Shane Curcuru

633 points
Shane Curcuru - Ask Me about Apache! Image Credit: Julian Cash
Cambridge, MA

Shane is founder of Punderthings℠ LLC consultancy, helping organizations find better ways to engage with the critical open source projects that power modern technology and business. He blogs and tweets about open source governance and trademark issues, and has spoken at major technology conferences like ApacheCon, OSCON, All Things Open, Community Leadership Summit, and Ignite.

Shane Curcuru serves as VP Brand Management for the ASF, wrote the trademark and branding policies that cover all 200+ Apache® projects, and assists projects with defining and policing their trademarks, as well as negotiating agreements with various software vendors using Apache software brands. Shane is serving a seventh term as an elected Director of the ASF, providing governance oversight, community mentoring, and fiscal review for all Apache projects.

Otherwise, Shane is: a father and husband, a BMW driver and punny guy. Oh, and we have cats! Follow @ShaneCurcuru and read about open source communities and see my FOSS Foundation directory.

Authored Comments

Indeed - feel better.

That's the best thing about participating in well-governed open source communities - the sense of family and friendship you often find. I'm incredibly lucky to be a long-time Apache Software Foundation Member, and the sense of community in many Apache projects is great.

Best personal-interest story: we have internal (private) mailing lists for discussions, and besides the baby announcements, the best ever email essentially said: "We're getting married in Vegas and need some witnesses - who's in?"

(Plus, I figured this is a great thread to spam on to get my badge points up! LOL)

So the answer to the article's title question is: the corporation owns the Red Hat brand. They obviously do a good job working with their community, but make no mistake, Red Hat, Inc. owns the Red Hat (R) brand. Which is fine, as long as you understand just who they are.

Fundamentally, this is one of the biggest questions for the long term health of an open source project: who controls your brand? If it's the community, is it clear and understood within the community where the legal and organizational ownership is? If it's the company, do you understand their business model, and know enough of the leadership to trust their direction?

This is not to say that corporate ownership of a brand like Red Hat is bad; not at all, many of the major open source companies do an amazing job of balancing their profitability with healthy communities. But it's an all-too-often made mistake to assume a community owns a brand, to find out later (perhaps under VC or investor pressure for a smaller company) that the company really owns it - and has decided for internal business reasons they want to take the brand in another direction.

This is one of the values of The Apache Software Foundation and several other independent foundations, in that they own their brands directly for the benefit of their communities. That's a much bigger subject: how can the communities that directly own their brands (especially non-profit or loosely organized ones) effectively control their own brand and perception?

Wish I could make it to RTP for the conference!