[adding ovs-dev] On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 09:36:47AM -0700, Ben Pfaff wrote: > Since roughly October, some of the OVS committers have been talking over > the idea of bringing Open vSwitch into a foundation. Originally the > group discussing the idea was Justin, Russell, Thomas, and me, but we > later expanded it to include all of the OVS committers. > > The kinds of changes we're interested in include transferring > ownership of the openvswitch.org and ovn.org domain names, hosting and > administration of the website, mailing lists, and forwarding email > addresses for ovn.org, formalizing the existing processes for adding > and removing committers, and obtaining support for organizing the > annual Open vSwitch conference. Possibly, OVS could benefit from > joining a foundation in other ways, such as trademark registration, > founding a centralized test or performance lab, etc., but those > potential benefits have not been our focus. > > We think that Open vSwitch development works quite well as a rule and > we have no desire to disrupt that, so we also have a list of changes > that we do *not* want to make. These include introducing new > processes for committers such as requiring copyright assignments or > CLAs (contributor license agreements), significant changes to other > policies and processes we have that are working, and significant > technical changes to our repositories on the basis of e.g. legal > requirements from a foundation. > > One option is to form our own foundation. To do this right, it would > be a lot of work. We did not seriously pursue this possibility. > > We seriously considered three options: > > - Apache Software Foundation. We had a call with members of the > Apache board. Apache would offer OVS all of the services that > we want. (They contract with the Linux Foundation to handle > events such as conferences.) However, they are very "cookie > cutter" in that every Apache project is expected to fit into its > strictly defined model. This would be difficult for OVS. For > example, the only acceptable license is the Apache license, > which means that the Linux kernel portions of the OVS project > would have to be broken out into a separate repository and could > not be officially part of the project. (We asked specifically > about this.) As a second example, Apache requires use of their > CLA and all of the committers would be required to sign it and > to get their employers to sign it. We considered these issues > to be too disruptive to the project. > > - Software in the Public Interest (spi-inc.org), aka SPI, the > parent of the Debian project. In many ways it is almost the > diametric opposite of the Apache Software Foundation. Projects > have a lot of freedom to operate as they choose, which is a > positive, but on the other hand SPI does not provide much in the > way of services. SPI could accept assets such as domain names, > and hold donations, but it's questionable whether SPI could > relieve us from burdens in hosting and administering even > mailing lists, and we could not expect help in running events. > > - Linux Foundation (LF). We held calls and meetings with LF > executive director Jim Zemlin and vice president Mike Dolan. LF > has all the services we're interested in. For established > projects, like OVS, they aim to avoid disrupting processes and > policies that work, so we could retain, unchanged, most of the > existing OVS governance. > > We came to consensus among our small group and then among the > committers in joining the Linux Foundation. Since then, we've > iterated through a few versions of a proposed charter for the Open > vSwitch project within Linux Foundation. I'm attaching a PDF of the > most recent version. The committers have come to informal consensus > in favor of this charter. VMware, which owns or employs owners of > some OVS-related assets, is also on board. > > Here's my summary of the document. Very little is changing. Under > the LF, OVS would have a technical steering committee (TSC), whose > membership is the current OVS committers. OVS retains its existing > documented procedures. The most important of these is the procedure > for adding new committers, in which existing committers nominate new > ones based on their contributions to the project. The details are > here: > > > https://github.com/openvswitch/ovs/blob/master/Documentation/committer-grant-revocation.md > > The OVS committers span a number of organizations and specialties and > represent the top contributors to the project. A current list is > included in the main repo: > > https://github.com/openvswitch/ovs/blob/master/MAINTAINERS.md > > Inclusion in the group of committers is tied to an individual's > contributions, not their affiliation. > > LF expects OVS to be a rather small budgetary burden, due to the > project's simple structure. The TSC will coordinate with LF for any > budgetary needs. > > At this point, I'd like to suggest that people read over the draft > and, if you have comments, bring them up here for discussion. After > allowing time for discussion, the committers will hold a vote on > joining the Linux Foundation. I believe that that is the final step > in the plan. > > Ben Pfaff (on behalf of all the OVS committers) > > P.S. Please ignore the dates in the charter. We will update them.
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