Hyperledger Foundation Hyperledger Global Forum 2020, 9 Mar 2020

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From YouTube: Panel: Blockchain Standards, Open Source, or Both?... Ron Resnick, Victoria Lee & Brian Behlendorf

Description

Panel: Blockchain Standards, Open Source, or Both? (the Answer is Both!) - Ron Resnick, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance; Victoria Lee, DLA Piper & Brian Behlendorf, The Linux Foundation

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is a member-led industry organization whose primary objective is to help guide web-scale commercial adoption of Ethereum-based services. This is achieved by delivering an open standards-based architecture and specifications based on market needs, and testing and certification programs that ensure interoperability across multi-vendor solutions. The availability of validated and verified trusted solutions is essential for Ethereum to win over consumer confidence and penetrate the largest world markets.

Hyperledger, hosted by The Linux Foundation, is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. Only an Open Source, collaborative software development approach can ensure the transparency, longevity, interoperability and support required to bring blockchain technologies forward to mainstream commercial adoption. That is what Hyperledger is about – communities of software developers building blockchain frameworks and platforms.

Within the Ethereum community, projects are beginning to span both organizations. For example, the ConsenSys spoke PegaSys built their Pantheon Ethereum client to conform to the EEA Client Specification. Pantheon was later submitted to Hyperledger and accepted as the Hyperledger Besu project. Once the EEA certification program is operational later this year, ConsenSys will likely submit a Besu-based product to EEA for certification.

This panel, co-hosted by the Executive Directors of the EEA and Hyperledger, will discuss the synergistic value that both organizations bring to the Ethereum ecosystem via the emergence of open-source based, standards-certified products.

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Hyperledger – Open Source Blockchain Technologies

Hyperledger is an open source community focused on developing a suite of stable frameworks, tools and libraries for enterprise-grade blockchain deployments.
It serves as a neutral home for various distributed ledger frameworks including Hyperledger Besu, Fabric, Sawtooth, Indy, as well as tools like Hyperledger Avalon, Cactus and libraries like Hyperledger Aries, Ursa. Learn more about Hyperledger projects: https://www.hyperledger.org/use

Case Studies: https://www.hyperledger.org/learn/case-studies
Training & Certification: https://www.hyperledger.org/learn/training
Tutorials: https://www.hyperledger.org/use/tutorials
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Events: https://www.hyperledger.org/events
Vendor Directory: https://www.hyperledger.org/use/vendor-directory

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Follow-us on Twitter @Hyperledger

Learn about Hyperledger Membership: https://www.hyperledger.org/about/join

#Hyperledger #HyperledgerGlobalForum2020 #Blockchain

A

All right, thank you for waiting patiently, I think we're gonna get started with this, we're still working on bringing up the the other participant up for the panel, but why don't I hand the mic off to Ron since Ron? This is kind of technically your panel okay.

B

Ron this is this is Vicki Lee I'm on the bridge, hello.

C

Everybody yeah that's Vickie, Lee from DLA, Piper and she's, going to join our Patt panel, and the panel is all about open source technology, your open source and and also the how it coincides, or how can it be synergistic with with the world I come from, I come from, I was at Intel for 12 years doing telecom, and so so I'm gonna walk through two slides to share with you some thoughts about how do you?

C

How can the to work collaboratively together, where you have interoperability interworking and still have the benefit of the world of what open source brings to the ecosystem? So brian behlendorf I'm sure you all know: Brian Ron Resnick I'm the executive director of the EA, and then we have Vicki. We on the wherever you are Vicki I, think you're in California right.

B

And on the phone so I'm, sorry I can't be there in person I'm a partner at DLA, Piper, okay,.

C

Great, so to kick this off, you guys can hear me. Okay, all right, I, put something together to help help you or help all of us understand, because in the world of blockchain, there's a lot of folks who really trying to figure out the implications of all these different ways.

C

You can look at technology, innovation and and how does it come to fruition and products, and so this slide shares with you and maybe I'm missing one but feel free to raise your hand- and let me know if I, if we're missing one but looking at the the pillars of technology, innovation, and so there are two slides once technology, innovation and the other slide is product innovation and and so to share with you why we have this label differently and its purpose I'm, going to walk you through a little bit slide and then the next slide and these slides by the way.

