The politics around Istio and Knative within Google are fascinating. AFAICT from the outside, they are primarily driven by a few execs who believe that Google "gave away the farm" when they moved K8s into a foundation. A few of my thoughts on this subject: 🧵
People frequently conflate "open governance" and "neutral IP ownership." It depends greatly on the foundation, but in the case of the CNCF, there are literally zero governance requirements enforced on projects. CNCF projects can be (and are) single vendor governed.
So in reality, CNCF (and ASF, etc.) are primarily around to provide neutral IP/trademark ownership. This allows projects to be used in consuming projects/products without fear of IP/mark litigation.
Now, the narrative that (I think) some execs at Google believe is that giving away the IP/mark for K8s has allowed an entire ecosystem of "grifters" to benefit from all of Google's work while @GCPcloud continues to languish in third place.
Here is the rub: K8s would *not* be what it is today without neutral IP ownership (neutral governance is important, but not as important as neutral IP). K8s has spawned an entire ecosystem *because* it can be used by consuming projects/products without fear.
Google execs are frustrated by their position in the cloud wars, but they would do well to not conflate OSS success/strategy with a lack of product execution. These are not the same thing, and not really even related at all.
In the cloud native space, there is an expectation, for better or worse, that critical OSS has neutral IP ownership. In this sense, Google's decision to not move Istio and Knative ownership is a 100% self own. All of these wounds are self inflicted and unnecessary.
Google can move Istio/Knative ownership with *zero* effect on governance and @GCPcloud products one way or the other. By not moving ownership, the community is alienated and fragmented, to the extent that there will be more competing projects and maybe even a fork.
What will Google ultimately end up doing with these projects? I have no idea. What I do think is that neutral IP ownership is critical, and it's in Google's interest to get it done, move on, and focus on @GCPcloud productization as a differentiator.
