Magento Association / Magento Open Source Q&A

[JoshuaSWarren]

Last week, the Magento Association held a Town Hall. Ritesh posted a recap of that here https://community.magento.com/t5/Magento-DevBlog/Magento-Association-Town-Hall-recap-for-October-27-...

At the end of the town hall we held a Q&A session where questions about Magento Open Source, the future of the Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source platforms, etc., came up. That conversation then spilled over into Twitter, where I captured all of the questions and answered them in this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/JoshuaSWarren/status/1585985876944834560

Not everyone in the Magento community is on Twitter, and Twitter threads aren't the best way to publish content long-term. I wanted to find a place that anyone could read and link to, so here I am. I'm intentionally not posting this in the Magento Association section of these forums, because that section requires you to login to post. 

Before I dive into answering the additional questions that were raised on Twitter, I want to point out that one of our Board members at the Magento Association who works for Adobe, Ritesh, has been posting on the DevBlog section of these forums about MA. Please do read those posts:

Here's a Board meeting recap - https://community.magento.com/t5/Magento-DevBlog/MA-Board-Meeting-Recap-October-13-2022/ba-p/503140

Here's the Town Hall recap - https://community.magento.com/t5/Magento-DevBlog/Magento-Association-Town-Hall-recap-for-October-27-...

Here's details on how Adobe and the Magento Association are bringing community input into the next and future releases of Magento Open Source - https://community.magento.com/t5/Magento-DevBlog/Get-involved-with-the-Magento-Open-Source-Community...

Finally, a disclaimer - I'm speaking for myself here, not Adobe. Also, in the interests of answering quickly, these are the answers I can provide as an individual Director. I have not run these answers past the entire Board of Directors, so please consider this a statement from me. Some of these items I will take to the Board for a more official, unified answer.

1) define enterprise

I believe this question came from my statement that:

"Adobe Commerce serves the enterprise. Magento Open Source exists to ensure anyone can use or contribute with the Magento code."

A better way to word this that I believe answers this question was provided in a slide that Ritesh from Adobe posted at the end of this thread - https://community.magento.com/t5/Magento-DevBlog/Get-involved-with-the-Magento-Open-Source-Community... - the slide titled "Two Ecosystems - One Community"

Magento Open Source - Small Business: "Create opportunity for entrepreneurship through a code base for people worldwide to get started on a path of prosperity through commerce" 

Adobe Commerce - Mid Market & Enterprise: "Empower companies to deliver unified experiences and unlock personalization at scale while providing a platform that meets enterprise performance and scalability demands". 

My guess is that the asker of this question was hoping for an exact GMV range for each platform. I don't have that. I will say that there are historical comments online from various financial disclosures from Adobe that put mid-market as low as $10 million per year in annual revenue extending up to $1 billion per year in annual revenue. If there's a desire for a specific breakpoint here from the community, I can ask Ritesh and others at Adobe to provide more details here. 

I'm going to post this thread now, there are a total of 10 questions that were presented on Twitter that I'm going to answer, but for readability and my sanity, I'm going to answer each additional question as a new reply to this thread...

[JoshuaSWarren]

2) will MA board members declare all biz dealings with Adobe so can be understand commercial relationship?

There's not currently a policy at the Magento Association that requires this, but I will recommend this to the Board. I will also ask the Board members to each consider sharing this information voluntarily in the meantime. 

In that spirit - I serve as the CEO of Creatuity Corp. Creatuity is a member of Magento/Adobe's solution partner program. As part of that program, we pay a fee to Adobe to participate and we are eligible to receive commissions from Adobe if we are involved in selling an Adobe Commerce/Adobe Commerce Cloud implementation. I do not manage our participation in the partner program, and I am not involved in the selling of these deals. We have not received any special treatment, special leads or special commissions due to my involvement in MA or any other reason - we've been treated just like any other partner. For the current fiscal year, if I'm not mistaken, we have not received any commissions from Adobe. To the best of my knowledge we have not even won any projects this year due to a referral from Adobe. 

We participated in this partner program before I was involved in the Magento Association, and the people that manage our involvement in this program both at Adobe and at Creatuity are not the same people that are involved in the Magento Association. 

[JoshuaSWarren]

3) What should merchants do who are currently on M2 and do not want to spend x million on licenses

I'm not sure if this is referring to Magento Open Source, Adobe Commerce or Adobe Commerce Cloud merchants. 