C

If you want to take photos on there there on the on the website, you can just download them as a PDF. So in the world that my world that I come from, you have there. You have to well actually an SDO software, I mean a standards, development organization, stos, they're, very formal, and how many you guys are familiar with SB o--'s and know if they aren't raise your hand now, I don't need to go there.

C

Okay, so you know SDOs and and there's two categories and the category my world has been is I, Triple, E, Etsy, the Etsy's and telecom. But these these are all royalty based. Sdos and those are really challenging and and I've lived with the world of how you stack royalties, and you guys already know how how much a phone is burdened and an intellectual property royalties to companies.

C

I'm sure you know who they are, and so that's that's one way how technology innovation comes to fruition, and then you also have the SDO so royalty, webs royalty-free and ANSI w3c ISO I've spent time with those but majority. My life has been Etsy, I Tripoli kind of land, and then we have the open source foundations, hyper ledger, for example, royalty-free not a standards org, but royalty-free, and this is the other source of technology innovation which is impactful to our world.

C

In the blockchain and multi-party in and DLT and the last one are commercial entities for profit, so I didn't target anybody who might want to join our org or org I only put the Forbes one digital 100 down. You can pick and see who those guys are I'm sure you you already know, but these guys are if they can pull it off, they have their patented technology. You have to use their. You know their operating system at whatever it is, but then I similar to how open-source works.

C

You get their code for the operating system, but you you know who they are. Look, how much money they're making higher up in the stack, it's so for them to donate, even some of their stuff for free, totally makes sense. Android, for example,.

C

Okay, so this is where it comes to the world of product ization and it's very interesting in the land of blockchain. There really hasn't been any entities that much you are looking at, how you can commercialize solutions that are standardized, but here's. Here's where it's, we see the synergy and Brian and I've talked a lot about this. If you look at what you get out of a the first four drivers of technology innovation, those guys write everything they can that the super smart engineers can input into their technology innovation period and it covers the gamut.

C

So if you look at any speaker being any standard, any spec, any technology, it's it could be a giant list of all the things that can do and what they want it to do, but that doesn't mean they're all going to be productized, so the best method and that I believe- and- and this is how we can collaborate together- is any entity or if an association is formed whereby that Association is product innovative driven. That Association then takes a look at what are the market requirements based upon the technology?

C

Innovators, whether it's any one of those categories in our world, it's the open-source community, so that's the ones we would talk about and they those the the companies that would participate in an association that becomes a standard or a specification. Let's ask standardized specification that then they can determine which are the must-haves or shells. This is you guys over now and SDOs yeah you?

C

You must have this feature, but it gets even more tricky and I'm even seeing that in what's going on the UEA, you should put in performance metrics and these and that then it gets really sticky, because many of the folks who are the drivers of technology innovation that it goes to their product guys, they may not become bolon doing that because maybe their company can't deliver.

C

So you if you can form an association that takes a look at the technology, innovation they they come together and they come to agreement of whether the market requirements and it could be four different, I'd, say vertical markets. My previous life that were called system profiles, then they can then they can define solutions that can be standardized to a spec and here's where it gets even more important certified.

C

So you, then, you find an independent lab that will take a look at these solutions that these these products, that the product offerings are being marketed and they certify and validated, and that's how you get trust which we're in the world of all about trust, we're trustless, that's how you can build trust with governments and institutions and big companies to be successfully motivated to purchase whatever the solution is offered far greater than if a companies saying you know, I'm, here's, my own dog food, that's what I'm selling believe me! It's better.

C

If you have an association, so in our discussions open-source community continues to do what they're doing and they could be. They can be proprietary. You can do whatever they want, but there should be I believe a version of the open-source that could get thrown over the fence to and I'm not even talking about the EA. It could be any SSO in association, we're by all the players from the business side get together and formulate these are the requirements for the market. These are the performance metrics.

