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I've been on both sides of this sort of divide, as both insider and outsider. It's easy to see it as politics. I do, pretty much all the time, but that's becau

I've been on both sides of this sort of divide, as both insider and outsider. It's easy to see it as politics. I do, pretty much all the time, but that's because I have a background in politics. I'm primed to assume the worst. I think the explanation is simpler. If you are a Googler, you mostly talk to Googlers, you mostly come to quick consensus that way, and it all makes sense to you and the Googlers you had casual whiteboarding sessions with. So you just go ahead with the to-you-obviously-best decision and get surprised when non-Googlers are mad at being presented with a fait accompli. There is no ill-will and no conspiracy required. Some of the personnel allocations are driven by corporate strategy, but folks engineering on the line are all reasonable human beings. It's just simple personal dynamics. You talk mostly to the people closest to you unless sustained effort is made to keep stuff in the open.

justicezyx 8y ago
You missed the key part. This is why it was open sourced, as a balance between control leverage and adoption.
- gouggoug 8y ago
  > This is why it was open sourced, as a balance between control leverage and adoption. I feel like I read this kind of statement all the time and I don't understand the reasoning behind it. Google came up with k8s. They could have kept it for themselves, or, open source it. They open-sourced it. It definitely benefits them, but, it also benefits us a lot. Saying they "open sourced, as a balance between control leverage and adoption" is so cynical. So I'd like to ask, what's the alternative? Not open-sourcing? Who would that benefit? What would be the non-ill-intentioned alternative that Google supposedly could have chosen?
  - wmf 8y ago
    In theory I guess Google could have open sourced k8s and then walked away, refusing to contribute anything more. According to "community is everything" thinkers this would have led to even greater/faster adoption than k8s already has (if such a thing is possible). Of course it sounds ridiculous when you state it explicitly which I guess is why they never do.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - mfer 8y ago
    Why did Google create Kubernetes and open source it? Why did the people who created Kubernetes all leave Google? What was the business strategy behind it all? After all, the created omega but it never did replace borg. Kubernetes wasn't meant to replace borg, was it? Google didn't create and release Kubernetes out of the goodness of their hearts. Have you ever pondered the strategy behind it all? Maybe they couldn't have kept it to themselves because that would have defeated the underlying purpose in the first place?
    - thockingoog 8y ago
      > Why did the people who created Kubernetes all leave Google? Umm, we didn't? > created omega but it never did replace borg It did have material impact on Borg. Sometimes the strategy is simply "we know how to do this, and we'd prefer not to see you go through all the same pain to figure it out".
      - mfer 8y ago
        Tim, I should not have used "all" there.
      - aberoham 8y ago
        Timmy!! When will knative and istio be handed over to a foundation? Does LF/CNCF have enough carrots in Jim Zemlin's bag of tricks?? 'tis fascinating to dig in to open source serverless on Kubernetes options only to realize that there's probably 100+ engineers working on istio+knative, ~10x more than any prior alternative. When is KnativeCon coming?
        jacques_chester 8y ago
        I don't think he's involved very closely. Since folks get so worked up about allocations unofficially shaping decisions, I suggest[^] that Knative be homed with the Cloud Foundry Foundation, where the rules are written to give votes based on how many fulltime contributors you assign. That way it's all out in the open. Disclosure: I work for Pivotal, which is in both the CFF and CNCF. I was aware of Knative relatively early. [^] in a ha-ha-only-serious way
  - justicezyx 8y ago
    A for profit company doing something with balanced objectives, how is hat ill intentioned?
- jacques_chester 8y ago
  I've argued something similar but not identical, which is that Google wanted to commoditise container platforms to stop AWS from moving further ahead. Scorch the earth, basically. That's what I meant by strategy guiding allocations. Google put their shoulder to the wheel with people, funding and sustained PR. But that's still different from the day-to-day goings-on being discussed here. The fate of Kustomize is not the stuff grand strategy. My argument is addressed to that level.

justicezyx 8y ago

You missed the key part. This is why it was open sourced, as a balance between control leverage and adoption.

gouggoug 8y ago
> This is why it was open sourced, as a balance between control leverage and adoption. I feel like I read this kind of statement all the time and I don't understand the reasoning behind it. Google came up with k8s. They could have kept it for themselves, or, open source it. They open-sourced it. It definitely benefits them, but, it also benefits us a lot. Saying they "open sourced, as a balance between control leverage and adoption" is so cynical. So I'd like to ask, what's the alternative? Not open-sourcing? Who would that benefit? What would be the non-ill-intentioned alternative that Google supposedly could have chosen?
- wmf 8y ago
  In theory I guess Google could have open sourced k8s and then walked away, refusing to contribute anything more. According to "community is everything" thinkers this would have led to even greater/faster adoption than k8s already has (if such a thing is possible). Of course it sounds ridiculous when you state it explicitly which I guess is why they never do.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mfer 8y ago
  Why did Google create Kubernetes and open source it? Why did the people who created Kubernetes all leave Google? What was the business strategy behind it all? After all, the created omega but it never did replace borg. Kubernetes wasn't meant to replace borg, was it? Google didn't create and release Kubernetes out of the goodness of their hearts. Have you ever pondered the strategy behind it all? Maybe they couldn't have kept it to themselves because that would have defeated the underlying purpose in the first place?
  - thockingoog 8y ago
    > Why did the people who created Kubernetes all leave Google? Umm, we didn't? > created omega but it never did replace borg It did have material impact on Borg. Sometimes the strategy is simply "we know how to do this, and we'd prefer not to see you go through all the same pain to figure it out".
    - mfer 8y ago
      Tim, I should not have used "all" there.
    - aberoham 8y ago
      Timmy!! When will knative and istio be handed over to a foundation? Does LF/CNCF have enough carrots in Jim Zemlin's bag of tricks?? 'tis fascinating to dig in to open source serverless on Kubernetes options only to realize that there's probably 100+ engineers working on istio+knative, ~10x more than any prior alternative. When is KnativeCon coming?
      - jacques_chester 8y ago
        I don't think he's involved very closely. Since folks get so worked up about allocations unofficially shaping decisions, I suggest[^] that Knative be homed with the Cloud Foundry Foundation, where the rules are written to give votes based on how many fulltime contributors you assign. That way it's all out in the open. Disclosure: I work for Pivotal, which is in both the CFF and CNCF. I was aware of Knative relatively early. [^] in a ha-ha-only-serious way
- justicezyx 8y ago
  A for profit company doing something with balanced objectives, how is hat ill intentioned?
jacques_chester 8y ago
I've argued something similar but not identical, which is that Google wanted to commoditise container platforms to stop AWS from moving further ahead. Scorch the earth, basically. That's what I meant by strategy guiding allocations. Google put their shoulder to the wheel with people, funding and sustained PR. But that's still different from the day-to-day goings-on being discussed here. The fate of Kustomize is not the stuff grand strategy. My argument is addressed to that level.