Google’s decision to dock the Istio service mesh project within the newly formed Open Usage Commons (OUC) group caused quite the uproar across the open source community and altered the perception of Google within that community. And from a completely biased perspective I am totally in favor of the move because it has provided a much larger wake for stories.

The move itself was announced earlier this month. It involved Google moving a trio of its open source projects into OUC in a decision it described as a way to protect the trademark of open source projects. The other projects were Google’s Angular web application framework and the Gerritt code collaboration tool that, regardless of Google putting those in front of Istio in the announcement, generated no concern from anyone.

The decision followed past comments by Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian who stated that the company was charting a course for Istio outside of Google’s walls. Most expected that charted course would lead to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) as that would have followed the established course initially set forth by the Kubernetes project more than 4 years ago.

Google had been viewed as a friend of open source, based significantly on it donating the code to what became Kubernetes. That platform was the rock under which the CNCF has built its now considerable house on and has become the cloud-native center for just about anything related to the broader cloud ecosystem.

Istio was lining up in a similar fashion to be the de facto service mesh implementation, especially for Kubernetes-based container deployments. In fact, the most recent CNCF annual user survey found that Istio was the most popular service mesh either being used or considered for deployment.

The CNCF was expecting it would eventually welcome Istio into its harbor. IBM, which merged its own service mesh development with Google to establish Istio, expected that to happen. Basically, everyone expected that to happen.

But, alas, Google fooled everyone with its tacking maneuver.

As part of the OUC announcement, Google hinted at what it viewed as the inability for open source organizations – like CNCF, without naming CNCF – to deal with trademark concerns that are obviously a big part of a company’s operating model.

(And don’t get me wrong: the cynic inside of me has questions about the ulterior motives of just about any organization no matter how altruistic they appear, trademark mismanagement or not.)

But, could the trademark issue be real? Most assuredly, as Redmonk’s Stephen O’Grady dug into in a recent blog post. But even O’Grady was disinclined to say that Google’s move with Istio was the right call, noting that “the situation is unfortunate and unnecessary.”

“It’s easy to imagine a world in which Google announces the OUC without Istio, a world in which the current discussion centers around the merits of separating trademark ownership from traditional concerns such as project governance and the specific foundation-driven approach Google took to same,” O’Grady wrote. “But that’s not the world we live in.”

Perhaps behind the scenes Google felt a bit shaded by “giving away” what became Kubernetes for free. It has been vocal in wanting to climb the cloud hyperscaler mast and must be flummoxed to see how its larger rivals have been able to use Kubernetes as a way to instead bolster their own operation. On the other hand, it is obviously hard to say how Google feels about Kubernetes for a lot of reasons, and mostly because there is no way to know what Kubernetes would have become had it remained under Google’s thumb.

"Our belief is that Google is pragmatically seeking to retain more control over them and better address the potential commercial benefits: Kubernetes has gone stratospheric, yet there has not been an equivalent payback in terms of Google Cloud Platform sales," 451 Research noted in a recent report.

And that trademark argument definitely feels a bit flimsy for various reasons, though I guess it can be defended just enough to make it sound legitimate. But, couldn’t Google have made a similar statement with another project that perhaps might not have caused so many waves?

Google also currently controls the Knative project, which has made waves as a possible singularized platform to help unite the out-of-control hurricane that is the serverless computing ecosystem.

Knative, in case you forgot, has slowly wedged itself into the serverless computing lexicon as a possible way to provide a Kubernetes-based interoperability layer across different serverless computing technologies. And like Istio, Knative has been gestating within Google’s hull with its supporting ecosystem waiting for it to be beached within an outside foundation.

However, Knative is at least a year behind Istio in terms of its maturation process, and there is not yet as much open source ecosystem momentum built up behind it, and the serverless computing market itself is still trying to find its sea legs.

But it does have some momentum. Knative was the dominate platform selected by participants in a recent CNCF survey, with 34% of those using an installable serverless platform tapping Knative. And a number of vendors have adopted Knative into their commercial offerings.

Google has been a bit clearer on its intentions to maintain control over Knative at least for now, but it could have done that and reduced the wake produced by the Istio decision by just moving Knative into the OUC.

Well, besides all of the intriguing stories we will get to write about this ongoing drama, the real benefactor of Google’s Istio play could be its rivals.

Microsoft, for instance, has been very vocal in its support of the open source community under the leadership of Satya Nadella. That support was especially tricky following its $7.5 billion purchase of GitHub in 2018, which itself caused a significant kerfuffle.

Microsoft also had a hand in developing a pair of open source projects in the Service Mesh Interface (SMI) and the Kubernetes-based event-driven autoscaling (KEDA) platform. The former has gained some traction as a possible Istio alternative, while the latter is focused on some of the serverless computing challenges. And, both are part of the CNCF.

And it's likely that the CNCF will remain open to adopting other possible platforms that could displace Istio and Knative as realistic options for anyone outside of Google.

All of this is not to say that Istio’s future is sunk. There is a chance that Google changes its mind and alters the OUC structure so that it more closely adheres to what have become open source organizational norms in terms of structure and oversight. Or, Google could also change Istio’s course and turn it over to CNCF.

Of course, I am hoping that Google keeps us all guessing for at least a little while longer. I think these rough seas could be fun.