Hi, I agree this is not problem of Ryan. He has done so much for the project. For the amount of money involved, almost nobody can be saint and reject. Even if he wants to reject, Tabular investors do not allow it.
The Apache members like the ones replying here should be the ones sincerely reflect on it. The foundation failed building mechanism to prevent corporate control. This almost happens in all successful Apache projects. The creators form startups and control the board. Databricks did exactly that for Apache Spark when they started. Many people actually see this as a roadmap to success. You can argue Iceberg is majority Apple, but we can see the development of the table format itself slowed down after Tabular formed, in favor of building a catalog instead of the table format itself. Apple does much more work in Spark Iceberg integration compared to the format. They are great people, but Ryan and Daniel are the final decision makers. Many proposals are piling up and take months and years to get reviewed and merged. Acquisition is the extreme end of it, so it is first controlled and then bought by the competitor!!! This is also why nowadays many projects just decide to not go with the Apache route. best, Sichen ________________________________ From: Owen O'Malley <owen.omal...@gmail.com> Sent: Wednesday, June 5, 2024 1:51 PM To: dev@iceberg.apache.org <dev@iceberg.apache.org> Subject: Re: Call for Ryan Blue to Step Down as PMC Chair I strongly disagree with asking Ryan to step down. For those who don't know me, I'm an Iceberg PMC member, Apache member, and was a mentor and champion for Iceberg when it entered the Apache Incubator<https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/IcebergProposal>. I've never worked at either Tabular or Databricks. Over the years, I've had a lot of discussions with Ryan about Apache in general and Iceberg specifically. Ryan's always impressed me with his commitment to doing the right thing for the open source communities that he works in. In particular, I think Ryan's done an amazing job of encouraging Iceberg's community and technology. That said, one of the danger signs for open source projects is when a majority of the PMC members or committers are employed by a single company. Towards that end, I'd encourage Ryan in his next quarterly report to the Apache Board to mention the acquisition as a risk factor for Iceberg. On a side note, discussions about individuals on Apache projects should in general happen on the project's private list and not in public. .. Owen On Wed, Jun 5, 2024 at 4:13 AM Kanou Natsukawa <kanou.natsuk...@gmail.com<mailto:kanou.natsuk...@gmail.com>> wrote: Hi community, I'm calling for Ryan Blue to step down as Iceberg PMC chair. With the recent acquisition of Tabular by Databricks [1], I believe there is a natural conflict of interest for him to continue to be the chair of the Iceberg project. Tabular's official messages will likely come and say something in the line of they will remain neutral, but in fact everyone knows that it is not possible when they have signed a contract with the company owning the competing project, and the contract has so much money involved. I have only contributed to Iceberg once, but I still see myself as a part of the community. I really like how Iceberg used to be, just a very well-designed table format. It started to change when Tabular was formed and started to do their REST catalog, but Tabular has been a small player in the industry that their control is in general not hurting the project. The startup also did many great things like py-iceberg after all, and I guess large companies also love the REST idea since they have the resource to build one, it's just not every company is Netflix or Apple. With Databricks, I am deeply worried about the direction of the project. I propose having someone from Apple (Russell, Anton, Yufei, Steven, Szehon), or Jack Ye from AWS to take the PMC chair position instead, as they are very active PMC members in the community, and have a much more neutral position to safely lead the project in the right direction. And also to other Iceberg PMC members and committers from Tabular, you have gained a lot of wealth from this, at this moment the best thing I hope you can do is please keep this project alone and out of your hands. [1] https://www.databricks.com/blog/databricks-tabular Thanks Natsukawa