C

You guys fight it out because they will I've seen it happen and then come up with something that we build trust from all the folks. Who would we like to see back it? So you have a global interoperability, a interworking solutions that are based on open source. So this is a model that and actually I've talked to the folks at DLA, and they they agreed that this is a good way to go. So we'll continue with this talk, but I wanted to open with these two slides and then we're gonna. Now that chat about okay.

C

How do we all work together and there's one last part which I'm going to ask Vicki to talk about whether the world that I that I share, which I came from intellectual property patents are and litigation, is all part of all this stuff I'm going to predict in the future? If we're not careful about this, we're going to see a significant amount of love. I'd say patent infringement of lawsuits on some of the blockchain implementations.

C

If we don't do things along lines with the Linux Foundation is done with the open innovation network and so I'm going to queue up Vicky and some of the folks, because I'm going to encourage the formation of a blockchain patent pool to help to help protect us and for the future. So with that said, I'll ask Brian and and Vicki to chime in now, and they could share their thinking talking about the synergy, what they're, what they're working on and how this might work moving forward. So Brian sure and.

A

While I'm talking, why don't we cut over cuz Vicki? Your video is on right.

B

A

Well well, but we can at least hear you, which is great, so I'll just add a few thoughts and then I'll hand it off to her so which I guess we could switch over so I I'm, always amazed when I can show up in a country at whatever level and the development curve, and my cell phone works right and when you think about the the tremendous amount of effort that goes into make something like that. So simple happen.

A

It kind of boggles the mind when, when you come from a world where you can update a website ten times a day right or you can push software updates once a week to major infrastructures right, you can't push hardware updates to every cell phone out there in the world or worse, every telco network out there, and so I've always had a lot of amazement both for like the stuff that you know, Ron's done with with GSM a-and, with with the the other kind of standards work in the in the toko space, as well as at the Linux Foundation.

A

We have a couple of telco projects that that world has figured something out, that about standardisation, about certification, about making the stuff work reliably and perform reliably for a very large population.

A

That I think the blockchain world really needs to listen to and understand and figure that out so I'm I'm always really eager when I, when I hear that those types of people coming into our space and why, having Arana the ei made so much sense, I also felt you some of you might remember, like my first blog post as executive director at hyper ledger, I kind of put out there a picture of what we were gonna do at hyper legend.

A

What we were not going to do because one of my formative experiences was working very early on on the Apache web server, but also simultaneously sitting and then contributing to the IETF working groups around HTTP and HTML and others, and there was a lot of overlap between these two communities right. There are a lot of people on the HTTP working group. People like Roy Roy fielding who was literally authoring.

A

The specification editing the specification, the primary editor, who also was one of the core maintainer Xand- did a ton of work, a lot more than I did on the Apache web server right.

A

But the fact that these were two separate initiatives was really important because it meant that the HTTP standard could be evolved independently from what we were doing on Apache and all the governance functions, the people we were rallying around Apache could be separated and- and that meant people like Netscape, if you remember them, Netscape could be involved in the HTTP standard and push that forward and we could work together with them.

A

Even though we had competing products, they meant Microsoft could do that as well, and, and so it meant that when somebody like AOL pushed an update to their web proxy that broke the web for everybody except AOL users. Not only could we say well that breaks it with Apache, but you're breaking the standard, and there were more await that came from that was very different and then it also turns out running open standards. Initiatives is kind of different from running open source initiatives.

A

From an IP point of view, we at hyper ledger make sure that when somebody contributes a pull request, a line of code that there's a developer certificate of origin attached to that contribution- and only to that contribution which says you know your rights in this, including patent rights come across with that contribution, but in a standards process.

A

What you want to avoid are people who kind of sit in on that process, absorb good ideas and then go file, patents on those processes or even suggest ideas without declaring that they've got a patent somewhere, letting other people implement them and then suddenly you know everybody owes somebody you've, never heard of a mere penny per transaction or penny per phone call, or something like that. So that's you have very different kind of ways of managing those communities and so, but they complement each other they're, not rival, risk they're, not I.

