Hi Ted, thank you a lot for your email! I really mean that. It would be wonderful to get more communication going between Apache and Debian. I've learned that these two large and important free software projects are nevertheless different in many ways.
I also appreciate very much the nice conversations we had last week. I could learn a lot from you. About the ZooKeeper package and partly also Hadoop/HBase which I also maintain(ed): a) The first and most important reason for orphaning these packages is, that I did quit the job where I used them. It's neither possible nor adequate to maintain a package that you don't use yourself. - So as long as there isn't anybody else who'd like to maintain these packages, we can stop the discussion here. b) I think that there is actually very little interest for Hadoop/HBase/ZooKeeper packages _in_ Debian. ( There is interest for packages _from_ Cloudera or Apache _for_ Debian, but that's something else.) Even the company I worked for switched to use the Cloudera distribution, because they felt more confident about it. Now there'll be the Bigtop project and people will rather use the "official" apache releases which are tested by Yahoo/Facebook/Cloudera then the Debian packages. So without any discussion about ZooKeepers Code quality, it might just not be worth to do the packaging work if nobody wants to use it. [1] http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator- general/201106.mbox/<banlktimriyvs5g5maklqvinauz9h6s5...@mail.gmail.com> c) A Debian stable release with ZooKeeper (/Hadoop/HBase) is not possible without a long term support commitment from upstream. I don't see, how Debian could fix bugs in ZooKeeper and test those without upstream helping with insights and test infrastructure. d) From what I've heard, read and experienced about the history and culture of Apache and Debian, quality has different priority in these two projects. Debian has a "Culture of technical excellence"[2] and is very keen about its independence from companies. I experienced the Hadoop projects as very company driven where quality is not nearly as important as in Debian. Now we have different priorities and standards. I propose we don't enter a discussion about those as long as points a)-c) aren't resolved. [2] Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian Project Leader): "Debian: 18 years and counting" http://conferences.ellak.gr/2011/files/2011/05/debian.pdf I'll have a university paper to deliver until Thursday and will do the orphaning afterwards. Best regards, Thomas Koch, http://www.koch.ro -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201106141117.18202.tho...@koch.ro
