Re: Status GCE images and trademark (was Please let's not talk about "clouds")
One more point: Part of our strategy is to include debian package
repositories hosted inside of Google, and it'd be lovely to see those
as a "first tier" mirror for Debian, so that we're in on the "ground
floor" for updates. Our current approach has some VMs set up to do
the mirroring, so I think that we can set things up so that things
just work.
-david
On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 8:12 PM, David McWherter <cache@google.com> wrote:
> 1) Providing "google custom kernels" in debian seems a moot point.
> Google Compute injects its kernel into RAM and boots a disk off of it.
> No kernel on disk is required or even examined. Within the year, we
> should be booting whatever kernel is on your image. Let's not
> engineer mediocre solutions for the short-term.
>
> 2) Google definitely would like "Debian" (in some way, shape, or
> form), to "own" the customer experience of getting the latest and
> greatest images and whatnot. I think it's clear that finding people
> who want to have ongoing relationships with the Google Compute team
> would be ideal. Keeping the communication "open" is most
> constructive.
>
> -david
>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Jimmy Kaplowitz <jkaplowitz@google.com> wrote:
>> [+David]
>>
>> Hi Brian,
>>
>> A couple of responses to the steps you said might help for "Official" Debian
>> images:
>>
>> 1) It's too late to get any new custom kernel package into either squeeze or
>> wheezy. The Google-provided kernels have their source released as one would
>> hope, but are not built from a Debian package (nor are they used only with
>> Debian). This issue should go away once arbitrary kernel support is
>> available in Google Compute Engine, but it won't be solved in the next month
>> or two, by which point we hope to have properly publicized these images and
>> have users using them.
>>
>> 2) As I understand it, people in Debian are already packaging
>> build-debian-cloud (f/k/a ec2debian-build-ami) for jessie. This is great.
>> While gcutil and gsutil are free software, the pace of development is such
>> that more thought is probably warranted on what the ideal situation is for
>> their packaging and where such packaging would live. If David and/or I make
>> it to DebConf13, this could be one of many fruitful topics of discussion. As
>> with point 1, we're hoping to publicize these quite soon, so any packaging
>> would necessarily happen some time after we properly announce these and gain
>> users, not before.
>>
>> My hope is that neither of these is a blocker for official Debian status.
>> Either way, I would encourage the policy for official Debian images to be
>> documented somewhere other than email archives, and for the parts of the
>> policymaking which don't involve attorney-client privileged communications
>> to occur on relevant public Debian lists like this one. :)
>>
>> As for who publishes: My work on this is part of my day job, but that
>> doesn't mean it isn't in keeping with my role as a Debian developer as well.
>> Plenty of other non-DD Googlers are helping generally with this effort as
>> part of their day jobs, but so far I'm the only one who has made images for
>> the debian-cloud project. If Debian prefers only DDs to make these images,
>> it shouldn't be a problem, especially if DD volunteers are interested so
>> that I'm not a bottleneck. I will definitely send out a call for volunteers
>> email, since nobody has yet reacted to that bit of my debian-cloud
>> announcement email. (Any DDs reading this: feel free to volunteer!)
>>
>> - Jimmy
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 6:23 PM, Brian Gupta <brian.gupta@brandorr.com>
>> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Jimmy Kaplowitz <jkaplowitz@google.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 12:49 PM, Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 09:56:31AM -0700, Clint Byrum wrote:
>>>>> > The trademark policy is not clear on describing things which contain
>>>>> > Debian itself. If HPCS adds a special super whiz-bang open source but
>>>>> > HP cloud only thing to the images, its not clear that they can or
>>>>> > cannot call that Debian still. It would be good for the project to
>>>>> > make the policy on images clear at http://www.debian.org/trademark .
>>>>>
>>>>> I agree with that. In fact: the "public cloud market place" scenario was
>>>>> one of the motivating factor for revamping the trademark policy, even if
>>>>> in the end we didn't end up detailing that specific use case (we
>>>>> probably should). This is mainly because until very recently we didn't
>>>>> have much concrete evidence of "official" Debian images to benchmark
>>>>> against.
>>>>>
>>>>> Note, however, that the trademark policy does offer a sane default: in
>>>>> case of doubt, you should ask permission before calling your image
>>>>> "Debian".
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'm glad I'm reading this thread - it's definitely something I'll want
>>>> to follow up on for Google's images as well, since they do add three
>>>> debs specific to the Google Compute Engine environment, as well as
>>>> Google's gsutil and gcutil tools via tarballs extracted sensibly under
>>>> /usr/local. All of them are free software under the Apache License
>>>> 2.0. The images we've put into the debian-cloud project so far have
>>>> been uploaded by a Debian developer - namely me - and we arranged
>>>> things explicitly so that non-Googler DDs can be granted the access to
>>>> upload official images.
>>>
>>> Jimmy,
>>>
>>> James Bromberger, a DD was is an employee of Amazon, is currently
>>> solely responsible for maintaining the "official" EC2 images. He does
>>> this with his "Debian hat" on.
>>>
>>> I believe, if you were willing to maintain the GCE images yourself,
>>> with or without other DDs helping you, you should be able to work out
>>> an arrangement that you are the (or one of the) maintainer(s) of
>>> "Official Debian images" for GCE. From reading back through email
>>> archives, it's clear that there is an expectation that DDs need to
>>> build and maintain "Official" images.
>>>
>>> If you wanted to follow this route there are still a couple of bugs
>>> that probably should be filed and addressed:
>>>
>>> 1) Custom kernel required -- I don't know if this is a show stopper
>>> bug, or perhaps it could be addressed in the mean time by a custom GCE
>>> kernel package that is included in Debian, and built and mantained by
>>> DDs.
>>> 2) Packages being created for the tools required to handle instance
>>> instantiation.
>>>
>>> I you went this route, I don't believe any special trademark request
>>> would need to be submitted, but I would follow up with leader@ to
>>> confirm the process and requirements. (This is all pretty new, so if
>>> anyone on this list has any thoughts, they should feel free to share.)
>>>
>>> However, if you wanted to publish images with your Google hat on, and
>>> have other Googlers who aren't DDs helping you, and call these images
>>> "Debian", then you'd likely want to have someone write to trademark@
>>> and submit a use request. (Since this falls into the "when in doubt"
>>> clause of the TM policy.) These would not be "Official images" but
>>> it's probable that your team would be granted usage rights to the
>>> Debian TM.
>>>
>>> My suggestion, since everything seems to be in place to allow
>>> non-Googlers to upload images, would be a new thread calling for DD
>>> volunteers to help you build and maintain images, as I think all would
>>> benefit if there were only "official debian images" for GCE. (You
>>> could also try jobs@d.o, if you wanted to widen your net for potential
>>> volunteers.)
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Brian
>>>
>>>> is a clarification to the trademark policy planned, or should I have
>>>> someone email trademarks@ on behalf of Google to confirm permission
>>>> before any broader announcement? We're hoping to make a couple of
>>>> announcements mentioning these images in the next several weeks (I'll
>>>> say more about that in a different thread).
>>>>
>>>> - Jimmy
>>>>
>>>>
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