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Posted to marketing@cloudstack.apache.org by Chip Childers <ch...@sungard.com> on 2013/03/07 15:34:20 UTC
Question about vendor-neutrality aspects of having "user case
studies"
NOTE: cross posted between a public and private list.
trademarks@ folks:
I have questions about intent / best practices / examples of where a
project community provides case studies on it's website of users of the
project's software.
The CloudStack marketing community is currently discussing getting case
studies from various users of the software, and understanding any
current consensus on what's right vs. wrong would be helpful.
While I'm sure that actively promoting the *idea* of users posting case
studies on their own sites is perfectly fine, I'm wondering about the
potential implications of the project itself hosting or linking to these
from our own site.
Vendor neutrality is obviously a critical aspect of the ASF's community
development practices, as well as an important brand protection
mechanism for the projects, hence why I wanted to bring trademarks@
into the discussion for advice and guidance.
Has this type of thing been discussed other projects (and do you
know the outcomes)? If not, what would be your guidance for CloudStack
specifically, and Apache projects generally?
-chip
RE: Question about vendor-neutrality aspects of having "user case
studies"
Posted by Giles Sirett <gi...@shapeblue.com>.
Chip
Yep, I get it now, thanks Shane
Kind Regards
Giles
D: +44 20 3603 0541 | M: +44 796 111 2055
Giles.Sirett@shapeblue.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Chip Childers [mailto:chip.childers@sungard.com]
Sent: 14 March 2013 19:47
To: cloudstack-marketing@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: Question about vendor-neutrality aspects of having "user case studies"
(removed trademarks@)
On Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 03:24:09PM +0000, Giles Sirett wrote:
> Chip
>
> Could you clarify who you mean when you say "vendor"
Giles,
Was Shane's reference
(http://community.apache.org/projectIndependence.html) helpful in answering your question?
-chip
This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Shape Blue Ltd or related companies. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither take any action based upon its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone. Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in error. Shape Blue Ltd is a company incorporated in England & Wales. ShapeBlue Services India LLP is operated under license from Shape Blue Ltd. ShapeBlue is a registered trademark.
Re: Question about vendor-neutrality aspects of having "user case
studies"
Posted by Chip Childers <ch...@sungard.com>.
(removed trademarks@)
On Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 03:24:09PM +0000, Giles Sirett wrote:
> Chip
>
> Could you clarify who you mean when you say "vendor"
Giles,
Was Shane's reference
(http://community.apache.org/projectIndependence.html) helpful in
answering your question?
-chip
RE: Question about vendor-neutrality aspects of having "user case
studies"
Posted by Giles Sirett <gi...@shapeblue.com>.
Chip
Could you clarify who you mean when you say "vendor"
I *think* you mean people like ShapeBlue & people like the guys over @ leaseweb i.e. people who are doing something commercial around an Apache project
If I'm right, read on. If not, ignore the rest of this email !
I think that there are two points, at different levels here:
a) specifically is it appropriate to show or link to case studies from an ASF site, when those case studies clearly are written to promote another business/product/service that happens to use CS (much like the ones I just sent round)?
I think this wholly depends on the context. If they are being labelled as pure Apache Cloudstack Case Studies, then no, they would be inappropriate as they could be misleading. If, however, some context is put around them, I think its fine. If people are still sensitive about this, then maybe we could create some guidelines.
There's also the point that the development of commercial products/services/etc around any OSS project is used by many as a view of the maturity of said project.
There may also be a degree of compromise required here. In the perfect world, we would have a set of case studies focussed purely on CloudStack. However, we are all trying to get ACS established & at the moment there isn’t a massive pool of users to work with. Combine this with the fact that getting organisations to partake in case studies can be time consuming and sometimes difficult (& costly) means that right now we need some solid stories to tell the world.
b) the broader marketing context
I hate to always come back to a comparison with Openstack, but the thing that those folks have done REALLY well is create a perception of a well-established product. Their case studies are right there: one click away from their homepage.
