Google's reputation in the open-source community has historically been a great one. The company creates a lot of important software and releases it freely for developers to do with as they wish.
But that reputation is now at risk of serious damage after it made a move that ticked off a number of open-source developers, including its partner in a key project, IBM, and a well-known computer scientist who now works on Oracle's cloud. The move even prompted a public callout blog post from IBM.
The issue is around the control of a popular open-source project created at Google known as Istio.
What is Istio?
Istio is an increasingly prominent part of the cloud ecosystem around what coders call "microservices," the most popular way to build cloud applications. A microservices architecture involves stitching together many small modular pieces of software, rather than the more old-school way of building one massive "monolithic" application.
Microservices need software-management tools like Istio, known as a "mesh" service, to make sure all those pieces reliably and securely work together.
IBM was building its own open-source mesh service, known as Amalgam8, but in 2017 it agreed to merge that into Google's Istio. With the combined backing of those two heavyweights, Istio became a popular choice for many developers. Today Istio is supported by a who's who in tech, including Cisco, Red Hat, Huawei, and VMware. There have been books written about it too, like "Istio Explained" from an IBM engineer.
In 2017, Google promised to transfer control of the Istio project to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), IBM said in its blog post.
Developers were looking forward to Istio joining the CNCF
While Istio is an open-source project — meaning anybody, anywhere can contribute code — Google retained the ultimate authority to make decisions on features and strategy for the project.
Organizations like the CNCF exist to ensure no one vendor has undue control over important open-source projects — more specifically that they can't manipulate them to benefit their commercial interests at the expense of others. The CNCF in particular is a part of the Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation is one of the biggest, most respected open-source organizations and has successfully kept the Linux operating system vendor-neutral for two decades. It also handles many other critical projects.
When a project grows to be as important as Istio, developers want to see it move into these vendor-neutral organizations so that the project's users, as well as other vendors, can guide its future.
Google earned itself enormous open-source street cred when it transferred its megaimportant Kubernetes project to the CNCF some years ago. That decision helped turn Kubernetes into one of the most important cloud technologies.
So there was no reason to think Google wouldn't do the same for other open-source cloud projects, like Istio.
Google's Open Usage Commons came as a surprise
But on Wednesday, Google surprised the open-source world by announcing it had launched a new open-source organization called Open Usage Commons (OUC), to which it had transferred three projects — including Istio.
The organization is run by people who work for Google, as well as a former Googler who is now the chief technology officer at SADA Systems, a big Google Cloud partner, and a few academics. IBM was not among the founding members of this new organization.
Equally importantly, OUC's purpose is very limited: It's handling only the trademarks — the project's name and logo — rather than the responsibility for the governance and development of all aspects of the open-source project under its care.
There may or may not be a good case for the existence of OUC. Creators of open-source projects often trademark names and logos, which helps them distinguish their versions of open-source projects. In its blog post announcing OUC, Google said trademarks have been overlooked area in open source that it wants to tackle.
The Linux Foundation disagrees and said in a blog post that it was more than capable of handling trademarks along with the needs of the project it oversees.
IBM is not happy
In any case, IBM is not happy. It saw Google's unilateral decision to create OUC and contribute Istio to it as a bait and switch.
"At the project's inception, there was an agreement that the project would be contributed to the CNCF when it was mature," Jason McGee, a vice president in IBM's cloud-platform unit, wrote in a blog post condemning Google's decision.
As a major player in the early development of Istio, IBM wanted and expected Google to transfer the entire project to the CNCF, a neutral ground.
"Today's announcement by Google of the creation of the Open Usage Commons (OUC) is disappointing because it doesn't live up to the community's expectation for open governance," McGee wrote, adding, "IBM continues to believe that the best way to manage key open source projects such as Istio is with true open governance, under the auspices of a reputable organization."
Developers are not happy
Developers also complained on Twitter. While Istio started at Google, its nature as an open-source project means that volunteer developers all over the world have contributed code. Had they known that Google had no intention of giving up control, they may have focused their energies elsewhere.
"I think a lot of us feel that Istio took up space that another mesh project could have taken. They strung the CNCF along dangling a donation, and then Google lamely tries to trick us into believing they 'donated it' to an 'open foundation.' It's patronizing and insulting," developer Daniel Imberman tweeted.
People inside the CNCF also condemned Google's move, saying that the open-source world already has an abundance of foundations and doesn't need a new one just to deal with names and logos.
"Google set up an organization with no details claiming to be solving a 'trademark issue' in open source that doesn't exist," Chris Aniszczyk, the chief technology officer of the CNCF, tweeted. He added, "Let's just hold trillion dollar companies to a higher standard if they don't fulfill their promises and question motivations of creating 'novel' initiatives"
Aniszczyk also sent a formal statement that said the reason people believed Google would contribute it was that in 2017, it tried to. It's application was retracted at the time due because the project hadn't proved itself popular yet.
He also implied if Google didn't change its mind, the Linux Foundation would throw its considerable weight behind a competing project.
He said: "Our community members are perplexed that Google has chosen to not contribute the Istio project to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), but we are happy to help guide them to resubmit their old project proposal from 2017 at any time. In the end, our community remains focused on building and supporting our service mesh projects like Envoy, linkerd and interoperability efforts like the Service Mesh Interface (SMI). The CNCF will continue to be the center of gravity of cloud native and service mesh collaboration and innovation."
But one of the sharpest criticisms came from the well-known computer scientist Jon Mittelhauser. Mittelhauser is a vice president in Oracle's cloud division, but he's best known as a cofounder of the pioneering internet company Netscape and for writing the Windows version of the very first internet browser. (Netscape launched the career of the tech power player Marc Andreessen.)
Mittelhauser even said his team at Oracle was reevaluating its use of Istio for building new services because of this move by Google.
"IBM comes out against Google; says Istio should be part of CNCF (I agree strongly) My team is in the process of reevaluating (and likely moving away from) the use of Istio as we build new cloud native services and technologies. Without open governance, we can't support it," he tweeted.
Google declined to comment on the controversy.
Trust and the cloud hang in the balance
We don't know if Google will bow to the pressure and move Istio to the CNCF, but we predict that such an outcome is likely. In which case, all's well that ends well for Istio's users.
If Google does not, however, the repercussions to its reputation could be severe.
Google's plan to become a bigger cloud player is to invent new technologies. If developers and big partners like IBM and Oracle don't trust Google to give up sole control once a project becomes important, they won't pile on, use it, and help it become popular.
But once it releases that tech to independent organizations, it can't control it. For instance, Amazon loves to point out that its cloud, Amazon Web Services, offers support for many Google-invented technologies, such as Kubernetes and TensorFlow.
So ultimately Google would gain no advantage for its cloud business if it created new tech that no one uses. And as it creates cloud projects that become popular, Google may be tempted to try and keep sole control. But, as we can see with Istio, that's a dangerous path to walk.
Are you a Google Cloud, Oracle, or IBM insider with insight to share? Contact Julie Bort via email at jbort@jkmperu.com or on encrypted chat app Signal at (970) 430-6112 (no PR inquiries, please). Open DMs on Twitter @Julie188.
