Trademark Turmoil and Open Source Struggles

Last week the kerfuffle between Synadia and CNCF, tussling over the ownership and futures of NATS, bled into the public. The outcome may cast a long shadow for open source and for the CNCF. Bryan and Adam were joined by Rachel Stephens and Adam Jacob to discuss how we got here and possible outcomes.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Rachel Stephens Adam Jacob, and Eliza Weisman.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

• Goats in sweaters
• CNCF Slide: Why You Should Host Your Project at CNCF
• CNCF NATS documents
• NATS GitHub discussion
  • The uncashed $10k check
• CNCF landscape
• CNCF blog on NATS / Synadia
• Synadia response to the CNCF

Postscript:

The CNCF updated its blog with proof that the ACH transfer of $10,000 was completed [still very funny! -ahl].

Derek Collison--as reported by Runtime News--has agreed to transfer the NATS trademark to the CNCF "because we just feel that the damage to the ecosystem and the ugliness is not worth it for anyone."

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!