OpenRewrite withdraw

[jkschneider]

This PR serves as the formal withdrawal of OpenRewrite from Commonhaus in the bootstrapping period. When OpenRewrite first joined early on, much of what is now proposed as the formal structure of the foundation was not yet developed. We have used these last months to observe the structure as it formed, offer input along the way, and challenge the proposed structure in ways that would allow OpenRewrite to continue to be part of the foundation after the bootstrapping period ended. We still believe in the future of Commonhaus and the value it adds to projects and their community, but the bootstrapping period has revealed to us some differences in directional vision that we feel are unresolvable.

I don't believe this PR needs approval from a group, since I am the ECG representative of the project in the bootstrapping period prior to everything being formalized.

I'll try to summarize what we have learned, in the spirit of being helpful to others:

Commonhaus is not as confederate as we imagined, and that’s OK

When OpenRewrite originally joined, what we imagined was really twofold: (1) a depository for the trademark and (2) for every other administrative aspect of the project an opt-in structure that delegated to the project as much administration as the project was willing to perform on its own.

For (1) the goal was to provide some assurance that OpenRewrite core would continue to be fully open source (a commitment Moderne still holds to).

For (2) we imagined a foundation that consisted of projects with varying degrees of legal and administrative power behind them already. For example, Moderne has already been defending the OpenRewrite trademark on its own and has the financial wherewithal to do that, but I wouldn’t expect the same from Jackson who doesn’t have the same corporate infrastructure (at least I think so). Our needs are perhaps different, and we thought an opt-in structure supported us both in our different situations.

As the bootstrapping period has unfolded, it became clear that the foundation is unwilling to fully delegate some administrative functions to projects. In the case of the Trademark policy in particular, the foundation believes it is in fact necessary to force some constraints on the project, a legal opinion we do not share. We can respectfully disagree on the specifics on this point, but maybe the important takeaway is that such a à la carte delegatory confederation as we imagined either isn’t possible or simply isn’t what the foundation wants. And that is OK!

Policy development

The proposed Trademark policy in particular became a lightning rod for us as early forms of the policy appeared to preclude our team from using the OpenRewrite brand iconography in creative and fun ways that weren't anticipated by the policy. We had been anticipating splitting the icon up into brightly colored assets and using them in physical displays. Something like:

This kind of fun 3D isomorphic view on the Moderne website also apparently violated the policy:

We communicated many of these concerns and were repeatedly assured by @ebullient that the intent of the policy was to enforce against potential abusers of the brand not against the developers of the project, and we do believe in the sincerity of Erin's stance. But it continued to be a concern that some future foundation leadership may not feel the same way, and feeling so constrained just... didn't feel right.

This conversation, trivial as it might seem, revealed I suppose the larger concern for us as a project.

Voting structure

With a majoritarian voting structure, policies could realistically be changed at any time, including to be more restrictive, in ways that could be well meaning but cause harm to the company Moderne (and other contributors) which pours so much energy and investment into the project.

I don't have an obvious solution for this. Clearly any one participating project blocking adoption of policy changes could substantially alter the ability of the foundation to stay relevant under changing circumstances. So perhaps this is best seen as a foreseeable consequence of committee oversight that, at any rate, wasn't apparent until some of these policies began to be circulated.

A warm farewell I hope

I want to once again reaffirm my admiration for the foundation and what it has set out to do, and hope you understand that we acted in good faith to find a path to inclusion. I also hope you’ll appreciate the tremendous pressure we are under as a project whose future is entwined with our livelihoods as well – a project that is in some cases being exploited commercially by larger companies with no return of value to the project. We will continue to work to find our own way in building software together in the open as much as possible.

[ebullient]

All is well, Jonathan.

You asked excellent questions, and I think we're in a better place as a result, even if it isn't the place we'd originally planned. This is what the bootstrapping phase was for.

The door is always open. You can come back at any time. ❤️

[JooHyukKim]

For a second, was alarming to see the name Jackson as part of the explanation 🙂

So it seems like you just wanted to explain that Jackson is not really monetized or it's trade marks are not utilized in any enterprise activities. (Hopefully.)

Wishing best luck to your projects , members and the community! Cheers

[ShaneCurcuru]

Question from an outsider: are any of the discussions/issues around trademark use that were at issue in public threads? As an open source trademark policy implementation geek, I'm really curious how these issues unfolded between the project (or contributors or their companies) and the CommonHaus leadership.

For any readers wondering why this stuff is important, I can see (without knowing any of the details here) two very obvious and important cases:

• OpenRewrite leadership being very surprised that their community members are held to very high standards in use of the OpenRewrite marks, even in ways that are obviously part of a rich and well-governed independent community.
• CommonHaus trademark managers being very surprised that while OpenRewrite is trying to be an independent project, it's user-focused homepage is literally part of a vendors website (and not an independent website, separate from a vendor).

I'm not at all saying either perspective is better, just that I can imagine both of these perspectives happening, and being a surprise. In any case, glad to see the "breakup" seems cordial!

[JooHyukKim]

@ShaneCurcuru Thank you for sharing! Comparing and seeing from two different perspectives did enrich my understanding of situation here.

With respect to the discussions around trademark usage, as far as I know, they were done all in public. From proposal to publishing, all in Github history. You may look at Github PRs, issues, discussions etc... Especailly PR's

[jkschneider]

@ShaneCurcuru As @JooHyukKim mentioned, some of the discussion took place in public threads, but we also spent a number of hours just on calls face to face trying to work out differences.

The two points you brought up as the obvious cases weren't part of the discussion or concern.

While the trademark policy has evolved somewhat from its original state, there were specific legal points of disagreement on how much the foundation could or could not delegate enforcement to Moderne to defend the trademark on behalf of the foundation. Please don't interpret that as Moderne trying to be controlling. Rather we feel like the company has far greater financial resources and reach to defend it right now while the foundation is comparatively young. For other projects in the foundation, that is reversed: the foundation has greater resources than the project (or the primary contributor to the project). Anybody used to dealing with the law will find a frustrating time nailing down the "truth" because frankly you can't get two different firms to agree on just about anything.

A big question for us was: what if an under-resourced foundation fails to effectively defend the trademark? Where would the material harm of that failure land?

Regardless of who is right or wrong on this specific point, I think the disagreement was overall healthy because it uncovered the larger problem for us about the voting structure and the nature of policy adoption/change that could create serious impacts that we weren't prepared for.

Perhaps what the passage of time will really lend Commonhaus is a track record of how it acts, how it governs, and what kinds of policies it prefers. I've been talking with Erin about CH for a couple years now, since before there was ever any public hint of it, and I think we started in a very similar place (the loose confederation). The point of the bootstrapping phase was to find out to what extent that was really possible. We went in eyes wide open. And that's why I'm still happy to call her a friend!