[Owncloud] company/community relationship

[Frank Karlitschek]

On 17.08.2012, at 21:30, Thomas Tanghus <thomas at tanghus.net> wrote:

> 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.

True. The title is not good. Something to fix.  :-)

> 
>> 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."

Good point.

>> 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?

True. But you can´t stress is enough :-)


> 
>> - 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..."

See the answer from Klaas here. An additional mail about this topic is coming in a few minutes

> 
>> - 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?

What do you mean?



> 
>> - 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 :-)

Thanks


Cheers
Frank