TSC Subcommittee Meeting (15 Apr 2021): Partnership Program

[mickmcgrath13]

April 2021 @StackStorm/tsc 1 hour meeting will take place on Thursday, 15th Apr 2021, 12:00 PM US Pacific.
This event has a video call.
Join: https://meet.google.com/tdq-xvwo-mnu
(US) +1 650-735-3248 PIN: 128167492#
View more phone numbers: https://tel.meet/tdq-xvwo-mnu?pin=2872811864098&hs=7

Purpose

To decide on a partnership program. Many of these discussion topics will have been answered or discussed in other issues (like this one). This issue is meant to aggregate them and start a subcommittee to take them forward.

Goals

• To align incentives for the StackStorm project as well as partners
  • Give and take - two-way significant value
  • What does ST2 provide to partners? What does it explicitly not provide?
  • What do partners provide to ST2? What do they explicitly not provide?

Deadline

Final draft by next ST2 TSC meeting

Governance

Anyone can join and contribute ideas.

Led initially by 4 partners:

• Amanda McGuinness (@amanda11) Edwin Lewzey (@elewzey)
• JP Bourget (@punkrokk)
• Ravi Rao (@raviorch)
• Mick McGrath (@mickmcgrath13)

Rules

• What is okay?
  • What is in the scope of access to a partner?
• What is not okay?
  • What is not in the scope of access to a partner?

FAQ

Should we create/host an FAQ for a 'soft landing' of governance / conflict of interest?

Disputes

In general, consensus for involved parties should be sufficient.
If a dispute arises, how are they resolved? This could be:

• Raise to TSC for a vote?
• or Dedicated arbitration guidance/framework for the subcommittee

Mechanics

• use existing issue or a new one?
• new issue for subcommittee?
• dedicated slack channel?
• Where will the draft be created (github issue, Google Drive doc, etc)?

[raviorch]

Thanks Mick, for creating the issue. Will post here the recommendation that I sent out to the other thread.

[mickmcgrath13]

This one:
#72 (comment)
?

[mickmcgrath13]

We should have verbiage to mitigate legal risk from incoming partners in case of possible "bad actors". Maybe something simple along the lines of:

I, as a partner, accept to not hold StackStorm accountable [...]

[raviorch]

Exactly we need incorporate this type of language. I will work with our legal counsel to get this sorted out if necessary.

[amanda11]

For Ammeon representation I'll be delegating to @elewzey who was also on the call. (I lost my mic half way through...)

[mickmcgrath13]

[arm4b]

We should have verbiage to mitigate legal risk from incoming partners in case of possible "bad actors". Maybe something simple along the lines of:

I, as a partner, accept to not hold StackStorm accountable [...]

Here is what LF legal proposed and so it was drafted on the https://stackstorm.com/partners-program/ (beta):

In your [partnership email] proposal, please include the following statement:

On behalf of PARTNER NAME ("Participant"), I agree that Participant will comply with the StackStorm Partners Program requirements published at https://stackstorm.com/partners-program/ and Linux Foundation Policies published at https://lfprojects.org/policies/, as updated from time to time, during our participation in the Partners Program.

What would be the language to add to that statement? cc @raviorch

[raviorch]

Eugene, We definitely would like to add verbiage like you mentioned below. In the meantime, you mentioned on the TSC call that you had researched other open source project partnership charters. Can you please provide examples of the same so the subcommittee has a starting point instead of reinventing the wheel. This would really accelerate our progress as other open source projects may have solved most of the issues we are seeing here. Please send this out asap as I will use that to put a draft out before the weekend if that is available. Ravi

…

------ Original Message ------ From: "Eugen Cusmaunsa" ***@***.***> To: "StackStorm/discussions" ***@***.***> Cc: "raviorch" ***@***.***>; "Mention" ***@***.***> Sent: 4/6/2021 10:43:41 AM Subject: Re: [StackStorm/discussions] Partnership Program Subcommittee (#73)

>We should have verbiage to mitigate legal risk from incoming partners >in case of possible "bad actors". Maybe something simple along the >lines of: > >>I, as a partner, accept to not hold StackStorm accountable [...] >> Here is what LF legal proposed and so it was drafted on the https://stackstorm.com/partners-program/ (beta): >In your [partnership] proposal, please include the following >statement: > >>On behalf of PARTNER NAME ("Participant"), I agree that Participant >>will comply with the StackStorm Partners Program requirements >>published at https://stackstorm.com/partners-program/ and Linux >>Foundation Policies published at https://lfprojects.org/policies/, as >>updated from time to time, during our participation in the Partners >>Program. >> What would be the language to add to that statement? cc @raviorch <https://github.com/raviorch> — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#73 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AQHYO6U4LQTYYGPZFHXKEDDTHNB43ANCNFSM42PEP2FA>.

