Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
Boris Renski Jr. wrote: While I like the simplicity and elegance of the newly proposed structure, I don’t see how it does away with the evils of the pay-to-play model…. Which is what you purport we are striving to achieve. What you, Josh, proposed is a simplified pay-to-play that arguably embraces the evils for the “market driven selfishness” in an even more obvious way than the model before it. In your case, all the seats are simply purchased for a fixed price of $200K. Right, any pay-to-play model will create a threshold effect, and Josh's proposal is just lowering the price to pay to get a reserved board seat to something that a company like Piston Cloud can pay. Since a lot of the 156 companies supporting OpenStack can afford such a price tag, you end up with a board containing too many directors. [...] So far the line between technology and marketing been well maintained. The bottom line is that a) technical committee must be elected and driven by meritocracy; b) foundation board should have virtually no influence (which is the case in the current structure) on the technical committee. Everything else is noise. I tend to agree with that, which is why I focused on the Technical Committee structure. Once we accept this, the question of structuring the board really becomes the question of how does one raise the maximum amount of money to continue to have a centralized body with a mission to evangelize the project. You can structure it by tiers to let the bigger guys pay more and get a bigger logo on the homepage. You can do a flat structure like Josh proposed. You can auction off the board seats etc. I see four models for this: All individual seats: All board seats are elected, you get one vote for every foundation member. Sponsoring is done separately. This is likely to raise the smallest amount of money, and the problem remains at another level: what is a foundation member ?. Tiered structure: this is the current proposal, which is well balanced. The only issue is that the board grows by 3 people when (if) a strategic member is added. Single-price: this is Josh's proposal, but I think it will result in a board that is too big and unable to function. Pay-to-vote: you have two classes: corporate seats and individual seats. Individual members elect the individual seats (which represent 25-33% of the total). Corporate seats are also all elected and corporations get a vote for every ?$ they put in. One drawback is that large corporations which are no longer guaranteed of getting a board seat will probably pay less under this model. Personally, I tend to prefer models that effectively prevent the board from growing uncontrollably. -- Thierry Carrez (ttx) Release Manager, OpenStack ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack Post to : openstack@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
How about as many companies that want to contribute annually $100K to running the foundation separate from marketing and sponsorship, can do so. Each company or a self-affiliated block of companies can put forward their board candidate. The companies that contributed to the board can then vote on 2/3 of the overall board membership. The 8 candidates with the largest number of votes are board members for one year. The user community would still have 1/3 of the board seats to elect 4 people of note. The board membership would be limited to 12 people. This way, all the committees and boards will be elected. A board membership code of conduct will be very important in this situation, as to protect the community from some companies up to mischief. BTW, I see no reason to dirty the good name of Heidi Klum by dragging her into this. sean roberts infrastructure strategy sean...@yahoo-inc.comapplewebdata://2E35986A-DC2A-436F-BB4A-C451982006C2/sean...@yahoo-inc.com direct 408-349-5234mobile 925-980-4729 701 first avenue, sunnyvale, ca, 94089-0703, us phone (408) 349 3300fax (408) 349 3301 On 3/12/12 11:06 AM, Dallas Kashuba dal...@dreamhost.commailto:dal...@dreamhost.com wrote: On Mar 12, 2012, at 2:45 AM, Thierry Carrez wrote: Boris Renski Jr. wrote: While I like the simplicity and elegance of the newly proposed structure, I don’t see how it does away with the evils of the pay-to-play model…. Which is what you purport we are striving to achieve. What you, Josh, proposed is a simplified pay-to-play that arguably embraces the evils for the “market driven selfishness” in an even more obvious way than the model before it. In your case, all the seats are simply purchased for a fixed price of $200K. Right, any pay-to-play model will create a threshold effect, and Josh's proposal is just lowering the price to pay to get a reserved board seat to something that a company like Piston Cloud can pay. Since a lot of the 156 companies supporting OpenStack can afford such a price tag, you end up with a board containing too many directors. This is something I was wondering about myself. Would there be a limit on the number of directors under Josh's proposal? Once we accept this, the question of structuring the board really becomes the question of how does one raise the maximum amount of money to continue to have a centralized body with a mission to evangelize the project. You can structure it by tiers to let the bigger guys pay more and get a bigger logo on the homepage. You can do a flat structure like Josh proposed. You can auction off the board seats etc. I see four models for this: All individual seats: All board seats are elected, you get one vote for every foundation member. Sponsoring is done separately. This is likely to raise the smallest amount of money, and the problem remains at another level: what is a foundation member ?. I agree that this model is likely to raise the smallest amount of money. Tiered structure: this is the current proposal, which is well balanced. The only issue is that the board grows by 3 people when (if) a strategic member is added. This is another thing I was wondering about. Will there be a limit on the number of strategic members? I don't see the foundation wanting to turn away someone waving money around, but then you have to deal with board growth. Single-price: this is Josh's proposal, but I think it will result in a board that is too big and unable to function. Pay-to-vote: you have two classes: corporate seats and individual seats. Individual members elect the individual seats (which represent 25-33% of the total). Corporate seats are also all elected and corporations get a vote for every ?