4 ms·

I am the project lead for Eclipse Che - developer workspace server and cloud IDE. The core of this project came out of Codenvy. Three years ago we were searchin

I am the project lead for Eclipse Che - developer workspace server and cloud IDE. The core of this project came out of Codenvy. Three years ago we were searching for the right governance model and community to open source Che from Codenvy. We originally started with Apache. We went that way because we did not have relationships with Eclipse Foundation, the Orion project - a perceived competitor at the time - was already there, and concerns over IBM having an outsized dominance / influence over the community. When we reached out to the Apache foundation to discuss the ways we could get our software into their foundation, building mentors, and also cross-project collaboration - we really struggled. We were unable to get the necessary endorsements. Apache was really bare bones governance. Because we couldn't get the right mentors, the proposal never made it out of an early proposal phase. Serendipity at the time had me accidentally meat the Orion project lead at the Eclipse Foundation. Conversations ensued, and a path for how Che could come to be a reality with the support of other vendors that wanted to get involved was laid out. And that lead to our ultimate path into Eclipse and promotion there. So this is an interesting back story about how one project ended up in Eclipse vs. Apache. Interestingly, Eclipse is opinionated about the projects they promote. They are topically focused and work for project cross-pollination along with driving marketing initatives and IP policies around driving adoption of their core underlying projects. So that is a bit of a departure from the Apache approach where each product is more autonomous in terms of its underlying promotion responsibilities. This plays a little bit to @dr_faustus comment on Apache being a place where many large projects are going - they can do that because the community already exists and they need the most structured infrastructure / process.

gtirloni 10y ago
I'm curious to understand where to draw the line between the need for governance/bureaucracy versus just releasing code on GitHub and being a good participant (reviewing PRs, running a mailing list, etc). Maybe whenever there are a dozen or so companies trying to create a business model so they don't fight each other too much? Has that ever worked with the high profile Apache projects that people remember here (OpenOffice, CouchDB, etC)?
- TylerJewell 10y ago
  There is a really interesting distinction between Apache and Eclipse around IP policy. It's taken me a good year of releasing with Eclipse to understand many of the nuances. The biggest distinction is that Eclipse has an IP Policy where all of the code and assets has to have provenance of the code - either code submitted under a CLA, but if there are links to third party libraries, they are each independently reviewed by an on staff legal team. There are more details beyond this, but that level of human provenance review for every Eclipse project for it to be released, enables certain companies to more readily and easily adopt projects with not only an EPL license, but released as an Eclipse project with signed binaries on their hosted servers. There are differences around mentoring, release process, hosting rules, infrastructure. But at the end of the day, it's about structure, rigorous rules, mentorship, and community.
  - jimjag 10y ago
    Apache's IP provenance is also considerably robust and respected.
specialist 10y ago
Thank you for sharing. "...we were searching for the right governance model..." I am very interested in comparisons of governance models. Case studies, war stories, analysis, whatever. I joined a team working on OSS specifically to learn more about governance. The stewards of kuali.org were a consortia. It was a train wreck. Least common denominator consensus based decision making, layers of hierarchy, no accountability, paralysis and inaction, abundance of NIH / reinvention, etc. Tellingly, kuali is now kaput. Sadly, I didn't learn anything actionable about governance.
- TylerJewell 10y ago
  It would be a nice white paper to compare the development, release, IP, infrastructure and branding processes of the Linux Foundation vs. Apache vs. Eclipse. I pick these three as they are foundations that have been long lasting and have proven an ability to retain member companies and a diverse set of projects. The comparison would take a lot of effort to do but be worthwhile. You need to compare details as minute as around how web sites are hosted, how products are named, trademarking + copyright issues, provenance and IP policies around releases, mentorship, maintenance --- even things as formal as how issues are created, pull requests established, and how projects are organized among the committers. The foundations can derive policy and rules at any level - and there is a significant variance depending upon the underlying charter of what the foundation is trying to promote. So the best place to start is the bylaws of each foundation, which are open source themselves, to understand the underlying motivation. Nearly all choices are made from the underlying principles. Interestingly, the Eclipse Foundation is one of the larger revenue organizations from member contributions, but they do not have that many projects - maybe 300 or so. The IP provenance requirements are so stringent that many smaller projects turn away because they do not desire such a level of review. So the Eclipse Foundation is about to introduce a dual IP mode where projects can self-certify their IP provenance. The entire process around releases will be different can instead of taking weeks to make a release, could be done nearly instantaneously, allowing many projects that have a small group or open source license to become a project of the foundation, if that was a desire.
  - rectang 10y ago

gtirloni 10y ago

I'm curious to understand where to draw the line between the need for governance/bureaucracy versus just releasing code on GitHub and being a good participant (reviewing PRs, running a mailing list, etc). Maybe whenever there are a dozen or so companies trying to create a business model so they don't fight each other too much? Has that ever worked with the high profile Apache projects that people remember here (OpenOffice, CouchDB, etC)?

TylerJewell 10y ago
There is a really interesting distinction between Apache and Eclipse around IP policy. It's taken me a good year of releasing with Eclipse to understand many of the nuances. The biggest distinction is that Eclipse has an IP Policy where all of the code and assets has to have provenance of the code - either code submitted under a CLA, but if there are links to third party libraries, they are each independently reviewed by an on staff legal team. There are more details beyond this, but that level of human provenance review for every Eclipse project for it to be released, enables certain companies to more readily and easily adopt projects with not only an EPL license, but released as an Eclipse project with signed binaries on their hosted servers. There are differences around mentoring, release process, hosting rules, infrastructure. But at the end of the day, it's about structure, rigorous rules, mentorship, and community.
- jimjag 10y ago
  Apache's IP provenance is also considerably robust and respected.

specialist 10y ago

Thank you for sharing. "...we were searching for the right governance model..." I am very interested in comparisons of governance models. Case studies, war stories, analysis, whatever. I joined a team working on OSS specifically to learn more about governance. The stewards of kuali.org were a consortia. It was a train wreck. Least common denominator consensus based decision making, layers of hierarchy, no accountability, paralysis and inaction, abundance of NIH / reinvention, etc. Tellingly, kuali is now kaput. Sadly, I didn't learn anything actionable about governance.

TylerJewell 10y ago
It would be a nice white paper to compare the development, release, IP, infrastructure and branding processes of the Linux Foundation vs. Apache vs. Eclipse. I pick these three as they are foundations that have been long lasting and have proven an ability to retain member companies and a diverse set of projects. The comparison would take a lot of effort to do but be worthwhile. You need to compare details as minute as around how web sites are hosted, how products are named, trademarking + copyright issues, provenance and IP policies around releases, mentorship, maintenance --- even things as formal as how issues are created, pull requests established, and how projects are organized among the committers. The foundations can derive policy and rules at any level - and there is a significant variance depending upon the underlying charter of what the foundation is trying to promote. So the best place to start is the bylaws of each foundation, which are open source themselves, to understand the underlying motivation. Nearly all choices are made from the underlying principles. Interestingly, the Eclipse Foundation is one of the larger revenue organizations from member contributions, but they do not have that many projects - maybe 300 or so. The IP provenance requirements are so stringent that many smaller projects turn away because they do not desire such a level of review. So the Eclipse Foundation is about to introduce a dual IP mode where projects can self-certify their IP provenance. The entire process around releases will be different can instead of taking weeks to make a release, could be done nearly instantaneously, allowing many projects that have a small group or open source license to become a project of the foundation, if that was a desire.
- rectang 10y ago