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What is up with the use of the term "donated" when in comes to transfering control of open source code to a standards body? There is no legal transfer taking pl

What is up with the use of the term "donated" when in comes to transfering control of open source code to a standards body? There is no legal transfer taking place, and politically, there if there is a power transfer, the power transfer happens in the form of the "doner" gaining more power over the "receiver". In the real world of serious standard bodies, the standard body does not "receive a donation of a standard" but works on choosing and developing the best standard possible based on technical merits.

wmf 10y ago
CNCF is not a standards body and can you explain this part: politically, the power transfer happens in the form of the "donor" gaining more power over the "receiver"
- timthelion 10y ago
  Yes, I can explain. Look at this issue https://github.com/opencontainers/image-spec/issues/24 https://github.com/opencontainers/image-spec/issues/24 and notice the belligerant and proprietary attitudes of the Docker employee. He thinks that because the standard is based on the Docker project, he somehow has more say in what will be decided than the other speakers. There is an implied ownership which is not translated when the donation takes place.
  - justincormack 10y ago
    Well I see a CoreOS employee saying that the spec should remain compatible with Docker until after 1.0. The image spec was not "donated" to OCI, various people decided to make a spec for roughly what Docker was doing already, in order to formalise it, with an agreement to do a 1.0 quickly. It was not a standard to create an all new spec, at least initially. There are a lot of existing images out there, so incremental change and backward compatibility is important.
crb 10y ago
There absolutely is a legal transfer. the donation assigns copyright, and normally includes the intellectual property rights of the trademark and logo. In theory, the recipient could choose to relicense.
- richardfontana 10y ago
  In these particular cases I would expect there would be no assignment of copyright (however I would assume you're right about trademarks). Despite the fact that there most likely is some transfer of intellectual property contemplated here, I do think the term "donation" is a little odd when describing stewardship transfer of open source projects to nonprofits -- though it's fairly well established (I associate it mainly with the Apache Software Foundation). To me "donation", based on its ordinary usage in English, suggests "here's something I don't need anymore; you can have it, I won't have any further involvement in it." That does fit certain situations (an example that comes to mind is Oracle's transfer of OpenOffice to the ASF).
  - dankohn1 10y ago
    Hi, Richard. You're correct that CNCF requires projects to provide the trademark, but we don't need copyright, because the ASLv2 license the code is already under is sufficient. "Contribute" might be better word than "donate". But it all a very open-source-oriented, metaphysical concept, in that by giving up some control over a project, the company that originated it is hopefully going to bring in many more contributors and ultimately increase both the total value of the project and the value to them. A core CNCF value proposition to projects [0] is that: "A neutral home for your project increases the willingness of developers from other companies and independent developers to collaborate, contribute, and become committers." Solomon made a useful analogy [1] that "rough comparison: Docker EE=RHEL, CE=Fedora, containerd=Linux". [0] https://www.cncf.io/projects/ https://www.cncf.io/projects/ [1] https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/837313258252091393 https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/837313258252091393 Disclosure: I'm the executive director of CNCF and have been working with Docker on their contribution of containerd and with CoreOS on their contribution of rkt.
jacques_chester 10y ago
> What is up with the use of the term "donated" when in comes to transfering control of open source code to a standards body? It's a transfer of property to a non-profit organisation with no expectation of a counter-transfer. I think "donate" fits the bill.
- timthelion 10y ago
  But there is no transfer taking place. The only transfer going on is a transfer of responsibility. If anything, CNCF is the doner, promising to maintain and endorse an existing peice of open source software.
  - dankohn1 10y ago
    Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13885437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13885437 . Docker and CoreOS are contributing the trademark, as well as committing to an open governance process under the aegis of CNCF.

wmf 10y ago

CNCF is not a standards body and can you explain this part: politically, the power transfer happens in the form of the "donor" gaining more power over the "receiver"

timthelion 10y ago
Yes, I can explain. Look at this issue https://github.com/opencontainers/image-spec/issues/24 https://github.com/opencontainers/image-spec/issues/24 and notice the belligerant and proprietary attitudes of the Docker employee. He thinks that because the standard is based on the Docker project, he somehow has more say in what will be decided than the other speakers. There is an implied ownership which is not translated when the donation takes place.
- justincormack 10y ago
  Well I see a CoreOS employee saying that the spec should remain compatible with Docker until after 1.0. The image spec was not "donated" to OCI, various people decided to make a spec for roughly what Docker was doing already, in order to formalise it, with an agreement to do a 1.0 quickly. It was not a standard to create an all new spec, at least initially. There are a lot of existing images out there, so incremental change and backward compatibility is important.

crb 10y ago

There absolutely is a legal transfer. the donation assigns copyright, and normally includes the intellectual property rights of the trademark and logo. In theory, the recipient could choose to relicense.

richardfontana 10y ago
In these particular cases I would expect there would be no assignment of copyright (however I would assume you're right about trademarks). Despite the fact that there most likely is some transfer of intellectual property contemplated here, I do think the term "donation" is a little odd when describing stewardship transfer of open source projects to nonprofits -- though it's fairly well established (I associate it mainly with the Apache Software Foundation). To me "donation", based on its ordinary usage in English, suggests "here's something I don't need anymore; you can have it, I won't have any further involvement in it." That does fit certain situations (an example that comes to mind is Oracle's transfer of OpenOffice to the ASF).
- dankohn1 10y ago
  Hi, Richard. You're correct that CNCF requires projects to provide the trademark, but we don't need copyright, because the ASLv2 license the code is already under is sufficient. "Contribute" might be better word than "donate". But it all a very open-source-oriented, metaphysical concept, in that by giving up some control over a project, the company that originated it is hopefully going to bring in many more contributors and ultimately increase both the total value of the project and the value to them. A core CNCF value proposition to projects [0] is that: "A neutral home for your project increases the willingness of developers from other companies and independent developers to collaborate, contribute, and become committers." Solomon made a useful analogy [1] that "rough comparison: Docker EE=RHEL, CE=Fedora, containerd=Linux". [0] https://www.cncf.io/projects/ https://www.cncf.io/projects/ [1] https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/837313258252091393 https://twitter.com/solomonstre/status/837313258252091393 Disclosure: I'm the executive director of CNCF and have been working with Docker on their contribution of containerd and with CoreOS on their contribution of rkt.

jacques_chester 10y ago

> What is up with the use of the term "donated" when in comes to transfering control of open source code to a standards body? It's a transfer of property to a non-profit organisation with no expectation of a counter-transfer. I think "donate" fits the bill.

timthelion 10y ago
But there is no transfer taking place. The only transfer going on is a transfer of responsibility. If anything, CNCF is the doner, promising to maintain and endorse an existing peice of open source software.
- dankohn1 10y ago
  Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13885437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13885437 . Docker and CoreOS are contributing the trademark, as well as committing to an open governance process under the aegis of CNCF.