Hi, we just wanted to clarify some things about the project, our initial thoughs for its openness and the possibility for offering paid support for vendors.
Our aim is for Operaton to become a FOSS (Free and open-source software) project. We have registered a trademark with one of our companies to protect the project, but we do not intend to keep it there, or use it for monetization. Our goal is to create or find a legal entity (foundation, etc…) that will take ownership of the project and manage its assets such as trademarks, domain names, the forum, the GitHub account… This legal entity will be controlled and led by the community, or people in the community.
We also plan to provide commercial support for Operaton with a company. This company will not have exclusive rights to the project or its trademark, but will work with customers to provide support, merge bug fixes into the mainline and help release fixed versions, while fully complying with the Apache 2.0 licence. There will be no proprietary versions of Operaton provided by this company. If this company is able to find enough customers to be financially stable, it could use these funds to hire full-time employees who could contribute to Operaton, again without any exclusive rights.
Other companies would be free to provide similar support, there will be nothing in the licence or trademark that restricts these options to any company or person.
If you have any questions, doubts or suggestions about this model, feel free to reply in this thread, we are looking forward to any feedback!
I like the idea of establishing an “eingetragener Verein” (registered association). We can create a “Vereinssatzung” (articles of association) that outlines how the association will make its decisions.
One appealing approach could be to allow companies to gain voting power through membership fees, while contributors earn voting power by contributing their efforts. We’ll need to find the right balance between these methods. For decision-making, we can simply ask the members to cast their votes.
However, I’m not a lawyer, so there might be some drawbacks to this model that I’m not aware of.
The Eclipse Foundation is a good choice for enterprise-strength FOSS projects. The foundation is now also EU based.
I have best connections to the Foundation staff and can warmly recommend it for projects like Operaton.
However, going to a Foundation also implies that processes are more restrictive. But this is also a good thing. Eclipse makes sure that companies can be sure that the software they use are legally clean to use, and for free.
You bring up an excellent point about reputation. Enterprises might trust a large FOSS foundation more when considering using this software in their technology stack. As a standalone small entity, we would definitely need to generate some membership fees or sponsorship income to pay for legal assistance for these kinds of matters.
I’m also active at Eclipse since 15+ years. Should we think about going to Eclipse, I’m familiar with the process of project proposals and the people guiding that. I know Hendrik also, we worked together at the same company and live nearby.