{"id":56385,"date":"2019-09-10T12:14:38","date_gmt":"2019-09-10T10:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.ethereumworldnews.com\/?p=56385"},"modified":"2019-09-10T12:14:41","modified_gmt":"2019-09-10T10:14:41","slug":"ibm-now-controls-majority-of-seats-on-hyperledger-blockchain-technical-steering-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.ethereumworldnews.com\/ibm-now-controls-majority-of-seats-on-hyperledger-blockchain-technical-steering-committee\/","title":{"rendered":"IBM Now Controls Majority of Seats on HyperLedger Blockchain Technical Steering Committee"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
New York-based tech giant IBM has doubled the number of employees on its technical steering committee (TSC) of Hyperledger, a multi-project open-source initiative supported by The Linux Foundation, and established to enhance cross-industry blockchain technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Six out of a total of 11 TSC members (for 2019-2020) work for IBM, according to an announcement made last week. Five are currently working at Big Blue and one, Mark Wagner, is employed at IBM subsidiary Red Hat as a senior principal engineer.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year\u2019s TSC only had two people who were employed at IBM and the same number of total seats. Wagner had a seat, however IBM\u2019s acquisition of Red Hat was not finalized until July of this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The newly formed committee is expected to begin governing after a new TSC chair is elected next week.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In recent years, IBM\u2019s developers have made significant contributions to the development of Hyperledger, including the code for Fabric<\/a>, a permissioned distributed ledger framework for developing enterprise-grade applications. However, the election results have raised concerns regarding the American multinational firm\u2019s influence over the enterprise blockchain consortium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blockchain platform architect at Oracle Todd Little stated: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is very clear that IBM now controls the TSC and is that the direction Hyperledger wants to take?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Notably, Hyperledger is among the leading enterprise blockchain development platforms. Other major competitors include several variants of the Ethereum (ETH)<\/a> blockchain and R3\u2019s Corda.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Hyperledger TSC establishes working groups that handle technical matters, approve projects, and manage updates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enterprise blockchain consultant Vipin Bharathan appeared to suggest that IBM\u2019s dominance on the committee is questionable, as only 33% of Hyperledger team members had casted ballots.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bharathan noted: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt has been shown that in a low turnout election, committed and well-organized groups dominate\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Responding to the concerns, executive director at Hyperledger Brian Behlendorf said developers \u201care expected to participate and contribute as individuals first, and as employees second.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Behlendorf also mentioned that Hyperledger employees had privately provided feedback after seeing TSC team members showing their loyalty to their employers. Moreover, Hyperledger might not be able to unfairly influence the results of an election because the outcome was not what the members had been expecting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n“It’s Not Like Linux and Other Open Source Projects”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n