If they're on Magento Open Source and they don't want to spend x million on licenses, they can remain on Magento Open Source. Adobe has committed not only to future releases of Magento Open Source, they have committed to allowing the community to guide what is prioritized for those releases and to sharing monthly the progress towards each release and what items are being released soon (see this post). 

If they're on Adobe Commerce or Adobe Commerce Cloud - I'm not going to make blanket statements about pricing or negotiating pricing and future licenses with Adobe, but I will say - I work with merchants that are on Adobe Commerce/Cloud and aren't spending millions per year. I don't see an expectation from Adobe that all merchants spend millions per year on licenses for Commerce or Commerce Cloud. 

[JoshuaSWarren]

4) Who is in charge of Magento OS GTM and sales

Magento Open Source go to market - that's a gap. I'm starting to see Ritesh and others at Adobe fill that gap, but in the turnover that occurred after some of the most familiar community faces from Magento Inc left Adobe, this was a gap that I saw develop. There have been some conversations about the Magento Association filling this gap, but I believe it's going to take a combined effort of MA and Adobe. I'm starting to see this effort from Adobe, where they're specifically defining where Magento Open Source fits as compared to Adobe Commerce, and doing so in a way that isn't just trying to pretend like Magento Open Source doesn't exist. Again, see that "Two Ecosystems - One Community" slide from Adobe. 

Magento Open Source sales - no one, and everyone. Meaning - there's no one at Adobe "selling" Magento Open Source (although I have to say some of Ritesh's language around "helping small businesses create prosperity through commerce" makes me think he should start selling Magento OS). Merchants typically are sold on the value of Magento Open Source by the implementer in the community that they are working with.

I think there's an opportunity here for the Magento Association to take on this role and truly 'sell' Magento Open Source, but I'm not sure if that's needed - I think the sales side of things are currently handled well by implementers in the ecosystem.

[JoshuaSWarren]

5) Describe why anyone should invest in a platform with unknown future and lacking clear leadership

I have a hard time with this question because from where I sit, the future isn't unknown. We've gotten clear messaging for the past couple of months from Adobe about the future of Magento Open Source and future Magento Open Source releases, and in the Town Hall Q&A, they shared that the Adobe Commerce codebase is still a superset of the Magento Open Source codebase and the two are still very much connected. 

On the leadership part of this question - I'm not sure exactly what's meant by that, but there's an additional question about the leadership of Magento so hopefully my answer to that one will be more clear. 

[JoshuaSWarren]

6) who owns Magento?

Adobe owns the trademark on the Magento name and logo. 

Adobe owns the GitHub account that controls the https://github.com/magento/magento2/ repo. 

The Magento codebase itself is licensed under the Open Source License, version 3.0. The tldrlegal.com summary of the OSL version 3 - https://tldrlegal.com/license/open-software-licence-3.0 - is helpful to understanding what this means. Anyone can sublicense, modify, distribute or even sell the Magento Open Source codebase. They cannot use the Magento trademark, however, and they cannot hold Adobe liable for what they do with the Magento Open Source codebase. And they must license any derivative works based on the Magento Open Source codebase under the same OSL license and make the source available. 

So - the community can (and has, repeatedly) fork the Magento Open Source codebase and create a derivative based on it. They cannot call it "Magento", however. 

The Magento Association does have a license agreement with Adobe that allows us to use the "Magento" name and logo in certain situations. 

Personally, I take all of this together to mean - while Magento open source is open source (it says so on the tin), practically it's owned by Adobe. A fork cannot use the Magento name and cannot live at https://github.com/magento/magento2/ so effectively, Adobe owns Magento open source. They can (and have) invite the community to be involved in efforts around Magento OS, but realistically they retain ownership of Magento. 

[JoshuaSWarren]

7) who leads Magento? 

I appreciate that this question was separate from "who owns Magento" - ownership and leadership can be two very different things. 

This is a tough question. I think there's even some misunderstanding of roles in the Magento Association about this. So I'm going to start there and expand outwards. 

I serve as the Chair of the Board of the Magento Association. This role is envisioned in our bylaws to mainly be an administrative one - making sure the Board meetings run well, etc. Separate from that there can been and in the past was a role of Executive Director that actually lead the day to day of the Magento Association. The way this works in many associations is that the Board sets the vision and direction at a very high level and then the Executive Director and volunteers drive the day to day execution of that vision. 