[raviorch]

Mick, JP, Edwin, please let me know what time is the best for us to meet. I have asked Eugene to provide some examples, in the meantime here are some examples I found:

https://www.mongodb.com/partners/partner-program
https://partner.suse.com/English/
SUSE-Application-Process-Final.pdf
https://partners.gitlab.com/English/
There a bunch more, but as it clearly states in the GitLab Channel Partner page, https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/resellers/
It talks about what the community provides to the partner first before getting into what the partner should provide, this is the type of language that we should use.

[arm4b]

@raviorch These are good examples. However, you're referring to the projects with the Open Core + Enterprise model. This is what Extreme Networks was before with the EWC. I'd imagine EXTR would absolutely need a complex multi-tier Partners Program with the Legal Agreements, etc, etc as it's a B2B partnership.

This is a very different model compared to how StackStorm 100% Open Source operates under the neutral non-profit LF governance with different values and system behind.

Here is an example for the Debian Open Source Partner program that was a prototype for the https://stackstorm.com/partners/ and https://stackstorm.com/partners-program/ drafts.

https://www.debian.org/partners/
https://www.debian.org/partners/2021/partners

In short, they want to highlight orgs by providing recognition (listing on the page) as "official partner" for those significantly helping the project. StackStorm can go further and provide co-marketing opportunities (examples at RFC: StackStorm Partners, Code of Conduct and Economy #51.

Similar to Debian, do you think we would be able to focus on simplicity and maintenance-free keeping in mind the Open Source community interests?

[mickmcgrath13]

Meeting

@raviorch I can meet for either of the following

• Wednesday, April 14 at 3 PM Eastern
• Thursday, April 15 at 3 PM Eastern

Benefits

@raviorch All of the links you posted (mongo, suse, gitlab) clearly display benefits of becoming a partner (to @punkrokk's point), and I think we should outline similar benefits. @armab's proposal does have a section for it already. It mostly speaks to 2 things:

• Redirect community inquires to the partners page
• Participate in shared marketing (blogs, etc)

Also, I like the table presentation in the mongo partners page:

GitLab has a similar one:

Possible Tasks

• I think for the benefits, we could condense the proposed language into a clearly presented table ('cuz words are hard :P ), and we could probably use the existing proposed language, too.
• Badges are nice. We have a 'Partner' badge already, and we could expand this concept over time. We should also probably have a section in the partners page that describes our badges program so that it's clear to applying partners what they'll get.

Language

Mongo, gitlab, and debian, do not seem to provide language to the effect of "we'll not hold the project accountable" (if they do, it's not obvious).
Suse might, but you'd have to go through the partner registration to get the terms and conditions pdf (it might be available elsewhere, but I haven't had a chance to look).

The partners code of conduct says a lot (esp. the conflict of interest), but I think it lacks one thing that was discussed during the TSC meeting which is: simple, visible language to say "don't sue ST2, yo".

@armab, the language in the proposed draft also doesn't seem to convey that message (don't sue st2).

I think the key point here is that I, as not a lawyer, don't see anything that explicitly states that ST2 won't be liable. It's possible it's buried in the verbiage somewhere, but without being well versed in legal-ese, it's not clear, and I suspect that the same will be true for others, so clear, concise language might be helpful?

Possible Tasks

• Should we just include a simple message (either to the partners page or to the submission request) to say that the applying partner agrees not to hold ST2 accountable? Again, something to the effect of I, as a partner, accept to not hold StackStorm accountable [...]

[elewzey]

@raviorch

Thursday, April 15 at 3 PM Eastern would work for me

[vivekorch]

Thanks @mickmcgrath13. I will join the meeting with Ravi.