Dear Jeff and discussion participants, Plase find my replies in line. > From Jeff Jirsa <jji...@gmail.com> w dniu 5 lis 2016, o godz. 17:37: > The thesis of your pasted gist is that you tried to contribute and were > pushed away. You hypothesize that it's done with lack of will to pull in > other people's work, and that this blocks outside contributors. I firmly > disagree with your conclusion. > > Your gist details a proposed transition from ant to maven on a 6 or 7 year > old project. You make a (relatively weak) case for it on technical merit. I take build and project structuring quite seriously. From these two things it’s clear if its easy to get started with it or not. If everything sits in one place there is lots of bidirectional links which makes understanding of how whole thing works harder. More over it also complicates patches cause its quite easy to introduce side effects. I know internally you follow some logic or pattern but if its not visible in first place, is not described or its just communicated in conversation then it requires spending hours of newcomers to get it over and do even a basic thing. Build and granuality of modules is essential to every project. I been working with many projects which had troubles with proper modularization, one of these was elasticsearch few years back. Thing is that Elastic, without even having whole apache way, invested their money and time in making their project something more than just one jar, Cassandra despite of higher age did not.
> You are met with a combination of silence and resistance - a project with > years of inertia, already out of the incubator, with build systems already > in place, with history and convention on the side of ant has little desire > to change from ant to maven, especially at the request of a person without > a history of contributions to the project. If you were to submit a change > to maven and disappear, who will maintain that change? Is there reason to > believe you're willing to maintain it long term? Have you ever contributed > non-invasive changes before, is there an evidence that this is the right > thing for the project? I am working with cassandra on daily basis. I was (actually I still am) repackaging it to deploy and had lots of troubles because of dependencies and simple a fact that thrift interface separation was not good enough or you produced broken artifact. I was, actually I’m still, maintaining this at work. This was primary reason I invested some of my spare time to make my daily work easier so I could later on use some of my paid time to help you with that. Questioning my presence for support is quite unfair because this shall be very first question back then, not now. In fact I am still subscribed to this mailing list even if my patch attempt have failed. > That is - the change you proposed is invasive, not > strictly necessary (wasn't a bug fix), and is being proposed by a newcomer, > which isn't a problem, but it means your proposal needs significant > supporting evidence to justify the disruption it would cause. This isn't > the same as proposing an improvement to the database, it's changing the > workflow of dozens of people and LOTS and LOTS of existing systems (CI and > release workflows, for example) - you need to be able to defend and justify > that change, as it likely causes ALL developers to change ALL of their > workflows. And quite frankly, you didn’t. Every build change is invasive, in some cases even bringing some dependency might be a small bomb. Some impacts are bigger, some are smaller, but at the end of the day I was not bringing a own tool which I pulled out of the hat (such for example buck). I proposed to use some standard tool which serves millions of projects, both OSS and commercial, around globe. Even other projects which datastax people are already involved in, which is also used by external dependencies pulled in by cassandra. Yes, it would change daily workflows, so release could be done in two simple commands and people who build for example java driver could build cassandra in the same way without copyting over binary artifacts to source directory. I won’t lie that it would be like turning on a new switch, because build changes would affect everyone who touches sources. There are no free benefits and to get some of above you would need to pay off something. You didn’t want to do it and that’s fine. That was your call. I still believe you was wrong, but as some external user I don’t know a whole story and my opinion may not be legitimate. > You then *materially mischaracterize* the interaction "Whole discantus > last for few mode days but at the end it was shut down by datastax > employee", and you selectively quote part of the exchange, but leave out > his closing sentence "*I don't want