From alanclark at openstack.org Thu Nov 12 03:52:23 2020 From: alanclark at openstack.org (alanclark at openstack.org) Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2020 20:52:23 -0700 Subject: [OpenStack Foundation] OpenStack Board Meeting December 8, 2020 7am - 9am pacific Message-ID: <014e01d6b8a7$3ae936e0$b0bba4a0$@openstack.org> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/calendar Size: 12224 bytes Desc: not available URL: From juliaashleykreger at gmail.com Mon Nov 30 02:50:34 2020 From: juliaashleykreger at gmail.com (Julia Kreger) Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2020 18:50:34 -0800 Subject: [OpenStack Foundation] [board][interop] Is it time to revisit: Trademarks, Branding, and Interoperability? Message-ID: Greetings everyone! Over the past few weeks I’ve been in a number of discussions regarding some of our most very fun topics. Branding, Trademarks, and Interoperability. I think this is a good time to revisit these topics because of the conversion from the OpenStack Foundation to the Open Infrastructure Foundation. The further broadening of the larger community represents both an opportunity and a checkpoint in which we should likely ask ourselves some questions to help guide our future path. I think what has made some of these discussions difficult in the past is because we intertwined the topics. To meet the perceived needs of the past, we ended up building and encoding specific models and concepts when the only project was OpenStack. We were trying to foster and develop an expansive ecosystem at that time. Then, it likely seemed logical to encode this as part of the bylaws. Except those processes have left us with something that is difficult to amend, change, or adapt moving forward. And even that seems like a daunting issue in itself, before we consider that non-openstack projects have different needs. This does not mean we can not nor should not ask ourselves what is important. We must identify where we want to see things in the future for such programs. If we don’t identify these things, then we can not measure future success nor possibly identify new needs. Besides, who else is better suited to lead projects to become more agile and responsive to emergent needs if not the board itself? So with those thoughts in mind, I would like for us to all mentally take a step back and try to answer some basic questions to help frame future discussion. * Where do we see the value in the trademark and associated branding? What is important? What is less important? * How do we see branding and trademarks evolving now that the foundation scope has expanded? * What is the desired end goal of trademark and branding programs? Are there multiple specific end goals? And then there is the topic of interoperability. Looking forward it seems like there is more than one level of interoperability that needs to be thought of and cared about. * At what level should we, the board, encourage cross-community/cross-project/product/service interoperability? * What is the end goal of interoperability in our evolved scope? * Is the board the right level at which to have the discussions and ultimately the technical management of the fine details regarding interoperability? I’m posing the last question for a very important reason. Our scope has widened. We have zoomed out. The bigger picture is our focus as the board. The lower level details of any project’s interoperability do require fine details and specific context. To unfortunately use another photography analogy, the repeated zoom in and zoom out does not help us keep our focus on the bigger picture. As a board, we need to track the picture consistently and constantly, which is the only way we can best frame our discussions and resulting outcomes. I hope this email brings about discussion on these topics. Not necessarily a discussion of how or what, but more of a discussion of means to unlock and enable. Thanks, -Julia From thierry at openstack.org Mon Nov 30 09:51:04 2020 From: thierry at openstack.org (Thierry Carrez) Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 10:51:04 +0100 Subject: [OpenStack Foundation] [board][interop] Is it time to revisit: Trademarks, Branding, and Interoperability? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3d99f28e-5f4e-2828-2da1-b098f82f54a8@openstack.org> Julia Kreger wrote: > Over the past few weeks I’ve been in a number of discussions regarding > some of our most very fun topics. Branding, Trademarks, and > Interoperability. > [...] Thanks Julia for starting this timely and important discussion. I agree that trademarks are not a goal in themselves, they are just means to an end, and periodically revising those end goals is necessary. To add some historical context, my summary would be that until now the Board has been using trademarks to drive two strategic objectives: 1- Interoperability: a enduser-centric view of what to expect when interacting with "openstack", driving ideally towards an identical experience. The tactics (driven by RefStack) were focused on making sure a minimal set of APIs were available in products allowed to call themselves "openstack", and try to grow that set over time. 2- Branding: an ecosystem-centric view of building a set of "compatible" products, driving ideally toward establishing a large marketplace. The tactics used for the first objective encouraged products to apply for the trademark programs, which was used as a funnel for the marketplace. As we enter the OIF era, are those end goals still valuable? Are trademarks the best tool to achieve them? Are there other key goals we should leverage trademarks for? Are the current tactics we use (Refstack and powered-by trademark programs) still valid ? -- Thierry Carrez (ttx) From Arkady.Kanevsky at dell.com Mon Nov 30 16:30:03 2020 From: Arkady.Kanevsky at dell.com (Kanevsky, Arkady) Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 16:30:03 +0000 Subject: [OpenStack Foundation] [Foundation Board] [board][interop] Is it time to revisit: Trademarks, Branding, and Interoperability? In-Reply-To: <3d99f28e-5f4e-2828-2da1-b098f82f54a8@openstack.org> References: <3d99f28e-5f4e-2828-2da1-b098f82f54a8@openstack.org> Message-ID: Dell Customer Communication - Confidential I will skip by-laws angle as it is only means to achieve a goal. Trademarks really serve two purposes: 1. it is a common definition and common language. 2. protection and path to branding. As we moved to OIF, trademark for OIF as the whole does not bring value. But having trademarks for each projects under OIF umbrella make sense. Suggest we look at two audiences. 1. Users/Operators 2. Vendors/Providers. The first ones want to ensure that when they develop apps/tools using OIF projects APIs they will work on "all" vendor/providers "products" (including upstream). The second ones deliver products/services based on OIF projects. Both parties want to have branding for the "contract" between two audiences. And interop is just a tool for that branding. In my view, interop cam at the right time when there were a lot of churn and a lot of implementations, and unclearness which openstack projects work together. We are past that stage for OpenStack. But for other OIF projects we are in various stages. Some of them are two new to have multiple implementations or vendor products based on them. Some, like Kata Containers, never intended to be standalone. But we still need branding, but in my view per OIF project. My 2c. Thanks, Arkady -----Original Message----- From: Thierry Carrez Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 3:51 AM To: foundation at lists.openstack.org; foundation-board at lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [Foundation Board] [OpenStack Foundation] [board][interop] Is it time to revisit: Trademarks, Branding, and Interoperability? [EXTERNAL EMAIL] Julia Kreger wrote: > Over the past few weeks I’ve been in a number of discussions regarding > some of our most very fun topics. Branding, Trademarks, and > Interoperability. > [...] Thanks Julia for starting this timely and important discussion. I agree that trademarks are not a goal in themselves, they are just means to an end, and periodically revising those end goals is necessary. To add some historical context, my summary would be that until now the Board has been using trademarks to drive two strategic objectives: 1- Interoperability: a enduser-centric view of what to expect when interacting with "openstack", driving ideally towards an identical experience. The tactics (driven by RefStack) were focused on making sure a minimal set of APIs were available in products allowed to call themselves "openstack", and try to grow that set over time. 2- Branding: an ecosystem-centric view of building a set of "compatible" products, driving ideally toward establishing a large marketplace. The tactics used for the first objective encouraged products to apply for the trademark programs, which was used as a funnel for the marketplace. As we enter the OIF era, are those end goals still valuable? Are trademarks the best tool to achieve them? Are there other key goals we should leverage trademarks for? Are the current tactics we use (Refstack and powered-by trademark programs) still valid ? -- Thierry Carrez (ttx) _______________________________________________ Foundation-board mailing list Foundation-board at lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation-board