Distribution - Clarify the criteria for downstream projects to be called distributions

[jpkrohling]

Given that I'm a vendor
And I have customers requesting support with SLAs
And I'm not comfortable supporting the upstream binaries
When I create my supported version of the Collector
Then I want to know what criteria to fulfill to be a "Distribution"

Or, in other words: Companies are asking vendors to provide support to OTel Collector (with SLAs, critical security patches, etc.). The vendors don't want to support a binary they don't ship and want to call their products "Distributions" so that people have confidence they are using a "supported Collector." Currently, vendors don't have an easy way to determine if they are such a distribution.

Things we figured out:

None yet.

Next thing to figuring out:

• Is this a real problem? (see first comment)

What to figure out next:

• Is this a problem we want to solve?
• Is "Distribution" the right term for this?

[jpkrohling]

Is this a real problem? At this stage, it would be helpful for the community (contributors, users) to help us understand how this affects them. If you believe this is a problem, or has been affected by this, vote this comment with 👍🏽 . If you think this is NOT a problem, vote this comment with 👎🏽

[codefromthecrypt]

I might suggest re-wording this part of the description. I am not sure if the key part here is vendors want to be labeled as "supported" rather want to use a word like "distribution" so that it is non-confusing what this thing is.

The vendors don't want to support a binary they don't ship and want to call their products "Distributions" so that people have confidence they are using a "supported Collector."

For example, "X.com distribution of opentelemetry collector" or "X.com opentelemetry collector distribution", not so much that users feel that the upstream "support it" rather that they know what they are likely getting (a collector distribution). I think that one vendor not supporting another's distribution of something is common enough to be a background, not a foreground concern. Also, if the word distribution exists near the company name, I'm not sure there is an implicit expectation of the opentelemetry main channels to "support" it.

TL;DR; I would like maybe to clarify if this is about branding of the word distribution (already used so hard to police even if we wanted to), or some shared support connotation if someone uses that word (I would downvote that for sure).

[codefromthecrypt]

As mentioned on the other issue, I think that if we are looking for some sort of vouching for a distribution, it would be via some certification (likely compliant/certified semantics 1.27 or whatever test suite one comes up with).

Meanwhile, focus this issue on the word distribution which by itself has not a very good way to "certify", so maybe should just be left to the world of brand abuse vs qualitative things like it is supported or not. That's somewhat easy to navigate and common issue since before CNCF was a thing.

My 2p on routes forward.