Debian as an Associate Member of the OpenInfra Foundation

Early in the history of the OpenStack Project, Debian became a
Supporting Organization of the OpenStack Foundation. As I understand
it, Bdale Garbee (one of the SPI Directors at the time) signed a
logo agreement so that Debian could be included in the Supporting
Organizations list of the openstack.org Web site. Debian continues
to hold the distinction of being the only community-maintained
OpenStack distribution included in the OpenStack "Marketplace" at
https://www.openstack.org/marketplace/distros/ (all the others
listed are backed by member companies of the foundation).

In an effort to increase accountability to its members and board of
directors for outreach activities involving other non-profit
organizations, as well as strengthen cross-organizational
relationships, the Open Infrastructure Foundation (formerly
OpenStack Foundation) has recently created a new non-paying
Associate Member organization class. As such, I'm writing to inquire
into the possibility of having Debian (or SPI on Debian's behalf)
become an Associate Member of the Open Infrastructure Foundation.

The process would be similar to that of the logo agreement signed
some years ago; there's no obligation for Debian or SPI, it's merely
a gratis extension of member organization benefits by the Open
Infrastructure Foundation to the Debian project and community,
including continued representation in the OpenStack Marketplace. I
brought this up with Debian Developers Thomas Goirand and Michal
Arbet (maintainers for most of the OpenStack packages in Debian) in
the #debian-openstack channel on OFTC last week, and they seemed
supportive of the idea, suggesting the next step was probably to
raise the topic here on SPI's general mailing list.

I know from the Organizational Structure page on the Debian site
that the project is already a member of similar organizations like
the GNOME Foundation and OSI. There are many DDs with prominent
leadership roles in the OpenStack project and Open Infrastructure
Foundation, present and past (including project team leaders,
technical committee members, foundation directors, even the current
chairperson for the board of directors is a DD), so I can almost
certainly get one or more of them to volunteer to serve as a liaison
given I'm not personally a contributing member of SPI (not yet, at
any rate).

Am I asking in the right place? Are there any initial concerns with
the proposal? And what would the next steps be? For reference, here
are more details on Associate Membership (I can also supply a copy
of the agreement text here on-list for review if that's preferable):

> The Associate member class is an Open Infrastructure Foundation
> ("the Foundation") member class that does not have a vote for a
> member of the Board of Directors to represent it, or a vote on any
> other matter. It was created on June 29, 2021 by a resolution of
> the Foundation Board of Directors, under the provision of section
> 2.1 of the Foundation bylaws.
>
> The Associate class is open to two types of organizations:
> non-profit organizations sustaining open infrastructure projects,
> and notable academic and public research institutions making
> extensive use of open infrastructure projects. The Executive
> Director of the Foundation has authority to admit and terminate
> members of the Associate Class.
>
> The Associate class does not require any membership fee. Members
> of the Associate class support the Foundation mission by
> associating their organization name with it and allowing the
> Foundation to promote that association. For non-profit
> organizations sustaining open infrastructure projects, the
> Foundation in return may reciprocate through membership in
> equivalent affiliate membership programs, engage in co-marketing
> opportunities or sharing events. For notable academic and public
> research institutions making extensive use of open infrastructure
> projects, they benefit in return from the Foundation support of
> their activities like any other Foundation member, through
> programs like job posting promotion or help in navigating our open
> source communities.

--
Jeremy Stanley, Open Infrastructure Foundation Staff

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for your detailed mail.

> Am I asking in the right place? Are there any initial concerns with
> the proposal? And what would the next steps be? For reference, here
> are more details on Associate Membership (I can also supply a copy
> of the agreement text here on-list for review if that's preferable):

I think the next steps might be (a) seeing the agreement text on-list
(as you suggest) and then (b) looping in any Debian folks
significantly involved in OpenStack so that they have an opportunity
to comment. Sounds good to me though.

Best wishes,

--
Chris Lamb
Open Source Initiative
Email: chris(dot)lamb(at)opensource(dot)org
Website: www.opensource.org

On 2021-12-10 11:14:58 -0800 (-0800), Chris Lamb wrote:
[...]
> I think the next steps might be (a) seeing the agreement text
> on-list (as you suggest) and then (b) looping in any Debian folks
> significantly involved in OpenStack so that they have an
> opportunity to comment. Sounds good to me though.

Thanks for the prompt followup! The text of the agreement is quoted
below, sans the signature block (the original is a PDF, I won't
attempt to subject everyone's MTAs to that), so that anyone can
raise concerns they may have with it. I'm also separately giving any
interested Debian Developers I know involved in OpenStack and the
OpenInfra Foundation a heads up so they'll hopefully chime in with
feedback, as I'm unsure how many of them actively follow
spi-general.