to give you the impression I am either > a gatekeeper or shooting down your proposal. I'm just attempting to explain > my perception **of the view of the existing contributors*.” I copied links to threaded copy of mailing list so everyone could easily go over message exchange and check it out. I quoted parts which were relevant from my point of view, after already having discussion with argument exchange similar to above. If you are selectively choose mail parts to talk about why you won’t defend now a second thread with question about mavenizing build which ended up with just "No”? Isn't it shutting down entire discussion? > You indicate that the decisions made by the PMC force other companies to > run forks (citing Stratio as an example). Here, again, history doesn't just > find this unsupportable, but patently untrue. Time and time again the PMC > made the decision to include code specifically so that Stratio wouldn't > need to fork. I don’t track all discussions happening on mailing lists on daily basis. Aleksey already made point about that so I asked privately Andreas who was CCed in his reply to also make an record of his obviously positive collaboration with project. You also share your positive feedback about collaboration with project in later part of your mail which is great. After all I might be just one frustrated guy who been incubated for over a year working hard on making board reaction just to show out some wrongly planned rebellion. > You indicate that discontinuation of thrift was seen by outsiders as > marketing driven. The discontinuation of thrift is technical in nature - > it's implementation has a ton of edge cases, it's existence introduces > risk. It's more code to maintain, and it's now less performant than the > native CQL. The preference for CQL over thrift evolved over time, it's > easier for newcomers, it's easier for most people to reason about, and the > 3.0 engine (ticket 8099) optimized storage for CQL, moving thrift to second > class status. This isn't marketing, this is tech. The communication may > have been poor (though to be fair, it was discussed in detail on various > JIRA tickets, which is sent to various mailing lists, so it "happened" in > the Apache sense). You bring CQL as example saying that now it is more performant than thrift. This means that you made great investment in it over past years. You did spend great amount of time on that I believe. Wouldn't be great if people who are not dedicated to more important parts could focus on infrastructure related changes while others worked on project core and performance? > If this is really an issue you brought to "a friend at ASF" as evidence of > misconduct by the PMC at the time, which is hinted at in the fact that you > felt called out by that insinuation in Kelly's original post, the fact that > it's wrong on so many levels AND the fact that I see no evidence that > anyone did any meaningful research to understand such a gross > mischaracterization of "control" is really troubling. I don’t know who from Apache board members could be my friend, but whole discussion was already started long time before I saw it on twitter. I won’t play any finger pointing in this case cause washing dirty linen in public was already going on before I even could send (per Chris suggestion) my mail to appropriate private mailing lists. It already went viral here without even myself showing up. I understand that there might be a tension between board and project PMCs, I’ve seen that before, but I can’t get rid of impression that some people are trying to present it as personal conflict while it’s not like that. I believe that common language will be found, as always been, when this attitude will be stripped down. Cheers, Łukasz > > On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 5:03 PM, Łukasz Dywicki <l...@code-house.org> wrote: > >> Good evening, >> I feel myself a bit called to table by both Kelly and Chris. Thing is I >> don’t know personally nor have any relationship with both of you. I’m not >> even ASF member. My tweet was simply reaction for Kelly complaints about >> ASF punishing out DataStax. Kelly timeline also contained statement such >> "forming a long term strategy to grow diversity around” which reminded me >> my attempts to collaborate on Cassandra and Tinkerpop projects to grow such >> diversity. I collected message links and quotes and put it into gist who >> could be read by anyone: >> https://gist.github.com/splatch/aebe4ad4d127922642bee0dc9a8b1ec1 >> >> I don’t want to bring now these topics back and disscuss technical stuff >> over again. It happened to me in the past to refuse (or vote against) some >> change proposals in other Apache projects I am involved. I was on the other >> ("bad guy") side multiple times. I