A

You know people don't have to belong to one and not the other and and they're also not necessarily I meet. They don't need to solve every problem on the planet. The IETF sits next to the I Triple E sits next to all these different standards bodies and in fact, a little bit of competition between these is pretty good right. It's pretty healthy. So it's great to see EA and, as some of you know, there's a couple of things that have started at EA and now have come over into hyper ledger.

A

The token taxonomy initiative work has driven some work now and ways to make those tokens work on top of fabric on baizhu and on others. There's some confidential computing standards that have now led into Avalon the creation of Avalon, so I and I haven't seen anything yet go the other direction but I'm sure, like the on-the-ground implementation, experience of people has helped inform some of the standards work at AEA, so I think we'll continue to see more of this and and I think it'll be interesting to talk more about the patent pool stuff.

A

There are some similar things in the open-source community to use as a model to consider, and you all might be surprised who actually is filing patents out there in the blockchain space. It's not anybody who's at this event, I'll just leave it at that I well, I mean sorry that the majority, the one who's filing the most patents and the blockchain space.

A

But aside from that I getting this story out there about the the differences between these and what might emerge as a third category which is kind of the governance function, which we've heard a lot about today. Already is how I think this landscape kind of rolls out and even with lots of options and and competition I think it's how we also do get to convergence.

C

Thank you Vickie. How about you filling in what your your firm and they're one of the largest firms and have significant interactions, obviously on hyper ledger, etc. Maybe you can talk a bit about the the challenges that you've seen that you faced and your view on what you think would be beneficial to help the blockchain ecosystem survive in the best way possible and to protect themselves as much as they can in sty PR infringement yeah.

B

Yeah happy to do that um before I before I dive into those topics, though I. If you don't mind, it's just a couple of questions, just a level set, so you know Ron in your slides, you mentioned SDOs.

B

Do you equate those with SSOs I'm? Because in my world we often talk about standard-setting organizations more so than SDOs? And I thought I think it might be helpful just to make sure that we're all on the same page about the types of organizations that we're talking about so.

C

I, don't think it matters and it doesn't and if there's an SSO, that's not on the slide. So thank you, but it only bought the only point of talking about these guys. The the fact is that the open source community is not standard, and yet we need to figure out how we protect the open source community beyond the scope once it gets to global interact. Let's say adoption where the biggest companies in the world are going to want to bet are betting down on it. I guarantee you because I've worked it and worked with them.

C

They're going to have their lawyers go look at the IPR of whatever they're they're dealing with and they get scrutinized. So it's about what you can share that you recommend to help the blockchain ecosystem protect themselves. The way that you guys have done a really good job with regard to Apache.

C

B

Yes, okay, it's great and then Brian I. Guess, if you don't mind, I'm, just going to challenge one of the statements that you made about that you know the difference between open-source and participating in a in a CESO. So you had said you know if someone just kind of sitting in on on something and sitting on it on a patent and then trying to license it later so I'm curious. You know most at least look in my world. What we would advise is setting up a SSO.

B

One of the Tartars you know should include a very robust IP policy. So you know the participants in that SSO should be. You know, parties to that IP policy which should protect against if some of the I guess the downsides that you described so. Does that resonate with you or are you thinking about it about it differently? Yeah.

A

No absolutely resonates and I think that's I. What I intended to say and I might have missed skipped a few words there, but definitely that I. These dint I was trying to contrast that ideal and that that way, that that is works for a lot of the standard-setting organizations with how things happen in an open-source community.

A

Ietf is perhaps kind of on the bubble between the two, because they are pretty lightweight, but a lot of standards bodies I mean this is why it's actually hard to have the degree of public accessibility and transparency in during the standard setting process, which is even a stray comment. You know if I have a patent that happens to cover you know a novel way of doing something that is obvious. In retrospect and I pop up on a on a conference, call and kind of even anonymously say: hey. Have you thought about this idea?

A

Then that gets. Somebody else goes yeah, that's great, let's, like encode, that into the standard that becomes potentially a problematic thing and in a standard right, whereas on an open source project in our open source project, the point of transfer is the the pull request. Is the code contribution. Arguably, if I was pointing to you know something more substantive, you know that that might be inclusion by reference, but I. It's just one.

