[occi-wg] Fwd: How I tried to keep OCCI alive (and failed miserably)

[Sam Johnston]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sam Johnston <samj at samj.net>
Date: Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 9:25 PM
Subject: [Sam Johnston] How I tried to keep OCCI alive (and failed
miserably)

I was going to let this one slide but following a calumniatory
missive<http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/2010-June/001867.html>to
his "followers" by the Open
Cloud Computing Interface <http://www.occi-wg.org/>'s self-proclaimed "Founder
& Chair", Sun refugee Thijs Metsch <http://twitter.com/befreax>, I have
little choice but to respond in my defense (particularly as "The Chairs"
were actively soliciting
<http://twitter.com/dizz/status/16397788487>followup from others
on-list in support).

Basically a debate came to a head that has been brewing on- and
off-list<http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/2010-March/001703.html>for
months regarding the Open
Grid Forum (OGF) <http://www.ogf.org/>'s attempts to prevent me from
licensing *my own contributions* (essentially the entire normative
specification) under a permissive Creative
Commons<http://www.creativecommons.org/>license (as an additional
option to the restrictive
OGF license <http://www.ogf.org/About/abt_policies_copyright.php>) and/or
submit them to the IETF as previously agreed and as required by the OGF's
own policies <http://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.1.pdf>. This was on the
grounds that "*Most existing cloud computing specifications are available
under CC licenses and I don't want to give anyone any excuses to choose
another standard over ours*" and that the IETF has an excellent track record
of producing high quality, interoperable, open specifications by way of a
controlled yet open process. This should come as no surprise to those of you
who know I am and will always be a huge supporter of open cloud, open source
and open standards.

The OGF process had failed to deliver after over 12 months of deadline
extensions - the current spec is frozen in an incomplete state (lacking
critical features like collections, search, billing, security, etc.) as a
result of being prematurely pushed into public comment, nobody is happy with
it (including myself), the community has all but dissipated (except for a
few hard core supporters, previously including myself) and software
purporting to implement it actually implements something completely
different altogether (see for
yourself<http://www.opennebula.org/documentation:rel1.4:occidd>).
There
was no light at the end of the tunnel and with both
OGF29<http://www.gridforum.org/OGF29/>and
IETF78 <http://www.ietf78.nl/home.html> just around the corner I yesterday
took a desperate gamble to keep OCCI alive (as a CC-licensed spec, an IETF
Internet-Draft or both).

I confirmed that I was well within my rights to revoke any copyright,
trademark and other rights previously granted (apparently it was amateur
hour as OGF had failed to obtain an irrevocable license from me for my
contributions) and volunteered to do so if restrictions on reuse by others
weren't lifted and/or the specification submitted to the IETF process as
agreed and required by their own policies. Thijs' colleague (and quite
probably his boss at Platform Computing <http://www.platform.com/>),
Christopher Smith (who doubles as OGF's outgoing VP of Standards) promptly
responded, questioning my motives (which I can assure you are pure) and
issuing a terse legal threat about how the "OGF will protect its rights"
(against me over my own contributions no less). Thijs then followed up
shortly after saying that they "see the secretary position as vacant from
now on" and despite claims to the
contrary<http://twitter.com/papaspyrou/status/16403013420>I really
couldn't give a rats arse about a title bestowed upon me by a
past-its-prime organisation struggling (and failing I might add) to maintain
relevance. My only concern is that OCCI have a good home and if anything
Platform have just captured the sort of control over it as VMware enjoy over
DMTF/vCloud, with Thijs being the only remaining active editor.

I thought that would be the end of it and had planned to let sleeping dogs
lie until today's disgraceful, childish, coordinated and most of all
completely unnecessary
attack<http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/2010-June/001867.html>on
an unpaid volunteer that rambled about "constructive technical debate"
and "community driven consensus", thanking me for my "meaningful
contributions" but then calling on others to take up the pitchforks by
"welcom[ing] any comments on this statement" on- or off-list. The attacks
then continued on Twitter with another OGF
official<http://twitter.com/papaspyrou> claiming
that this "*was a consensus decision within a group of, say, 20+ active and
many many (300+) passive participants*" (despite this being the first any of
us had heard of it) and then calling my claims of copyright ownership "*genuine
bullshit*" and report of an implementor instantly pulling out because they
(and I quote) "*can't implement something if things are not stable*" a "*damn
lie*", claiming I was "*pissed*" and should "*get over it and stop crying*"
(needless to say they were promptly blocked).*
*
Anyway as you can see there's more to it than Thijs' diatribe would have you
believe and so far as I'm concerned OCCI, at least in it's current form, is
long since dead. I'm undecided as to whether to revoke OGF's licenses at
this time but it probably doesn't matter as they agree I retain the
copyrights and I think their chance of success is negligible - nobody in
their right mind would implement the product of such a dysfunctional group
and those who already did have long since
found<http://blog.opennebula.org/?p=185>
alternatives <http://blog.opennebula.org/?p=528>. That's not to say the
specification won't live on in another form but now the OGF have decided to
go nuclear it's going to have to be in a more appropriate forum - one that
furthers the standard rather than constantly holding it back.

*Protip*: None of this has anything to do with my current employer so let's
keep it that way.

--
Posted By Sam Johnston to Sam
Johnston<http://samj.net/2010/06/how-i-tried-to-keep-occi-alive-and.html>at
6/17/2010 09:25:00 PM
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