$ they put in. One drawback is that large corporations which are no longer guaranteed of getting a board seat will probably pay less under this model. Also agreed that large corporations will likely pay less without a guaranteed board seat. We've been watching this conversation with much interest over the last couple of days at DreamHost. Its great to see so many smart people who clearly care a great deal about this project and the foundation! I've been personally wrestling with this balance of fundraising vs the best leadership for the foundation. I think ultimately the best leadership would be the meritocratic approach insulated from the money side of things, but I also see a lot of value in the financial stability provided by larger companies committing to a significant amount of funding over the longer term. One additional question I've been pondering relates to both the Single-price and Tiered structure models as Thierry referred to them here. If you do put limits on total board seats (and thus total foundation membership), what do you do if there are more companies interested in membership than you have spots available? Do companies get turned away and if they do, what process is used to figure out who is in and who is out (in the
Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
In much the same way we’re struggling with creating a reasonably sized board that’s a fair representation of both the diversity of the (producer and consumer) community, and the investments of its sponsors, it feels like we’re also struggling to identify the key stakeholders in actually forming the foundation and a process to make a decision around the foundation structure. At the risk of offending the larger organizations involved, what about adopting the same format that we employed in the FITS Working Group and limit planning committee representation to two representatives from each organization? If, as in the case of Rackspace, the organization itself holds individuals with a diverse set of opinions, then we would hope that the two representatives could be selected to adequately capture such diversity. As a second control, what about limiting the debate to representatives from organizations that are willing to commit (or have already demonstrated) to a minimum of one (1) full-time-equivalent dedicated to OpenStack contributions? This could include not just code contributions, but docs, bugs and localization. However, it would not include directly-commercial activities like training, installation or proprietary extensions. Finally, I’d like to second Sean Roberts’ proposal for a face-to-face meeting, with enough time given to resolve and move forward on the key items of debate. I’m willing to travel if needed, although perhaps we could use a survey or some other method of self-reporting to gather the participants and select a venue. -- Joshua McKenty, CEO Piston Cloud Computing, Inc. w: (650) 24-CLOUD m: (650) 283-6846 http://www.pistoncloud.com Oh, Westley, we'll never survive! Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has. On Monday, March 12, 2012 at 11:55 AM, Sean Roberts wrote: How about as many companies that want to contribute annually $100K to running the foundation separate from marketing and sponsorship, can do so. Each company or a self-affiliated block of companies can put forward their board candidate. The companies that contributed to the board can then vote on 2/3 of the overall board membership. The 8 candidates with the largest number of votes are board members for one year. The user community would still have 1/3 of the board seats to elect 4 people of note. The board membership would be limited to 12 people. This way, all the committees and boards will be elected. A board membership code of conduct will be very important in this situation, as to protect the community from some companies up to mischief. BTW, I see no reason to dirty the good name of Heidi Klum by dragging her into this. sean roberts infrastructure strategy sean...@yahoo-inc.com (applewebdata://2E35986A-DC2A-436F-BB4A-C451982006C2/sean...@yahoo-inc.com) direct 408-349-5234mobile 925-980-4729 701 first avenue, sunnyvale, ca, 94089-0703, us phone (408) 349 3300fax (408) 349 3301 On 3/12/12 11:06 AM, Dallas Kashuba dal...@dreamhost.com (mailto:dal...@dreamhost.com) wrote: On Mar 12, 2012, at 2:45 AM, Thierry Carrez wrote: Boris Renski Jr. wrote: While I like the simplicity and elegance of the newly proposed structure, I don’t see how it does away with the evils of the pay-to-play model…. Which is what you purport we are striving to achieve. What you, Josh, proposed is a simplified pay-to-play that arguably embraces the evils for the “market driven selfishness” in an even more obvious way than the model before it. In your case, all the seats are simply purchased for a fixed price of $200K. Right, any pay-to-play model will create a threshold effect, and Josh's proposal is just lowering the price to pay to get a reserved board seat to something that a company like Piston Cloud can pay. Since a lot of the 156 companies supporting OpenStack can afford such a price tag, you end up with a board containing too many directors. This is something I was wondering about myself. Would there be a limit on the number of directors under Josh's proposal? Once we accept this, the question of structuring the board really becomes the question of how does one raise the maximum amount of money to continue to have a centralized body with a mission to evangelize the project. You can structure it by tiers to let the bigger guys pay more and get a bigger logo on the homepage. You can do a flat structure like Josh proposed. You can auction off the board seats etc. I see four models for this: All individual seats: All board seats are elected, you get one vote for every foundation member. Sponsoring is done separately. This is likely to raise the smallest amount of money, and the problem remains at another level: what is a foundation member ?. I agree that this model
Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
On Fri, 2012-03-09 at 14:50 -0800, Boris Renski Jr. wrote: In my view the price tag for the sponsorship and the ultimate means for raising the money is not what drives OpenStack’s vendor independence principles. What matters the most is the degree of decoupling between the front-end, marketing and the technical governance. Much of the OpenStack current momentum is due to this fairly unique way of doing open source where on one end you have an open, meritocracy-based technology community and, on the other – structured commercial interest that evangelizes it. As long as the two sides remain sufficiently decoupled (as they have been so far) – no OpenStack principles will be compromised. I think that the community needs to do away with this geek, open source mentality of “all corporations are evil” FWIW, I don't think I've noticed the all corporations are evil mentality during any of the foundation discussions to date. Then again, I haven't noticed the petulant moralism of the meritocracy in OpenStack either. So, perhaps those attributing such unreasonable behaviour to folks could call out specific examples in future as they occur? and harness the value in strong commercial forces evangelizing and battling for the interest of the independent technology community. This is what got OpenStack to where it is now. So far the line between technology and marketing been well maintained. The bottom line is that a) technical committee must be elected and driven by meritocracy; b) foundation board should have virtually no influence (which is the case in the current structure) on the technical committee. Everything else is noise. Rackspace and others have done an awesome job of evangelising and promoting OpenStack to date. I'm sure no-one wants that marketing success to falter. However, you're overstating the current and proposed independence between the project's technical community and the entity evangelising the project (i.e. Rackspace currently, the Foundation in future). Looking at: http://wiki.openstack.org/Governance/Foundation/Structure the Foundation is responsible for project management, community management (including the technical community, I assume), release management, encouraging and rewarding contribution and, importantly, the governance structure of the project itself. Any power the technical community has over the project is devolved to it by the Foundation. In the proposed structure, the Foundation is ultimately in complete control of the project just as Rackspace is now. It is not analogous to the separation between Linux project governance (i.e. Linus) and its evangelism (i.e. the Linux Foundation). If the primary motivation for the current proposal's emphasis - decision making by corporate appointees, very large corporate cash contributions and a multi-million dollar annual budget - is purely on the evangelism and marketing side, perhaps the notion of having two separate organizations is worth considering. However, to make that work, the organization responsible for the project would have to own the OpenStack mark (so that e.g. it has full control over decisions about what can be announced as an official OpenStack project release), but perhaps delegate the responsibility for administering that mark to the marketing organization. Cheers, Mark. ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack Post to : openstack@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
We will make ourselves available. I am offering up a Yahoo meeting space in SF, Santa Clara, or Sunnyvale. Teleconference may be available on short notice. ~sean On Mar 9, 2012, at 3:41 PM, Joshua McKenty jos...@pistoncloud.commailto:jos...@pistoncloud.com wrote: This is great! Jonathan, do you think a completely-elected board is something that the larger corporations would go along with? Ben's suggestion to that effect certainly seems to be the simplest model, since we can scale the membership, deliver specific value for cash contributions, and still manage the size of the board. Regarding the Individual Member seats - I would like to echo Devin's concerns about stacking by strategic members. If these are truly independent, meaning that they're not employees of the corporate members, then I think it's a great benefit to have them be part of the board! I'm imagining folks like Tim Bell (CERN), Peter Mell (NIST) or Vint Cerf on there. Boris, I completely agree with decoupling of the business side of OpenStack from the technical side, and I think managing two separate organizations would be one way to achieve this. My concerns are solely on the business side right now. I've spent a lot of time chatting with the PTLs today, and I have confidence that they can hold the technical community to a meritocratic standard. I think the proposal to vote for seats on the foundation board is more about managing board size, than any crossover of technical community management. Having said that, I'm still concerned with the idea that we would let the bigger guys pay more and get a bigger logo on the homepage. If we're going to sell OpenStack privileges, I think we need to do it ala-cart, and explicitly. Some examples (echoing Ben Cherian's comments) might be: - Use of the trademark (for products, training, or certification) - Sponsorship of openstack events - Priority registration for summits and conferences (not necessarily in favor of this one...) While I was drafting this up, I saw Sean Robert's email suggesting that we meet face-to-face and work through some of this together - it seems like a fantastic plan to me, and I'll bump everything else from my schedule to make it happen if others are interested. What do you guys think? -- Joshua McKenty, CEO Piston Cloud Computing, Inc. w: (650) 24-CLOUD m: (650) 283-6846 http://www.pistoncloud.com Oh, Westley, we'll never survive! Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has. On Friday, March 9, 2012 at 3:06 PM, Jonathan Bryce wrote: On Mar 9, 2012, at 4:50 PM, Boris Renski Jr. wrote: The one thing I would do away with is the “elected board members” in favor of more associate member seats. This almost feels like a way to compensate the technology side for giving the marketing side leverage over the former. If we feel that this is necessary, it is a symptom of presence of technology-commercial coupling and we need to fix something else. All technical members should be elected based on merit. All board members – appointed based on monetary/evangelism contribution. Decoupling between technology direction and purchasing power should be rock solid. Thanks for the thoughts, Boris. One point I'd make: the Individual Member seats are not just about compensating the technology side. It gives an opportunity for the entire community to elect representatives. These could be some of the luminaries Josh spoke of or others unaffiliated with any corporate member. Individual Membership is not limited solely to developers who are contributing code, but would include users, deployers, translators, marketers and people with all sorts of involvement in the community. Individual Membership is free and a great place for participants academic institutions, non-profits, etc. to participate with no price tag. Jonathan. ___ Foundation mailing list foundat...@lists.openstack.orgmailto:foundat...@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack Post to : openstack@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
Having more than 5 companies pony up big dollars *is* a great problem to have. I didn't mean to suggest the solution stays the same. We need to plan for this scenario as there is a real chance of more participants than what has been negotiated in the back rooms. Of course, everyone wants the greatest up-front value for their investment. Capital is actually the least strategic type of investment a big company can make. The biggest companies are the biggest companies because they put their best people on strategic investments. Having been at IBM in a group, DB2, dependent on the success of Linux during many of the pivotal years of Linux's commercial rise (2000-2004), IBM truly made that strategic investment. There were no guarantees. Although the Linux Foundation is an exceptional organization there is no model for what OpenStack has achieved with the leadership of Rackspace and others in the areas of strategic, business development, marketing, and events in hand with the technical leadership and achievements of the the community. If we agree that this investment is essential to our success, and the budget that it requires, then let's retire the possibly insulting argument that a meritocratic board is anything but a requirement, that there is something extortive about this, or that everyone else should be content jockeying for part of the board, or that technical contribution is the only full domain of participation for everyone. Rackspace reserving long term influence for themselves and selling it to a BIG four will forever shadow the OpenStack project. Thank you, -- @lloyddewolf http://www.pistoncloud.com/ ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack Post to : openstack@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
On 03/09/2012 02:38 PM, Joshua McKenty wrote: I don't believe ANY open source project has ever had this much commercial involvement, and certainly not this early in its evolution. I suspect Linus might disagree with the first part. -- Robbie Williamson rob...@ubuntu.com robbiew[irc.freenode.net] Don't make me angry...you wouldn't like me when I'm angry. -Bruce Banner ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack Post to : openstack@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
Really? Linux was postcard-ware for the first... what, two years? -- Joshua McKenty, CEO Piston Cloud Computing, Inc. w: (650) 24-CLOUD m: (650) 283-6846 http://www.pistoncloud.com Oh, Westley, we'll never survive! Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has. On Friday, March 9, 2012 at 12:48 PM, Robbie Williamson wrote: On 03/09/2012 02:38 PM, Joshua McKenty wrote: I don't believe ANY open source project has ever had this much commercial involvement, and certainly not this early in its evolution. I suspect Linus might disagree with the first part. -- Robbie Williamson rob...@ubuntu.com (mailto:rob...@ubuntu.com) robbiew[irc.freenode.net (http://irc.freenode.net)] Don't make me angry...you wouldn't like me when I'm angry. -Bruce Banner ___ Foundation mailing list foundat...@lists.openstack.org (mailto:foundat...@lists.openstack.org) http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack Post to : openstack@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