A

One reason why I like a well-designed standards body does think about who is in the room and participated in the conversation not just contributing to the final document right? Yes,.

B

Absolutely, and so that that's actually the perfect segue into the point that I was going to make about standard-setting bodies, and you know some of the biggest challenges and sending those organizations up are putting together the Charter documents and those intellectual property policies that govern exactly that situation that you described Brian. So you know who's participating in the meeting those you know what type of information that's being exchanged.

B

How does that feed back into the discussions and the formulations around the standards or the specifications are firm, often assist standard-setting organizations and setting up those policies and also advising clients who are looking to participate in some ffos?

B

You know what explaining to them, what they're signing up for when there's they're you know joining an SSO as a participant and the member and some of those episodes. Actually, um you know, distinguish between different levels of participation. You know whether you're an active participant, whether you're in a working group or you're, a more passive member, if you will, and so those standards setting organizations as I said, have oftentimes very detailed and very robust IP policies that are in stark contrast to the framework.

B

You know and I use a word framework very loosely the the framework that is often used for open source projects, because the old point of the open source project is to you know, engender community involvement, and you know open the door to greater concert. You know greater level of contribution, greater level of participation and transparency if you will and the the contribution process that Brian described is the typical process that that we see I.

B

You think that you know blockchain and an open-source are similar in that kind of the ultimate goals or the the principles behind them are similar. You know blockchain having a distributed ledger the security that's that's associated with that is it's somewhat analogous to you know having an open-source project having community involvement. You know, you know encouraging developers to contribute back best-of-breed.

B

You know improving the the codebase with with bug, fixes and corrections and the like. So in that sense, I think you know the philosophy behind blockchain and an open-source are very similar, but the the intellectual property approach or philosophy to to each are different and can have a pretty significant impact on a company's product, evasion, strategy and business model.

C

Great thank you and, in my past, life I've been deposed I've experienced when I've worked at a large company, where small companies wait until the biggest companies are doing. That's what they do and that's my worry about. What's going on in the world of blockchain and and actually DLA Piper didn't introduce me to the executive director of the open innovation network and they've actually offered to help the world a blockchain. To add to what they're doing, which I think is great, because the association should not be the patent pool, that's not their world of expertise.

C

It's at co-lead Pipers and it's its entities that can build up a and, and I it sounds like a proponent of a patent pool which I am because that's a defensive effort, because the quantity of patents that you acquire to defend against offensive is how you offset this in the best way.

A

Do people know about the open invention, Network I would okay. So let me just give a few minutes on that. So, oh I n is an organization, that's independent of the linux foundation, independent of any other or but they have a lot of a lot of us kind of involved in what they're doing and they started out when there is a lot of concern about the patent profile of the linux kernel in the linux operating system I and and started as a set of companies saying hey.

A

We have a common interest in making sure that you know we all some of us have patents. Some of us, you know, rather than doing you know a billion different cross licensing kind of things and always worrying about somebody showing up out of out of the woodwork to kind of claim that you know they've got some core patent on something that is hard to work around.

A

Instead, why don't we work together on a pool the pool says if you are a member of the organization, if you're in the pool, then you agree that all of your patents are licensed and usable by everyone else in the pool, and I believe, there's also like an on- are like a defensive. Only covenant publicly as well. Actually a victoria might be able to correct me on that too, and then III if you're outside the pool.

A

You know you might still be subject to those companies wanting to license so there's really a strong incentive to be in that pool and part of that is defining the linux system, as they call and what's inside, of linux versus what's outside and over time, they've gradually expanded that definition in partnership with their membership. Of course, because it's you know, kind of increasing the scope for everybody of.

A

What's in and what's not and and they're looking at a number of different domains, I mean already in that is I, think web technologies and my containerization and a lot of the kind of new wave stuff that people are tracking and they're. Looking at adding blockchain to that definition might also make sense to have it be a separate kind of initiative or a separate pool lots of different possibilities there, but I just want to make sure I mean there are a really good organization, they're, really creative, at how they they go out.

