Thanks Jonathan. I have seen several people replying back and citing general technical benefits again to having different drivers hosted elsewhere. I have also seen people say, “well it’s ALv2 and open source, so people can fork it and blah and blah”.
“Opensource” and “ALv2” don’t necessarily a community make and I think that point is a little lost amongst people who are part of this Apache PMC. Thanks for being willing to update the report as I asked and I look forward to your thoughts and the community thinking on this and reviewing it with my board hat on. Cheers, Chris On 6/6/16, 3:19 PM, "Jonathan Ellis" <jbel...@gmail.com> wrote: >I’m happy to consult with my peers in other projects for the board report >and summarize their ideas and Cassandra PMC's to improve contributor >diversity. I’ll plan to attend the meeting in person to discuss this >further. > >On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 5:33 PM, Mattmann, Chris A (3980) < >chris.a.mattm...@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote: > >> Thanks for the info Jonathan. I think have assessed based on >> the replies thus far, my studying of the archives and >> commit and project history the following situation. >> >> Unfortunately it seems like there is a bit of control going on >> I’m going to call a spade a spade here. A key portion of your >> software’s stack, a client driver to use it, exists outside of >> Apache in separate communities. This is an inherent risk to the >> project. Some of you cite flexibility and adaptability as reasons >> for this - I’ve seen it in so many communities over the last 12+ >> years in the foundation - it’s not really due to those issues. >> There is definitely some control going on. I would ask you all >> this - has there been a PR or patch in the past year or two that >> wasn’t singularly reviewed by DataStax committers and PMC? Also, >> as to the composition of the PMC when was the last time a non >> DataStax person was elected to the PMC and/or as a committer? >> >> By itself the diversity issues alone are not damning to the >> project, but taken together with the citation to other project >> communities even those outside of Apache (e.g., the comments >> well “Postgres does it this way, so it’s a good example to >> compare us to” or “these other 4 projects at the ASF do it >> like this, so X”.. [sic]) and with the perception being created >> to those that don’t work at DataStax, and there is an issue here. >> >> I would like to see a discussion in your next board report about >> the diversity and health issues of the project, and also some >> ideas about potential strategies for mitigation. >> >> I appreciate the open and honest conversation thus far. Let’s >> keep it up. >> >> Cheers, >> Chris >> >> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ >> Chris Mattmann, Ph.D. >> Chief Architect >> Instrument Software and Science Data Systems Section (398) >> NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, CA 91109 USA >> Office: 168-519, Mailstop: 168-527 >> Email: chris.a.mattm...@nasa.gov >> WWW: http://sunset.usc.edu/~mattmann/ >> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ >> Director, Information Retrieval and Data Science Group (IRDS) >> Adjunct Associate Professor, Computer Science Department >> University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 USA >> WWW: http://irds.usc.edu/ >> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On 6/5/16, 1:51 PM, "Jonathan Ellis" <jbel...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 8:32 AM, Mattmann, Chris A (3980) < >> >chris.a.mattm...@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote: >> > >> >> 1. Is Apache Cassandra useful *without* a driver? That is, can >> >> you use the database without a driver to connect to it or in the >> >> real world would your users all have to download at least one >> >> driver in order to use the DB? >> >> >> > >> >The users do need to download a driver--but this is pretty normal for >> >community-driven OSS databases. Besides the Apache projects I listed, >> >PostgreSQL also runs on a community-maintained driver model. >> > >> > >> >> 2. To confirm again, at one point at least the Java driver code >> >> lived in the code-base, and further, at one point, people did >> >> submit some patches to add drivers, but the PMC didn’t want to >> >> maintain that code (and apparently they didn’t want to create >> >> any new PMC members and/or committers to do so) and so thus >> >> people started their own new projects? That right? >> >> >> > >> >I think that summary over-emphasizes the governance aspect at the expense >> >of more important considerations: >> > >> >0. The very first Cassandra driver interface was Thrift. No Thrift >> clients >> >were ever part of the Cassandra tree. >> > >> >1. When we created the CQL protocol, we initially had a Java driver in >> tree >> >as a reference implementation. >> > >> >2. But due primarily to the project management issues mentioned by Nate, >> >and secondarily to the governance aspects above, we moved quickly back to >> >the pure community-driven drivers approach that had worked for us before. >> > >> >2a. While some Apache databases do ship a Java driver in tree, I think >> that >> >this hinders adoption because it signals to users that non-Java drivers >> are >> >second-class citizens. (No doubt this is not the *intent* of that >> >decision, but it is a likely consequence nevertheless.) >> > >> >2b. DataStax saw CQL adoption as a key driver for Cassandra adoption and >> >hence its own success, and hired a team to accelerate the production of >> >drivers for the new CQL protocol. These drivers are Apache licensed and >> >see broad community participation, e.g. with ~70 contributors to the Java >> >driver. >> > >> >2c. Neither has DataStax "sucked the oxygen out of the room." Lots of >> >non-DataStax drivers exist as well. >> > >> >As Aleksey pointed out earlier, I don't see anyone being harmed by this >> >state of affairs. Cassandra PMC doesn't want to run drivers projects, >> >driver authors don't want to be run by Cassandra PMC, and meanwhile users >> >have Apache licensed drivers that let them be productive with Cassandra. >> > > > >-- >Jonathan Ellis >Project Chair, Apache Cassandra >co-founder, http://www.datastax.com >@spyced