On Friday, March 9, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Thor Wolpert wrote: I thought a Foundation that paid for legal, marketing and core services; along with a hosted set of projects whose membership was based upon meritocracy was the model. That is and always has been the plan and can be seen in the existing detailed structure proposal: http://wiki.openstack.org/Governance/Foundation/Structure I think Josh is really focusing more on the details of membership on the Board, which is separate from the the governance and membership of the projects.___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack Post to : openstack@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
While I like the simplicity and elegance of the newly proposed structure, I don’t see how it does away with the evils of the pay-to-play model…. Which is what you purport we are striving to achieve. What you, Josh, proposed is a simplified pay-to-play that arguably embraces the evils for the “market driven selfishness” in an even more obvious way than the model before it. In your case, all the seats are simply purchased for a fixed price of $200K. In my view the price tag for the sponsorship and the ultimate means for raising the money is not what drives OpenStack’s vendor independence principles. What matters the most is the degree of decoupling between the front-end, marketing and the technical governance. Much of the OpenStack current momentum is due to this fairly unique way of doing open source where on one end you have an open, meritocracy-based technology community and, on the other – structured commercial interest that evangelizes it. As long as the two sides remain sufficiently decoupled (as they have been so far) – no OpenStack principles will be compromised. I think that the community needs to do away with this geek, open source mentality of “all corporations are evil” and harness the value in strong commercial forces evangelizing and battling for the interest of the independent technology community. This is what got OpenStack to where it is now. So far the line between technology and marketing been well maintained. The bottom line is that a) technical committee must be elected and driven by meritocracy; b) foundation board should have virtually no influence (which is the case in the current structure) on the technical committee. Everything else is noise. Once we accept this, the question of structuring the board really becomes the question of how does one raise the maximum amount of money to continue to have a centralized body with a mission to evangelize the project. You can structure it by tiers to let the bigger guys pay more and get a bigger logo on the homepage. You can do a flat structure like Josh proposed. You can auction off the board seats etc. The one thing I would do away with is the “elected board members” in favor of more associate member seats. This almost feels like a way to compensate the technology side for giving the marketing side leverage over the former. If we feel that this is necessary, it is a symptom of presence of technology-commercial coupling and we need to fix something else. All technical members should be elected based on merit. All board members – appointed based on monetary/evangelism contribution. Decoupling between technology direction and purchasing power should be rock solid. -Boris From: foundation-boun...@lists.openstack.org [mailto:foundation-boun...@lists.openstack.org] On Behalf Of Joshua McKenty Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 11:20 AM To: OpenStack; foundat...@lists.openstack.org Subject: [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a diplomatic person. When we were launching OpenStack, this was a bit of an advantage (if we had waited for permission before releasing the Nova source code, we'd still be waiting) - but since the first summit, the community has grown so quickly, and become so diverse, that I have tried to leave discussions of governance, foundation structure, dispute resolution, and most particularly monetary corporate contributions, to others with more... tact. But now I feel I have no choice but to speak up; I'm deeply concerned. The biggest, splashiest openstack stories of the past two years have all had the names of huge, multi-national corporations in them - names like IBM, ATT, Dell, HP, and CISCO. And while their participation has been tremendously positive for the project (with Quantum and Crowbar standing as examples of this), I see things trending in a direction that makes me nervous for the smaller players - for the startups who will live or die on the strength of the OpenStack project. Like Piston Cloud. The current official proposal for the foundation creates a new class of super-members - with a sticker price of $2.5M (due up front) that puts it out of reach of all but a small handful of organizations. This is not a new idea - it was the first structural proposal for the foundation that I heard from the organizing team, and I have argued against it (at times seemingly successfully) continuously since last fall. I understand why it is appealing; it creates a small and manageable board of directors, with a large pool of resources, who shouldn't have too much trouble guiding and directing the outcomes of OpenStack. But it's not a structure that represents or embodies the principles that OpenStack was founded upon, and I think that while it may offer some short-term benefits, it may be damaging to the long-term health of the project because it strangles
Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