So, I guess what I'm saying, is right now....any decent success stories should be welcomed. I do not think they should be buried in the WIKI - I look at the wiki, as does everybody on this list I guess. But does somebody trying to gauge the significance of CloudStack for the first time, look at the WIKI?
Kind Regards
Giles
D: +44 20 3603 0541 | M: +44 796 111 2055
Giles.Sirett@shapeblue.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Chip Childers [mailto:chip.childers@sungard.com]
Sent: 07 March 2013 14:34
To: trademarks@apache.org; cloudstack-marketing@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Question about vendor-neutrality aspects of having "user case studies"
NOTE: cross posted between a public and private list.
trademarks@ folks:
I have questions about intent / best practices / examples of where a project community provides case studies on it's website of users of the project's software.
The CloudStack marketing community is currently discussing getting case studies from various users of the software, and understanding any current consensus on what's right vs. wrong would be helpful.
While I'm sure that actively promoting the *idea* of users posting case studies on their own sites is perfectly fine, I'm wondering about the potential implications of the project itself hosting or linking to these from our own site.
Vendor neutrality is obviously a critical aspect of the ASF's community development practices, as well as an important brand protection mechanism for the projects, hence why I wanted to bring trademarks@ into the discussion for advice and guidance.
Has this type of thing been discussed other projects (and do you know the outcomes)? If not, what would be your guidance for CloudStack specifically, and Apache projects generally?
-chip
ShapeBlue provides a range of strategic and technical consulting and implementation services to help IT Service Providers and Enterprises to build a true IaaS compute cloud. ShapeBlue’s expertise, combined with CloudStack technology, allows IT Service Providers and Enterprises to deliver true, utility based, IaaS to the customer or end-user.
________________________________
This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Shape Blue Ltd. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither take any action based upon its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone. Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in error. Shape Blue Ltd is a company incorporated in England & Wales.
Re: Question about vendor-neutrality aspects of having "user case
studies"
Posted by Daniel Shahaf <d....@daniel.shahaf.name>.
Chip Childers wrote on Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 10:02:59 -0500:
> On Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 02:54:43PM +0000, Mark Thomas wrote:
> > On 07/03/2013 14:34, Chip Childers wrote:
> > > NOTE: cross posted between a public and private list.
> >
> > Ack.
> >
> > > Vendor neutrality is obviously a critical aspect of the ASF's community
> > > development practices, as well as an important brand protection
> > > mechanism for the projects, hence why I wanted to bring trademarks@
> > > into the discussion for advice and guidance.
> > >
> > > Has this type of thing been discussed other projects (and do you
> > > know the outcomes)? If not, what would be your guidance for CloudStack
> > > specifically, and Apache projects generally?
> >
> > Case studies are fine. The neutrality bit comes from letting anyone post
> > a case study. If submissions were limited (e.g. to employers of
> > committers or even worse employers of a subset of committers) then that
> > would be a problem and expect the board to be "most seriously displeased".
> >
> > As an example, Tomcat has a Wiki pages (so anyone can edit them) for
> > users [1], support providers and training providers[2].
>
> Thanks Mark. So marketing folks - the wiki is where we're going to need
> to host these (if we want to host them), or where we need to collect
> links to external sites. That way, anyone can add their own (regardless
> of commit status in the project).
That does not follow. Subversion used to have a links.html page listing
projects that interface with our product. To be added to the page,
projects had to send a patch (following our patch submission guidelines)
against the page source in our repository.
Feel free to compare this to technical and social commit bits. (Anyone
could get themselves added to the page, but only project committers had
the ability to modify the HEAD version of the page in our repository.)
Re: Question about vendor-neutrality aspects of having "user case
studies"
Posted by Chip Childers <ch...@sungard.com>.
On Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 02:54:43PM +0000, Mark Thomas wrote:
> On 07/03/2013 14:34, Chip Childers wrote:
> > NOTE: cross posted between a public and private list.
>
> Ack.
>
> > Vendor neutrality is obviously a critical aspect of the ASF's community
> > development practices, as well as an important brand protection
> > mechanism for the projects, hence why I wanted to bring trademarks@
> > into the discussion for advice and guidance.
