handing it over to their own organisation. disclaimer: work for IBM, but not on istio.

There appears to be no record of such an "agreement" other than IBM's claim. If there was, IBM would probably be doing more than writing snippy blog posts.

Well, according the CNCF statement mentioned by techcrunch [1], Istio has been submitted in the past when it was very very young [2] - that at least shows intent?

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/08/google-launches-the-open-u...

[2] https://github.com/cncf/toc/pull/70

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

#59

Post by tw04 »

deanCommie wrote: post #15
tedk-42 wrote: post #13

It sounds like Google want to continue maintaining the Istio project under the guise of something called the Open Usage Commons. The other two projects under that are Angular and Gerrit, two other Google products. IBM's disappointment stems from the fact that they feel Istio is also their baby and that it was suppose to goto the CNCF one day, not Googles own umbrella foundation. I think the same. Google for the most…

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…

Given it's run by someone from Oracle, skepticism/cynicism is warranted.

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

#60

Post by erk__ »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #14
mehrdada wrote: post #8

For the uninformed, IBM is mostly in the business of selling expensive old-school consultancy solutions by marketing snake oil and packaging open source in proprietary label. Need evidence? Watch this cringeworthy video, for example: https://youtu.be/iNVM8vGCZjQ

IBM contributes to the Linux Foundation (Node.js, webpack, jquery, etc.), Apache, and by owning RedHat, also major parts of Linux development, among other things.

Also recently the OpenPOWER foundation got moved under the Linux Foundation
Post reply on HN