Let's use an example - do you know who Arthur D. Levinson is? Some of you probably do, but most don't. Do you know who Tim Cook is? Well, Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple. But Arthur D. Levinson is the Chairman of the Board of Apple. When's the last time you saw Arthur in an Apple keynote or announcement? It's Tim Cook in that executive role that takes the direction from Apple's board and makes it happen. 

So, right now, without an executive director for MA, I find myself stepping into a role where I'm leading the communication with the community and leading some of our efforts. But I don't think that's the best solution for MA long term. We've got conversations in the works at the officers level in the Magento Association and soon the Board level to address this. 

Now, who leads "Magento"? If you're referring to who leads Adobe's ownership of Magento Open Source, I look to our two Adobe representatives to the MA Board of Directors as the leaders currently - Ritesh and Stanislav (https://www.magentoassociation.org/who-we-are). While Ritesh reports to Adobe's VP for strategy, product & marketing for both AEM and Adobe Commerce, Loni Stark and Loni provides leadership within Adobe to represent Magento, it's Ritesh that is spending quite a bit of time and energy thinking about Magento Open Source and how we can harness the energy within the Magento ecosystem to benefit all merchants. 

[JoshuaSWarren]

8) who is able to get involved in Adobe Commerce

It depends on what you mean by involved and what you mean by Adobe Commerce. And goodness, now I feel like Bill Clinton saying "it depends on your definition of the word is". 

If you mean who can see, contribute to or interact with the Adobe Commerce codebase - customers that purchase an Adobe Commerce license and partners in the various partner programs that Adobe offers.

If you mean who can have a voice in the future of Adobe Commerce, I'd say that's where the Magento Association can help. Part of my vision for MA has always been to grow into a role similar to the SAP association ASUG. ASUG and SAP work together on the product roadmap for SAP. While we have not formally organized feedback sessions and channeled that feedback into the Adobe Commerce roadmap, we do meet with leaders involved in the future roadmap of Adobe Commerce on a regular basis and pass along a sense of what we are hearing. If there is a need here for something more organized beyond Adobe's existing customer panels, I'd love to explore how the Magento Association can help with that. 

[JoshuaSWarren]

9) are Magento customers not large enough for Adobe commerce now going to get for free?

If this question means are Magento Open Source customers going to be able to get Adobe Commerce for free - I doubt it. I can ask Adobe that question directly, and Adobe has given some things away (i.e., Page Builder being ported from Adobe Commerce over to Magento Open Source), but Adobe is a for profit company and I just don't see them giving away Adobe Commerce. 

We are starting to see situations where Adobe is trying to find, where it makes sense, the ability to sell certain portions and services of the commercial product to Magento Open Source customers at a price point that works for Magento Open Source customers. For instance, Adobe has launched a payment processing solution called Payment Services, and that solution is being sold to and is available to both Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce customers https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/commerce-merchant-services/payment-services/guide-overview.h...). 

[JoshuaSWarren]

10) is MA now active or planning to go away again and just here to be the messenger

This is where understanding the difference between the chair of the board and the executive director of MA is so important. *I* am not MA. Just because I'm not tweeting doesn't mean MA isn't doing anything.  

We have 7 different committees and task forces that have done a substantial amount of work this year, producing events, a podcast, new member benefits, content, working to ensure Magento Open Source continues to have more community guidance and working to promote more diversity among the voices that are heard in our community. 

One great piece of feedback we got at the Town Hall event last week was that holding a 2 hour Town Hall once a year on Zoom to tell you everything we've been doing as an Association doesn't really work great for a lot of the community. So I think we're doing a poor job of ongoing updates of what we've been doing and in meeting the community where they are with these updates. 

As an Association - we've been active, we're remaining active, we don't plan on going anywhere. 

As for me, yes, I get pulled into my job so much at times that I disappear from Twitter. I can't promise that will stop. I'll work to communicate more and more often about what's going on in MA, but I also want to make sure that both internally at MA and externally in the community I'm building awareness that it's not about me or my voice. And I want to make sure that the future of MA and MA's communication with the community doesn't rest on just one volunteer. We've got to build this to be more sustainable. 

Let me know if I missed any questions.