Josh, Good work on the alternate proposal. Mark, Jonathan, Thanks for the quick response. I tend to prefer a simpler approach to membership classes and I like the idea of only having one corporate class. The only real difference between the associate member and the strategic member is the amount of money they put in and that paying more money guarantees them a position on the board. Here's another idea: What if we decouple the fundraising from the board membership? I think there are enough benefits that companies would want to pay the foundation for like: - Logo and trademark usage - Access to benchmarks, best practices, and other intelligent materials - And most important, IMO, having the foundation defend the member in cause of a legal threat or patent issue Most companies building businesses around OpenStack would pay for protection. Then, you can decide who is on the Foundation board without thinking about how much they're corporation paid and rather elect people based on value and merit. Thoughts? - Ben On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 2:27 PM, Mark Collier m...@openstack.org wrote: Josh, Thanks for taking the time to consider the proposed structure and provide your thoughts on it. I don't think your concerns are very far off from what we are wanting to address with the Associate Member category, which allows more companies to be represented at a lower price point. The current funding proposal is on the wiki for reference: http://wiki.openstack.org/Governance/Foundation/Funding Let me address a few of your points regarding the proposed plan: *Accessibility*: Associate Member fees start at $50k/year which is substantially lower than a $200k/year flat fee model. The members will elect resprenstatives as a class to the Board. Those Board members will have the same roles and responsibilities as any other Board member. Additionally, companies who wish to show their support for OpenStack may also become a sponsor without paying the full Associate Member fee. Sponsor levels have not been worked out, but I suspect they will start in the 20k/year range. *Board Size*: My sense is that with a flat fee of 200k/year, we wouldstillget many more than 15-20 interested parties, which would quickly overwhelm the board, making it unmanageable. The Associate Member concept mitigates this issue by allowing the class to grow (for accessibility), without the seats balooning, by having elected representatives. It also reduces the risk of shaking up the board makeup and size through acquisition. *Strategic Member fees*: One small clarification: the proposal calls for Strategic Members to make a commitment of $500k/year for 5 years, paid annually (not up front). This figure was driven primarily by the need to arrive at a reasonable board size, while also raising substantial funds for foundation operations. *Strategic Member dominance*: Board members who are appointed by Strategic Members will make up only 1/3 of the board, and will have the same roles and responsibilties as the other board members. *Requirement** for **S**trategic **M**embers** to have full time staff*: The current structure proposal states that Strategic Members must Provide dedicated resources (e.g. developers, legal resources) and the funding proposal states that ...the general expectation is a resource commitment that is consistent with staffing two full time equivalents so it looks like we are on the same page re: 2 FTE requirement. I hope many other folks take the opporunity to weigh in, both on this mailing list as well as in the webinars we'll be holding next week and in any other forum that suits your fancy. I'll also try to keep up with all of the blogging and tweeting, as if that's possible! Mark From: Joshua McKenty jos...@pistoncloud.com Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2012 11:20:17 -0800 To: OpenStack openstack@lists.launchpad.net, foundat...@lists.openstack.org Subject: [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a diplomatic person. When we were launching OpenStack, this was a bit of an advantage (if we had waited for permission before releasing the Nova source code, we'd still be waiting) - but since the first summit, the community has grown so quickly, and become so diverse, that I have tried to leave discussions of governance, foundation structure, dispute resolution, and most particularly monetary corporate contributions, to others with more... tact. But now I feel I have no choice but to speak up; I'm deeply concerned. The biggest, splashiest openstack stories of the past two years have all had the names of huge, multi-national corporations in them - names like IBM, ATT, Dell, HP, and CISCO. And while their participation has been tremendously positive for the project (with Quantum and Crowbar standing as examples of this), I see things trending in a direction that makes me nervous for the smaller players
Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
Mark, one thing that I am curious about - there doesn't seem to be language in the foundation structure document that would prevent individual members from organizations that are also strategic members from also being on the board. Is there any language that prevents board stacking? Devin On Friday, March 9, 2012 at 2:27 PM, Mark Collier wrote: Josh, Thanks for taking the time to consider the proposed structure and provide your thoughts on it. I don't think your concerns are very far off from what we are wanting to address with the Associate Member category, which allows more companies to be represented at a lower price point. The current funding proposal is on the wiki for reference: http://wiki.openstack.org/Governance/Foundation/Funding Let me address a few of your points regarding the proposed plan: Accessibility: Associate Member fees start at $50k/year which is substantially lower than a $200k/year flat fee model. The members will elect resprenstatives as a class to the Board. Those Board members will have the same roles and responsibilities as any other Board member. Additionally, companies who wish to show their support for OpenStack may also become a sponsor without paying the full Associate Member fee. Sponsor levels have not been worked out, but I suspect they will start in the 20k/year range. Board Size: My sense is that with a flat fee of 200k/year, we would still get many more than 15-20 interested parties, which would quickly overwhelm the board, making it unmanageable. The Associate Member concept mitigates this issue by allowing the class to grow (for accessibility), without