Ceph

h1. Foundation

_This is a brainstorming document and is subject to the outcome of the Red Hat acquisition of Inktank (and the Ceph IP).  There are some very good arguments to be made for single-vendor Open Source projects, and those discussions have yet to occur as a part of the merger._

Housing the Ceph project within a Foundation setting would ensure that the community is empowered to make good technical decisions and coordinate efforts across the industry.  Below is a rough outline of what the goals and responsibilities of a Ceph Foundation might look like.

h3. Responsibilities:

* Project Governance

* Development process and release management

* Developer, user, and ecosystem community management

* Centralized clearinghouse for engineering work

* Brand management (PR, marketing, trademark)

* Event management (Ceph days, CDS, meetups, etc)

* Legal affairs

h3. Protecting

* The Ceph software by ensuring it remains freely available by facilitating the open development process

* The trademark

* The core values of the Ceph community, such as:

* Respecting and appreciating the individuals and organizations who contribute in various ways, including testing, documenting, translating, integrating, extending, educating, financing, training, supporting, facilitating, evangelizing, designing, and art making.

* Respecting the meritocracy which guides decision making.

* Encouraging economic opportunity in the Ceph ecosystem.

h3. Empowering

* Developers to write great code without overly painful process or tools in a way that takes care of the legal issues

* Developers by training them to become better Free Software contributors

* Developers by providing access to a set of reference platforms, including for large-scale testing

* Users to have access to great software and provide feedback and input on the direction

* Community members of all sorts to organize events, information, discussions and other activities and resources

* Companies to build a powerful and profitable ecosystem and marketplace around the software that creates new business opportunities and feeds the long-term health of Ceph

* Users, by educating them on the best uses for the Ceph software

h3. Promoting

* The software produced

* The developers producing it

* The users using it

* The marketplace of businesses built with or around the software

If there was a Ceph Foundation, it should:

* Provide resources for developers

** Teuthology instances

** Package build farms

** Shared hardware test lab

*** for running teuthology QA

*** for vendors to contirube hardware for testing and eval

** ...

* Organize Ceph Developer Summits

** Define the roadmap

** Discuss feature implementation details

** ...

* Decide the governance

** Development workflow (reviews, merge rights etc.)

** Release cycle

** What is part of Ceph what is not

** Own the Ceph trademark and thus logos

** Host the Ceph website and repository

** ...