> >
> > Has this type of thing been discussed other projects (and do you
> > know the outcomes)? If not, what would be your guidance for CloudStack
> > specifically, and Apache projects generally?
>
> Case studies are fine. The neutrality bit comes from letting anyone post
> a case study. If submissions were limited (e.g. to employers of
> committers or even worse employers of a subset of committers) then that
> would be a problem and expect the board to be "most seriously displeased".
>
> As an example, Tomcat has a Wiki pages (so anyone can edit them) for
> users [1], support providers and training providers[2].
Thanks Mark. So marketing folks - the wiki is where we're going to need
to host these (if we want to host them), or where we need to collect
links to external sites. That way, anyone can add their own (regardless
of commit status in the project).
>
> Mark
>
> [1] http://wiki.apache.org/tomcat/PoweredBy
> [2] http://wiki.apache.org/tomcat/SupportAndTraining
>
Re: Question about vendor-neutrality aspects of having "user case
studies"
Posted by Mark Thomas <ma...@apache.org>.
On 07/03/2013 14:34, Chip Childers wrote:
> NOTE: cross posted between a public and private list.
Ack.
> Vendor neutrality is obviously a critical aspect of the ASF's community
> development practices, as well as an important brand protection
> mechanism for the projects, hence why I wanted to bring trademarks@
> into the discussion for advice and guidance.
>
> Has this type of thing been discussed other projects (and do you
> know the outcomes)? If not, what would be your guidance for CloudStack
> specifically, and Apache projects generally?
Case studies are fine. The neutrality bit comes from letting anyone post
a case study. If submissions were limited (e.g. to employers of
committers or even worse employers of a subset of committers) then that
would be a problem and expect the board to be "most seriously displeased".
As an example, Tomcat has a Wiki pages (so anyone can edit them) for
users [1], support providers and training providers[2].
Mark
[1] http://wiki.apache.org/tomcat/PoweredBy
[2] http://wiki.apache.org/tomcat/SupportAndTraining
Re: Question about vendor-neutrality aspects of having "user case
studies"
Posted by Shane Curcuru <as...@shanecurcuru.org>.
(ACK crosspost public & private lists)
Excellent commentary everyone!
Everyone should read this for important rationale and background of
Apache vendor neutrality: Projects must appear to be, and actually be,
governed independently of commercial influence:
http://community.apache.org/projectIndependence.html
On 3/7/2013 10:04 AM, Chip Childers wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 05:00:59PM +0200, Daniel Shahaf wrote:
>> Chip Childers wrote on Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 09:34:20 -0500:
>>> The CloudStack marketing community is currently discussing getting case
>>> studies from various users of the software, and understanding any
>>> current consensus on what's right vs. wrong would be helpful.
>>>
>>
>> An ASF project site should not endorse or prefer any single vendor.
>> It's fine to link to external sites --- Subversion links to external
>> parties for binaries, and OpenOffice for support --- but you need to be
>> impartial about it. Also use rel="nofollow" on external links.
>>
>> /me greps nofollow http://www.apache.org/**/*...
>>
>> http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/linking might be related. (It is
>> still a draft, so Shane might weigh in as to how close it is to his
>> current thoughts about an eventual policy.
Indeed, while parts of the Corporate Recognition pages might be formal
policy, most of this is more of a "best practice" for projects to
follow. I kept it as draft because I ran out of time, and also I wanted
to better explain the rationale and details of some practices before
sending it out - although there shouldn't be major changes, just
improvements & explanations. Guess I'd better find some time now!
>>
>>> While I'm sure that actively promoting the *idea* of users posting case
>>> studies on their own sites is perfectly fine,
>>
>> +1
>>
>>> Has this type of thing been discussed other projects (and do you
>>> know the outcomes)? If not, what would be your guidance for CloudStack
>>> specifically, and Apache projects generally?
>>
>> You're aware of the issues here --- content useful to users, and being
>> neutral towards third parties --- so I'm confident you'll find a fair
>> balance.