the seats balooning, by having elected representatives. It also reduces the risk of shaking up the board makeup and size through acquisition. Strategic Member fees: One small clarification: the proposal calls for Strategic Members to make a commitment of $500k/year for 5 years, paid annually (not up front). This figure was driven primarily by the need to arrive at a reasonable board size, while also raising substantial funds for foundation operations. Strategic Member dominance: Board members who are appointed by Strategic Members will make up only 1/3 of the board, and will have the same roles and responsibilties as the other board members. Requirement for Strategic Members to have full time staff: The current structure proposal states that Strategic Members must Provide dedicated resources (e.g. developers, legal resources) and the funding proposal states that ...the general expectation is a resource commitment that is consistent with staffing two full time equivalents so it looks like we are on the same page re: 2 FTE requirement. I hope many other folks take the opporunity to weigh in, both on this mailing list as well as in the webinars we'll be holding next week and in any other forum that suits your fancy. I'll also try to keep up with all of the blogging and tweeting, as if that's possible! Mark From: Joshua McKenty jos...@pistoncloud.com (mailto:jos...@pistoncloud.com) Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2012 11:20:17 -0800 To: OpenStack openstack@lists.launchpad.net (mailto:openstack@lists.launchpad.net), foundat...@lists.openstack.org (mailto:foundat...@lists.openstack.org) Subject: [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a diplomatic person. When we were launching OpenStack, this was a bit of an advantage (if we had waited for permission before releasing the Nova source code, we'd still be waiting) - but since the first summit, the community has grown so quickly, and become so diverse, that I have tried to leave discussions of governance, foundation structure, dispute resolution, and most particularly monetary corporate contributions, to others with more... tact. But now I feel I have no choice but to speak up; I'm deeply concerned. The biggest, splashiest openstack stories of the past two years have all had the names of huge, multi-national corporations in them - names like IBM, ATT, Dell, HP, and CISCO. And while their participation has been tremendously positive for the project (with Quantum and Crowbar standing as examples of this), I see things trending in a direction that makes me nervous for the smaller players - for the startups who will live or die on the strength of the OpenStack project. Like Piston Cloud. The current official proposal for the foundation creates a new class of super-members - with a sticker price of $2.5M (due up front) that puts it out of reach of all but a small handful of organizations. This is not a new idea - it was the first structural proposal for the foundation that I heard from the organizing team, and I have argued against it (at times seemingly successfully) continuously since last fall. I understand why it is appealing; it creates a small
Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
This is great! Jonathan, do you think a completely-elected board is something that the larger corporations would go along with? Ben's suggestion to that effect certainly seems to be the simplest model, since we can scale the membership, deliver specific value for cash contributions, and still manage the size of the board. Regarding the Individual Member seats - I would like to echo Devin's concerns about stacking by strategic members. If these are truly independent, meaning that they're not employees of the corporate members, then I think it's a great benefit to have them be part of the board! I'm imagining folks like Tim Bell (CERN), Peter Mell (NIST) or Vint Cerf on there. Boris, I completely agree with decoupling of the business side of OpenStack from the technical side, and I think managing two separate organizations would be one way to achieve this. My concerns are solely on the business side right now. I've spent a lot of time chatting with the PTLs today, and I have confidence that they can hold the technical community to a meritocratic standard. I think the proposal to vote for seats on the foundation board is more about managing board size, than any crossover of technical community management. Having said that, I'm still concerned with the idea that we would let the bigger guys pay more and get a bigger logo on the homepage. If we're going to sell OpenStack privileges, I think we need to do it ala-cart, and explicitly. Some examples (echoing Ben Cherian's comments) might be: - Use of the trademark (for products, training, or certification) - Sponsorship of openstack events - Priority registration for summits and conferences (not necessarily in favor of this one...) While I was drafting this up, I saw Sean Robert's email suggesting that we meet face-to-face and work through some of this together - it seems like a fantastic plan to me, and I'll bump everything else from my schedule to make it happen if others are interested. What do you guys think? -- Joshua McKenty, CEO Piston Cloud Computing, Inc. w: (650) 24-CLOUD m: (650) 283-6846 http://www.pistoncloud.com Oh, Westley, we'll never survive! Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has. On Friday, March 9, 2012 at 3:06 PM, Jonathan Bryce wrote: On Mar 9, 2012, at 4:50 PM, Boris Renski Jr. wrote: The one thing I would do away with is the “elected board members” in favor of more associate member seats. This almost feels like a way to compensate the technology side for giving the marketing side leverage over the former. If we feel that this is necessary, it is a symptom of presence of technology-commercial coupling and we need to fix something else. All technical members should be elected based on merit. All board members – appointed based on monetary/evangelism contribution. Decoupling between technology direction and purchasing power should be rock solid. Thanks for the thoughts, Boris. One point I'd make: the Individual Member seats are not just about compensating the technology side. It gives an opportunity for the entire community to elect representatives. These could be some of the luminaries Josh spoke of or others unaffiliated with any corporate member. Individual Membership is not limited solely to developers who are contributing code, but would include users, deployers, translators, marketers and people with all sorts of involvement in the community. Individual Membership is free and a great place for participants academic institutions, non-profits, etc. to participate with no price tag. Jonathan. ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack Post to : openstack@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
Re: [Openstack] [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative
I currently don’t see a meaningful path around selling board seats in some shape of form. Having a single, structured body dedicated to project evangelism has been key to OpenStack success so far. It is important that the foundation is able to raise meaningful amounts of money to fund its operations, staff and PR activities. On the other hand, expecting companies to commit $50K - $500K / year to the foundation without offering the credibility and nominal influence that comes with the board seat is not likely to work IMHO. Selling board seats is like saying “thank you for your donation, we publically acknowledge your goodwill and commitment to the foundation – here is a board seat so you can supervise” Selling rights to trademarks, training licenses and event sponsorships is like saying “bitch, we are important, if you want to benefit from OpenStack – pay us money” One is about motivating donations…i.e. giving organizations a way to publically demonstrate their commitment to the good cause that is OpenStack; the other - about selling assets and milking the momentum of the brand. One has the “goodwill donation mentality”, the other – “extortion mentality.” I feel that fewer will favor the latter. -Boris From: foundation-boun...@lists.openstack.org [mailto:foundation-boun...@lists.openstack.org] On Behalf Of Joshua McKenty Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 3:40 PM To: Jonathan Bryce Cc: foundat...@lists.openstack.org; OpenStack Subject: Re: [OpenStack Foundation] Foundation Structure: An Alternative This is great! Jonathan, do you think a completely-elected board is something that the larger corporations would go along with? Ben's suggestion to that effect certainly seems to be the simplest model, since we can scale the membership, deliver specific value for cash contributions, and still manage the size of the board. Regarding the Individual Member seats - I would like to echo Devin's concerns about stacking by strategic members. If these are truly independent, meaning that they're not employees of the corporate members, then I think it's a great benefit to have them be part of the board! I'm imagining folks like Tim Bell (CERN), Peter Mell (NIST) or Vint Cerf on there. Boris, I completely agree with decoupling of the business side of OpenStack from the technical side, and I think managing two separate organizations would be one way to achieve this. My concerns are solely on the business side right now. I've spent a lot of time chatting with the PTLs today, and I have confidence that they can hold the technical community to a meritocratic standard. I think the proposal to vote for seats on the foundation board is more about managing board size, than any crossover of technical community management. Having said that, I'm still concerned with the idea that we would let the bigger guys pay more and get a bigger logo on the homepage. If we're going to sell OpenStack privileges, I think we need to do it ala-cart, and explicitly. Some examples (echoing Ben Cherian's comments) might be: - Use of the trademark (for products, training, or certification) - Sponsorship of openstack events - Priority registration for summits and conferences (not necessarily in favor of this one...) While I was drafting this up, I saw Sean Robert's email suggesting that we meet face-to-face and work through some of this together - it seems like a fantastic plan to me, and I'll bump everything else from my schedule to make it happen if others are interested. What do you guys think? -- Joshua McKenty, CEO Piston Cloud Computing, Inc. w: (650) 24-CLOUD m: (650) 283-6846 http://www.pistoncloud.com Oh, Westley, we'll never survive! Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has. On Friday, March 9, 2012 at 3:06 PM, Jonathan Bryce wrote: On Mar 9, 2012, at 4:50 PM, Boris Renski Jr. wrote: The one thing I would do away with is the “elected board members” in favor of more associate member seats. This almost feels like a way to compensate the technology side for giving the marketing side leverage over the former. If we feel that this is necessary, it is a symptom of presence of technology-commercial coupling and we need to fix something else. All technical members should be elected based on merit. All board members – appointed based on monetary/evangelism contribution. Decoupling between technology direction and purchasing power should be rock solid. Thanks for the thoughts, Boris. One point I'd make: the Individual Member seats are not just about compensating the technology side. It gives an opportunity for the entire community to elect representatives. These could be some of the luminaries Josh spoke of or others unaffiliated with any corporate member. Individual Membership is not limited solely to developers who are contributing code, but would include users, deployers, translators, marketers and people