simply collected public records of >> interactions with DataStax staff I was aware, simply because of my personal >> involvement. It shown how some ideas, yet cassandra mailing list don’t have >> many of these coming from externals, are getting put a side with very >> little or even lack of will to pull in others people work in. This is >> blocking point for anyone coming from external sides to get involved into >> project and help it growing. If someone changes requires moves in project >> core or it’s public APIs that person will require support from project >> members to get this done. If such help will not be given it any outside >> change will be ever completed and noone will invest time in doing something >> more than fixing typos or common programmer errors which we all do from >> time to time. Despite of impersonal nature of communications in Internet we >> still do have human interactions and we all have just one chance to make >> first impression. If we made it wrong at beginning its hard to fix it later >> on. >> Some decisions made in past by project PMCs lead to situation that project >> was forked and maintained outside ASF (ie. stratio cassandra which >> eventually ended up as lucene indexes plugin over a year ago), some other >> did hurt users running cassandra for long time (ie. discontinuation of >> thrift). Especially second decission was seen by outsiders, who do not >> desire billion writes per second, as marketing driven. This led to people >> looking and finding alternatives using compatible interface which might be, >> ironically, even faster (ie. scylladb). >> >> And since there was quote battle on twitter between Jim Jagielski and >> Benedict, I can throw some in as well. Over conferences I attended and even >> during consultancy services I got, I’ve spoken with some people having >> records of DataStax in their resumes and even them told me "collaboration >> with them [cassandra team] was hard". Now imagine how outsider will get any >> chance to get any change done with such attitude shown even to own >> colleagues? Must also note that Tinkerpop is getting better on this field >> since it has much more generic nature. >> I don’t think this whole topic is to say that you (meaning DataStax) made >> wrong job, or you are doing wrong for project but about letting others join >> forces with you to make Cassandra even better. Maybe there is not a lot of >> people currently walking around but once you will welcome and help them >> working with you on code base you may be sure that others will join making >> your development efforts easier and shared across community. >> >> Kind regards, >> Lukasz >> >>> Wiadomość napisana przez Edward Capriolo <edlinuxg...@gmail.com> w dniu >> 4 lis 2016, o godz. 18:55: >>> >>> On Thu, Nov 3, 2016 at 11:44 PM, Kelly Sommers <kell.somm...@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> I think the community needs some clarification about what's going on. >>>> There's a really concerning shift going on and the story about why is >>>> really blurry. I've heard all kinds of wild claims about what's going >> on. >>>> >>>> I've heard people say the ASF is pushing DataStax out because they don't >>>> like how much control they have over Cassandra. I've heard other people >> say >>>> DataStax and the ASF aren't getting along. I've heard one person who has >>>> pull with a friend in the ASF complained about a feature not getting >>>> considered (who also didn't go down the correct path of proposing) >> kicked >>>> and screamed and started the ball rolling for control change. >>>> >>>> I don't know what's going on, and I doubt the truth is in any of those, >> the >>>> truth is probably somewhere in between. As a former Cassandra MVP and >>>> builder of some of the larger Cassandra clusters in the last 3 years I'm >>>> concerned. >>>> >>>> I've been really happy with Jonathan and DataStax's role in the >> Cassandra >>>> community. I think they have done a great job at investing time and >> money >>>> towards the good interest in the project. I think it is unavoidable a >>>> single company bootstraps large projects like this into popularity. It's >>>> those companies investments who give the ability to grow diversity in >> later >>>> stages. The committer list in my opinion is the most diverse its ever >> been, >>>> hasn't it? Apple is a big player now. >>>> >>>> I don't think reducing DataStax's role for the sake of diversity is >> smart. >>>> You grow diversity by opening up new opportunities for others. Grow the >>>> committer list perhaps. Mentor new people to join that list. You don't >> kick >>>> someone to the curb and hope things improve. You add. >>>> >>>> I may be way off on what I'm seeing but there's not much to go by but >>>> gossip (ahaha :P) and some ASF