>>
>> Daniel
>>
>
> Thanks for the pointers Daniel. I think we may actually want to take
> Marks's advice on this. If we have a page on our website where it would
> be appropriate to reference case studies, it sounds like the most *open*
> approach would be to have it refer to the wiki.
There are a couple of separate but related issues:
- General policy for what kinds of external pages to link to. The key
criteria here is: is the content of those external pages truly useful to
users of Apache CloudStack software? I.e. just to CloudStack itself in
a general way, and not specifically to some vendor's solution built atop it?
If so, then it's probably fine to list - especially since as Daniel
noted "You're aware of the issues here" - and I know from past behavior
a lot of CloudStack folk are careful to pay attention to this.
Good case studies can be a boon to new user adoption, as well as to
attracting future contributors to the project - so it's definitely worth
thinking this through to let it happen in an appropriate way.
- How physically items are posted to your main website or to your wiki.
If you allow open wiki access, that's fine, as long as in addition to
spam policing, you also police the overall tone and inclusion of the
links to meet the above criteria (i.e. the links are useful to general
CloudStack users). Note that eventually you will have users who abuse
the wiki for linking to sites that are not truly useful for our users.
Note also that the important issues around branding are around the
perception of an informed consumer. That means the level of scrutiny
for appropriateness is much higher for the home page or main landing
pages of cloudstack.a.o. It's not as high for other main pages, and
typically is somewhat lower for wiki pages (since most informed
consumers understand that wikis are driven by the broader community and
change more often).
Does that all make sense?
Re: Question about vendor-neutrality aspects of having "user case
studies"
Posted by Chip Childers <ch...@sungard.com>.
On Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 05:00:59PM +0200, Daniel Shahaf wrote:
> Chip Childers wrote on Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 09:34:20 -0500:
> > The CloudStack marketing community is currently discussing getting case
> > studies from various users of the software, and understanding any
> > current consensus on what's right vs. wrong would be helpful.
> >
>
> An ASF project site should not endorse or prefer any single vendor.
> It's fine to link to external sites --- Subversion links to external
> parties for binaries, and OpenOffice for support --- but you need to be
> impartial about it. Also use rel="nofollow" on external links.
>
> /me greps nofollow http://www.apache.org/**/*...
>
> http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/linking might be related. (It is
> still a draft, so Shane might weigh in as to how close it is to his
> current thoughts about an eventual policy.
>
> > While I'm sure that actively promoting the *idea* of users posting case
> > studies on their own sites is perfectly fine,
>
> +1
>
> > Has this type of thing been discussed other projects (and do you
> > know the outcomes)? If not, what would be your guidance for CloudStack
> > specifically, and Apache projects generally?
>
> You're aware of the issues here --- content useful to users, and being
> neutral towards third parties --- so I'm confident you'll find a fair
> balance.
>
> Daniel
>
Thanks for the pointers Daniel. I think we may actually want to take
Marks's advice on this. If we have a page on our website where it would
be appropriate to reference case studies, it sounds like the most *open*
approach would be to have it refer to the wiki.
Re: Question about vendor-neutrality aspects of having "user case
studies"
Posted by Daniel Shahaf <d....@daniel.shahaf.name>.
Chip Childers wrote on Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 09:34:20 -0500:
> The CloudStack marketing community is currently discussing getting case
> studies from various users of the software, and understanding any
> current consensus on what's right vs. wrong would be helpful.
>
An ASF project site should not endorse or prefer any single vendor.
It's fine to link to external sites --- Subversion links to external
parties for binaries, and OpenOffice for support --- but you need to be
impartial about it. Also use rel="nofollow" on external links.
/me greps nofollow http://www.apache.org/**/*...
http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/linking might be related. (It is
still a draft, so Shane might weigh in as to how close it is to his
current thoughts about an eventual policy.
> While I'm sure that actively promoting the *idea* of users posting case
> studies on their own sites is perfectly fine,
+1
> Has this type of thing been discussed other projects (and do you
> know the outcomes)? If not, what would be your guidance for CloudStack
> specifically, and Apache projects generally?
You're aware of the issues here --- content useful to users, and being
neutral towards third parties --- so I'm confident you'll find a fair
balance.
Daniel