> > Open Infrastructure Foundation Associate Member Agreement
> >
> > This Open Infrastructure Foundation Associate Member Agreement
> > (this "Agreement") is between OpenStack Foundation, d/b/a Open
> > Infrastructure Foundation, a Delaware non-stock, non-profit
> > corporation ("Foundation"), and the entity identified in the
> > signature block below ("Associate Member") and is dated
> > effective as of the date of last signature below.
> >
> > The Associate Member Class of the Foundation is a member class
> > that is open to non-profit organizations and academic and public
> > research institutions who are admitted by the Foundation's
> > Executive Director. The Associate Member Class was developed to
> > benefit both the Foundation and each participating member
> > through community, collaboration, and co-creation. An Associate
> > Member is not required to pay a membership fee but supports the
> > Foundation's mission, which is to develop, support, protect, and
> > promote open source software projects for building and managing
> > technology infrastructure. The Associate Member Class is not
> > entitled to vote in Foundation matters nor does it have a
> > designated representation on the Foundation's Board of
> > Directors.
> >
> > In consideration of the mutual benefits to each party, the
> > receipt and sufficiency of which the parties hereby acknowledge,
> > Associate Member and the Foundation hereby agree as follows:
> >
> > 1. Associate member has reviewed and agrees to abide by: (i) the
> > Foundation Community Code of Conduct available at
> > https://openinfra.dev/codeofconduct and (ii) the Foundation's
> > Trademark Policy available at https://openinfra.dev/trademark,
> > each as may be amended from time to time.
> >
> > 2. Subject to compliance with each party's applicable trademark
> > usage guidelines, (i) the Foundation may display Associate
> > Member's name and logo and (ii) Associate Member may display the
> > Foundation logo and name, in each case (x) solely to disclose or
> > describe Associate Member's status as an Associate Member of the
> > Foundation and (y) in compliance with such party's then-current
> > trademark guidelines.
> >
> > 3. This Agreement shall continue until it is terminated.
> > Associate Member may terminate this Agreement at any time, and
> > for any reason, upon written notice to the Foundation's
> > Executive Director at the legalnotice(at)openinfra(dot)dev(dot) The
> > Foundation may terminate this Agreement at any time, and for any
> > reason, upon written notice to Associate Member at the email or
> > physical address stated below its signature. Upon termination of
> > this Agreement, each party will cease use of the other party's
> > name and logo as promptly as commercially practical.

--
Jeremy Stanley, Open Infrastructure Foundation Staff

On 12/10/21 7:50 PM, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> The process would be similar to that of the logo agreement signed
> some years ago; there's no obligation for Debian or SPI, it's merely
> a gratis extension of member organization benefits by the Open
> Infrastructure Foundation to the Debian project and community,
> including continued representation in the OpenStack Marketplace. I
> brought this up with Debian Developers Thomas Goirand and Michal
> Arbet (maintainers for most of the OpenStack packages in Debian) in
> the #debian-openstack channel on OFTC last week, and they seemed
> supportive of the idea, suggesting the next step was probably to
> raise the topic here on SPI's general mailing list.

I am hereby confirming this fact: I'm very glad Jeremy is taking this
initiative, and would love if there was more things done by the Debian
publicly team to increase the visibility of OpenStack on Debian.

Cheers,

Thomas Goirand (zigo)

On 2021-12-10 19:59:33 +0000 (+0000), Jeremy Stanley wrote:
[...]
> I'm also separately giving any interested Debian Developers I know
> involved in OpenStack and the OpenInfra Foundation a heads up so
> they'll hopefully chime in with feedback, as I'm unsure how many
> of them actively follow spi-general.
[...]

Picking this back up from December, the thread garnered replies in
support from Debian Developers Thomas Goirand (a maintainer of the
OpenStack packages in Debian) and Allison Randal (an elected
individual director on the board of the OpenInfra Foundation). In
the meantime, I've also been granted contributing member status in
SPI and am happy to serve as a liaison between both organizations if
that helps.

What are the next steps for the proposal? Should I try to elicit
more feedback to the mailing list? Or is more information about the
foundation or its associate membership desired? Will I need to add
it to the SPI board meeting agenda for approval (I understand that
today's meeting is probably short notice, but perhaps April's)?

Also, it may be useful to point out a bit more background on
Debian's relevance to some of the other projects represented by the
OpenInfra Foundation besides OpenStack:

StarlingX is an "edge computing" focused GNU/Linux distribution.
Previously it was a Red Hat derivative, but their community decided
to pivot and redo their next major release as a Debian derivative
instead. They've been working with upstream project developers in
the various subsystems they've previously had to patch/fork in order
to whittle away at their divergence, with the hope of getting as
close as possible to eventually being a Debian Pure-Blend.

The OpenDev Collaboratory, a community-run development hosting
service, provides minimal Debian-based virtual machines in its CI
system in order for projects to be able to test that changes to
their software will work on Debian. OpenDev's sysadmins are also the
primary upstream developers for a number of upstream projects
included in Debian, such as the git-review client, or the
python3-gear and python3-gerritlib libraries.

The Zuul "project gating" and CI/CD software, while not yet packaged
in Debian itself, supports the use of Debian as a test platform in
its standard jobs library, and tests all of its changes on Debian
(as well as on other distributions of course). Its published
container images are also built on the Python community's base
images, which are in turn built from the semi-official Debian
container images.

Thanks as always for your feedback and assistance.
--
Jeremy Stanley, Open Infrastructure Foundation Staff