meeting notes and DataStax blog posts. >>>> >>>> August 17th 2016 ASF changed the Apache Cassandra chair >>>> https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/ >>>> 2016/board_minutes_2016_08_17.txt >>>> >>>> "The Board expressed continuing concern that the PMC was not acting >>>> independently and that one company had undue influence over the >> project." >>>> >>>> August 19th 2016 Jonothan Ellis steps down as chair >>>> http://www.datastax.com/2016/08/a-look-back-a-look-forward >>>> >>>> November 2nd 2016 DataStax moves committers to DSE from Cassandra. >>>> http://www.datastax.com/2016/11/serving-customers-serving-the-community >>>> >>>> I'm really concerned if indeed the ASF is trying to change control and >>>> diversity of organizations by reducing DataStax's role. As I said >> earlier, >>>> I've been really happy at the direction DataStax and Jonathan has taken >> the >>>> project and I would much prefer see additional opportunities along side >>>> theirs grow instead of subtracting. The ultimate question that's really >>>> important is whether DataStax and Jonathan have been steering the >> project >>>> in the right direction. If the answer is yes, then is there really >> anything >>>> broken? Only if the answer is no should change happen, in my opinion. >>>> >>>> Can someone at the ASF please clarify what is going on? The ASF meeting >>>> notes are very concerning. >>>> >>>> Thank you for listening, >>>> Kelly Sommers >>>> >>> >>> Kelly, >>> >>> Thank you for taking the time to mention this. I want to react to this >>> statement: >>> >>> "I've heard people say the ASF is pushing DataStax out because they don't >>> like how much control they have over Cassandra. I've heard other people >> say >>> DataStax and the ASF aren't getting along. I've heard one person who has >>> pull with a friend in the ASF complained about a feature not getting >>> considered (who also didn't go down the correct path of proposing) kicked >>> and screamed and started the ball rolling for control change." >>> >>> There is an important saying in the ASF: >>> https://community.apache.org/newbiefaq.html >>> >>> - If it didn't happen on a mailing list, it didn't happen. >>> >>> It is natural that communication happens outside of Jira. The rough aim >> of >>> this mandate is a conversation like that that happens by the water cooler >>> should be summarized and moved into a forum where it can be recorded and >>> discussed. There is a danger in repeating something anecdotal or 'things >>> you have heard'. If that party is being suppressed, that is an issue to >>> deal with. If a party is unwilling to speak for themselves publicly in >> the >>> ASF public forums that is on them. Retelling what others told us is >>> 'gossip' as you put it. >>> >>> "I think it is unavoidable a single company bootstraps large projects >> like >>> this into popularity" >>> "I don't think reducing DataStax's role for the sake of diversity is >>> smart." >>> >>> Let me state my opinion as an open source ASF member that was never >>> directly payed to work on an open source project. I have proposed and >> seen >>> proposed by others ideas to several open source projects inside (ASF and >>> outside) which were rejected. Later (months maybe years later) the exact >>> idea or roughly the same idea is implemented by different person in a >>> slightly different form. There is a lot of grey area there. >>> >>> How does that related to this http://www.datastax.com/2016/ >>> 11/serving-customers-serving-the-community ? >>> >>> Remember the ASF is a volunteer organization. One desired effect of the >>> volunteerism is so that one single large company does not bootstrap or >>> control the project. (When my proposed ideas got knocked down, I had some >>> choices including complain to anyone that will listen, lick my wounds and >>> press on, or become less involved.) >>> >>> Whatever event has happened has happened. Like you, I only know of it >>> second hand so I will not comment. >>> >>> The volunteer committers can decide their own level of involvement. For >>> example, they can "double down" and use their free time to stay >>> involved. They can attempt to convince their organization that pulling >> them >>> back is the wrong move, or they can fall away. >>> >>> " The ultimate question that's really important is whether DataStax and >>> Jonathan have been steering the project in the right direction" >>> >>> Outside of the politics/litigation it is becoming normal for an ASF >> project >>> to rotate the PMC chair. It keeps things fresh, and helps avoid issues >>> where some may perceive control by one person/entity. Your question may >>> ultimately highlight an issue as ASF sees it, namely who is "steering" >> you >>> mention a corporate entity in your question. >> >>
