All makes sense, except for the part where you say that you are "very
surprised" :-)
By the way, on a related note, I personally think that governance model
based on a variation of 'benevolent dictatorship' [1] is MUCH closer to
the way FIWARE has been governed in the last ~5 years. It might be nice
(and more sustainable) to switch to a meritocracy-based model inspired by
OpenStack -- but, frankly, I am not sure that an incremental transition
from the former to the latter is even possible.
Regards,
Alex
[1] http://oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/benevolentdictatorgovernancemodel
From: Philipp Slusallek <philipp.slusallek at dfki.de>
To: Juanjo Hierro <juanjose.hierro at telefonica.com>
Cc: "fiware-chapter-architects at lists.fiware.org"
<fiware-chapter-architects at lists.fiware.org>,
"fiware-chapter-leaders at lists.fiware.org"
<fiware-chapter-leaders at lists.fiware.org>
Date: 29/12/2015 09:24 AM
Subject: Re: [Fiware-chapter-leaders] VERY IMPORTANT: Simplifying
number of Open Source licenses linked to FIWARE GEs
Sent by: fiware-chapter-leaders-bounces at lists.fiware.org
[I have taken this to the CHL/CHA list only]
Hi Juanjo,
I am very surprised by this email from you. While I am not necessarily
opposed to the goal of your email, I find the process deeply flawed.
Changing a license is not something we do for fun. There might be
implications that are relevant to discuss before such "decisions" are
taken and published (for a starters: What about the need for getting
permission for such a change by copyright holders of the OSS SW we
create?). And there might actually be alternatives as well.
Funny enough, we actually have just published a shiny new governance
model that defines a Technical Committee for making such decisions. We
even have a well-established weekly coordination call where the relevant
discussions and decisions can and should take place. None of this has
been used in this process, AFAIK. Shouldn't we follow the rules and
processes that we have defined for ourselves before we publicly announce
such "decisions"?
I suggest that we discuss this topic in our next coordination call in
more detail and by email in the mean time. Until then I will find out
what changing the licenses would even mean in our chapter. Given the
holiday season this might take some time.
On a highly related note let me bring up a topic that has been worrying
me for a while now: The current de-facto governance process is highly
focused on you as the main decision facilitator and leader of the
project. And let me be clear: You have, in general, been doing a great
job at that!
However, without you many things simply do not happen. And most
importantly: You have not participated in the coordination calls since
mid September (according to the minutes) -- this is for *more than three
months and counting*. Even worse, you also seem to be hard to reach even
when there are important pending decisions (as has been discussed on the
call multiple times). I am pretty sure that you are doing good work in
the mean time, but that does not really help this situation. This email
of yours is most likely a result of this lack of communication.
Obviously, by using such a highly centralized structure as we are doing
right now, we have created a bottleneck situation for you (and you
probably feel it the most!). This is a situation that is not helpful and
maybe even dangerous for making progress in the project. This is
something that a good governance model should avoid.
As we know from SW development, with a bottleneck we have three options:
We either free up the bottleneck from other tasks, we add more
processing power to it (since upgrading you is probably not an option
:-), a dedicated deputy structure or such comes to mind), or we redesign
the system to avoid the bottleneck with a more distributed decision
making structure (might be hard to implement).
I believe, we should be addressing this situation in our next call.
Final notes: I have been genuinely worried about the situation for a
while now, so please do not shoot the messenger. And no, I am not at all
interested nor even willing to take on more power or jobs within FIWARE.
Best,
Philipp
Am 28.12.2015 um 15:09 schrieb Juanjo Hierro:
> Dear all,
>
> 2016 is going to be a crucial year during which we have to
> significantly increase the visibility of FIWARE among the wider
> community of developers. It also has to experience a significant growth
> in terms of adoption (numbers of users of the technology).
>
> One of the topics in which we have identified a need to improve, in
> order to lower the barriers of adoption, is the one about open source
> licenses associated to the FIWARE GEris. We have received a lot of
> different feedback about the need to be able to deliver a simple
> message, easier to understand. Because of that, a first action to
> implement would be that of avoiding to manage too many open source
> licenses. Having too many open source licenses is hard to explain and
> weakens the notion of "platform" which should mean adoption of common
> policies, rules and practices for its components, e.g., the open source
> license adopted.
>
> Based on information available and expertise about characteristics of
> open source licenses, we believe that the number of Open Source Licenses
> can and should be reduced to just two:
>
> * Apache License version 2.0
> * GNU Affero GPL v3.0
>
>
> We believe that one or the other license should allow to address the
> goals/needs of FIWARE GEri owners:
>
> * The Apache version 2.0 license is a paradigm of open source license
> giving anyone the permission to derive close products without
> contributing back developed improvements. It has been typically
> chosen by owners who are mostly focused on accelerating the
> adoption, as a de-facto standard, of the specifications implemented
> by the open source product under this license.
> * The GNU Affero GPL v3.0 license is as paradigm of open source
> license where the owner allows third parties to study, use and
> modify the software but without the right to derive closed products
> (or setup cloud services based on derived versions of the software
> that are kept "hidden" to users of such cloud services). It has
> been typically chosen by owners who claim that third parties who
> modify the software should contribute back to the community in
return.
>
>
> In both cases, a clear message to deliver is that
> applications/services developed based on the FIWARE GEris will not need
> to be distributed as open source. In other words, they are not
> "contaminated" by the open source nature of FIWARE GEris.
>
> We would kindly ask FIWARE GEri owners to bring an update of the info
> about their FIWARE GEris that was available at the following URL
> (particularly the Open Source license currently adopted):
>
>
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nl02hcZ79WC5i_sYbL1jV_aLyF1swcES0P4VQgP-csE/edit?usp=sharing
>
>
> We would also kindly ask owners of FIWARE GEs which are not
> distributed under any of the above mentioned open source licenses to
> confirm they would agree to adopt one of the two (in which case we ask
> them to specify which one in a new column titled "revised open source
> license" we have added to the shared google docs spreadsheet). If not,
> we will ask them to reply Miguel and me what would be the rationale
behind.
>
> Deadline for gathering the info will be January 8th.
>
> Best regards,
>
> -- Juanjo
>
> ______________________________________________________
>
> Coordinator and Chief Architect, FIWARE platform
> CTO Industrial IoT, Telefónica
>
> email: juanjose.hierro at telefonica.com
> twitter: @JuanjoHierro
>
> You can follow FIWARE at:
> website: http://www.fiware.org
> twitter: @FIWARE
> facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/FI-WARE/251366491587242
> linkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/FIWARE-4239932
>
>
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