[Owncloud] company/community relationship

[Thomas Tanghus]

On Friday 17 August 2012 00:02 Frank Karlitschek wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> 
> in ownCloud we are in the very lucky situation that we have a healthy
> open source project and also a company that cares about the commercial
> aspects of ownCloud like providing services which make ownCloud relevant
> for bigger enterprises.
> 
> This is a great symbiotic relationship. I´m involved in free software
> project for a long time and I think that having a company and an open
> source project in parallel that work closely together and complement each
> other is key if you want to spread ownCloud. It would be great if ownCloud
> could play a small role in the federated web and decentralized web-services
> movement.
> 
> I wrote a short essay for Lydias book about the need to have a business
> model for an open source project a while ago. Month before that there was
> even the possibility to found an ownCloud company. The text is here if
> someone is interested: http://open-advice.org

310 pages?!? I'll bring that as part of my vacation reading ;) But seriously 
that book had slipped my attention.
 
> So I think that we found a good balanced relationship between the community
> and the company. To be completely open and transparent with this, we created
> a guideline document that describes how the relationship works. I haven´t
> seen a similar document from other open source companies yet but I think
> it´s a good thing to be completely open here.
> 
> There is nothing new here. It´s just a description of the status quo. We
> will put this on the website soon.
> 
> Please let me know if there are any questions. :-)

knitpickingmode, suggestions and questions:

> -----------------------------------------------------
> Guidelines for the ownCloud community

I don't disagree about anything in this writing, except that is more of a 
"Guidelines for ownCloud community/ownCloud Inc. collaboration" document as 
your subject also suggests.

> Started in 2010 at the San Diego KDE event, the ownCloud community project
> started as a way to control your own data while sharing it. ownCloud, Inc.
> was created to carry on this mission, while also meeting the rising demand
> for commercial support from the ownCloud user community.

"ownCloud, Inc. was created created in 2012 to help carry on this mission, 
while also meeting the rising demand for commercial support from the ownCloud 
user community."

> The ownCloud community consists of all people interested in the success of
> ownCloud - including all employees of ownCloud, Inc. All work together to
> build, support, promote and spread the use of ownCloud, as well as the idea
> of decentralized cloud services and an open Web.
> 
> - The ownCloud community is a friendly, innovative and open community of
> contributors and users. We help each other to have the best ownCloud
> experience possible.

This is already in the CoC, right?

> - ownCloud, Inc. is a software company built around the ownCloud Open Source
> project and is fully committed to Open Source principles.
> 
> - ownCloud is developed as an Open Source project by all participants of the
> ownCloud community.
> 
> - All members of the ownCloud community understand that ownCloud Inc. can
> sell proprietary licenses for ownCloud to its customers. As in many Open
> Source companies, parts of the proceeds flow back into the ownCloud
> community, e.g. through sponsorships or employing ownCloud community
> developers.

"Given the open AGPL licensing scheme ownCloud Inc. (and others) can choose to 
sell proprietary licenses and equally develop optional proprietary plugins for 
it's customers, while..."

> - There will always be a standard ownCloud available under an OSI-approved
> Open Source license.
> 
> - ownCloud, Inc. may choose to develop proprietary enterprise extensions to
> ownCloud. Those extensions are optional, and will not be required to run
> standard ownCloud.
> 
> - The ownCloud community respects the ownCloud trademark usage guidelines,
> which explain usage options for the ownCloud trademarks.

How exactly is it wrt trademark?

> - The owncloud.org website is centered around the ownCloud community, while
> owncloud.com promotes the offerings of ownCloud, Inc. All work together to
> promote the ideas behind ownCloud and to increase usage.

+1 :-)

-- 
Med venlig hilsen / Best Regards

Thomas Tanghus