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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

#71

Post by znpy »

koffiezet wrote: post #52
fcantournet wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

    If I see the support contract bills of my clients, 
    holy crap, you could host a ton of stuff on GCP 
    for that.
yeah with no support lol, and when something goes wrong... oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

on a more serious note: in order to compare apples to apples you should compare red hat support bills with GCP support bills (i think they call that "professional services"). I guess they aren't cheap either.

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

#72

Post by caniszczyk »

Zafira wrote: post #22
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.

As someone who helps run CNCF, there's about 100 certified distributions and thousands of people who have been certified as kubernetes administrators (CKAs), as a small non profit with about 25 employees that pales in comparison to a trillion dollar cloud provider

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

#73

Post by ocdtrekkie »

ehsankia wrote: post #18
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 don't understand why everything any company does has to either be 100% altruistic or 100% out of greed. Why can't there be a middle ground? Obviously they see the value of open source, especially with projects like TensorFlow, but at the same time, after having spent so much resources developing these, they still want to reserve some control so that their investment can stay useful and agile to their needs. That se…

There is no such thing as corporate altruism. It is all greed. For all companies.

When a company open sources something, you're right, they "see the value of open source". They know it will enable collaboration, essentially unpaid labor on their project, community and interest, and while others can use it, it places them at the center in a driving power position over the technology and gives them the ability to set the standard.

Open sourcing is good business. And that's before we talk about the marketing value of claiming it's altruistic and selling that idea to everyone else. Once you start taking advantage of people's naivety to promote your company and your brand, you're really cooking with gas.

People need to stop believing in corporations, because corporations are built for the purpose of making money. You can trust them insofar as you understand that goal and understand them to move in accordance with it.

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

#74

Post by jononor »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #41
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 don't see altruism, but alignment of different interests. Summer of Code is a huge project they finance, seems altruistic but is a recruiting&marketing tool. Publishing libraries like protobuf and abseil serves to drive standards in directions they like. Chrome/Chromium drives the open web, ensures their say on standards and gives the ability to set them. Android/AOSP brings leadership in mobile devices to them. Ag…

Some open source projects might also be (partially) for employee retention. Letting some high-performing developer(s) open source internally developed projects because it is what they want to do. Might be particularly relevant for developer tooling where commercial potential is generally quite low.

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

#75

Post by framebit »

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 is essentially a consortium of at least 35 different companies masquerading as one. A lot of those companies are doing ridiculous nonsense, but some of them are doing really cutting edge work. IBM Research in particular attracts some top-notch talent.

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

#76

Post by solarkraft »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #41
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 don't see altruism, but alignment of different interests. Summer of Code is a huge project they finance, seems altruistic but is a recruiting&marketing tool. Publishing libraries like protobuf and abseil serves to drive standards in directions they like. Chrome/Chromium drives the open web, ensures their say on standards and gives the ability to set them. Android/AOSP brings leadership in mobile devices to them. Ag…

> Publishing libraries like protobuf and abseil serves to drive standards in directions they like.

Could you elaborate on why they care? Do they have some kind of competitive advantage when it comes to Protobuf?

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

#77

Post by solarkraft »

Andrex wrote: post #63
fcantournet wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> better at abusing their current dominant position (hehe it sucks doesn't Goog ? heh? Doesn't it ?) Just wanted to say this one weirdly petty/obnoxious concluding line tainted an otherwise solid comment. Seems unnecessary.

I don't see why. It's funny, based on facts and doesn't imply a clear bias (very different from something like "and btw Google are assholes").

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

#78

Post by biggestlou »

Legogris wrote: post #30
biggestlou wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is the blog post itself not all the evidence required? IBM was a major partner in Istio and has been left out in the cold.

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

#79

Post by crb »

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…

> After achieving CNCF certification in Nov 2017[2], GCP began using the term 'Kubernetes' within the product name, rebranding it as 'Google Kubernetes Engine'.

After _creating_ the certification program: it was driven by GKE PM (and upcoming book author[1]) William Denniss. https://kubernetes.io/blog/2017/10/software-conformance-cert...

(At the time of GKE's launch, 'containers' were more well known than 'Kubernetes'. Google also owned the trademark, so it could have been called Kubernets Engine from the beginning.)

[1] https://www.manning.com/books/getting-started-with-kubernete...

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

#80

Post by lokar »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #41
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 don't see altruism, but alignment of different interests. Summer of Code is a huge project they finance, seems altruistic but is a recruiting&marketing tool. Publishing libraries like protobuf and abseil serves to drive standards in directions they like. Chrome/Chromium drives the open web, ensures their say on standards and gives the ability to set them. Android/AOSP brings leadership in mobile devices to them. Ag…

I think you are partly right here. The problem I see is the use of the word "they". It's a big company, and different people have different goals.

IME (I worked there for a long time, but no longer), individual (and small groups of) engineers with a passion for OSS drive publishing/sharing.

Execs with the interests you outline approve/agree to the sharing.

The motivations are not monolithic, and a corporation is not a person, it's a group of people.

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