A

Defending this kind of stuff and they're even able to bring companies like Microsoft and IBM and big patent holders into the pool and and make that really work for everybody in the linux ecosystem. Hey.

B

Brian and Ron I'm curious. You know what your views are on the lot network.

C

I'm not aware, maybe you can throw song. Yes.

B

A lot is similar to open an innovation network. You know a lot. A lot of the larger companies are starting to sign up for that too, but it's basically setting up a framework for springing licenses to come into place if there is a divestiture or a fail of a patent to an MPA and non-practicing entity, so it it provides the companies who have signed up to be participants and lot some protection against.

B

You know assertions that are going to be made by MPs, as companies are looking to divest some. You know non-essential patents or you know. Patents are not core to the business yeah.

C

So we're gonna go now to questions, but one last comment: there's two kinds of patent pulls: why I like the oin but and I- don't know about this one via licensing and other guys, they're profit-making ventures and they and they're they're tied to revenue driven IP. Our solutions we're not so we need to be very careful who we pick if we do a patent pool. So with regard to that, let's open we have about seven minutes. Six seven minutes left would love to have questions gentleman over there.

C

A

But I'll repeat it for Victoria on that line as well.

A

Let me just repeat it for Victoria's sake.

A

If she couldn't hear that and try to summarize it into a tweet length question which I think is some of the more informal standards bodies, XMPP even UPnP sounded like one challenge has been, you can get the companies to participate, but as soon as it appears that that use of that standard threatens their desire to be a platform, their desire for everybody to plug into them, then it might be hard to get them to engage and we've even seen some standards kind of like XMPP kind of gets subsumed when one large gorilla implements it and then everybody it just becomes an API into a single central thing, rather than it yeah.

A

So so is the question really? How do you get companies to be willing to engage even if they're kind of giving away what that part that they wanted to own previously or is it yeah.

C

So I can show you how I've seen it solved and I, and so there multiple ways to solve, but one one way: let's we'll call it a systems approach, and so all the components are, the building blocks of, let's say, could be any and any stack architecture stack can be divided into components and each individual company may have their own secret soya sauce of how they're going to write the code for those components and that's what they're they don't want to give that away. That's their competitive advantage.

C

So the way it's I've seen it solved is that you end up coming up in this association and I'm talking about a formal standards organization that writes requirements, and they they write into working communication protocols that connect the dots between all these different components, but the action and that's what becomes standardized and that's. Why I'm bringing up market requirements and performance metrics?

C

Because if you have those, although that three, then you could, then then those companies don't have to give away their secret sauce, because as long as they're delivering and communicating to affect the performance, metrics and the require market requirements they're good, and that this is going to encourage the whole world to blockchain to be accepted by everyone. Though regulators and many of the companies who don't want to have a sole source provider, so I can share with you, there's very proven ways how you can manage that.

C

Oh Victoria did you wanna? Did you have any comment to that? I.

B

Know I did I think you're spot on on that. Okay.

C

Okay, you told one more question gentleman.

C

So the question is typically in the past and you have the technology and then you have the management of it. That's, oh, it's very standard I've seen it countless times, and so how do you catch up and is there an any entity in our world who has oversight of it? That's technically neutral, not at this point I'm hoping to see that but I think it's it's severely needed, so you're, spot-on and and unfortunately, and I'm able to close out with this.

C

This is the first world I've ever entered where people's personal assets are involved, as well as their I've never experienced this before personal assets are involved. They can be in companies that they work for or not work for, and then these a lot of young ki young kids, who are programmers who don't have this maturity of understanding of the risks they face. So it's been, it's been very challenging and he's gonna steal. My.

A

Well, it's one thing for your phone to get bricked it'd be another thing for your 401k to get bricked so.

C

Anyway, I think this is this has been very interesting experience for, even for me, I've been doing this for two years, but it's I, don't think. There's ever been anything like this before that that I've witnessed. Are we done then? Okay? Thank you very much for all. Coming.

B

Ok, thank you. Thank.

C

You Victoria right.