Hi Rich, Just to chip in my two cents' worth, we in Apache Brooklyn have been involved in the discussions, and have tried to see if people can be found to help continue jclouds. The eventual outcome of all the discussion, however, seems to be that the attic is, sadly, the most realistic option for the project at this point.
Ignasi, just on the point of > We did several calls to action with concrete requests for help, but no further engagement happened. I don't think that's quite fair - numerous people both from Brooklyn and other projects engaged with the discussions. What hasn't happened is people stepping up to commit the necessary time to maintain and forward-develop the project. To which point, John, on the point of > We all have excuses, including, "my day job is already a full time effort" I think people are just being honest here, not making excuses. As you say, maintaining an open source project is a significant commitment, especially on the scale of jclouds. I can speak only for myself I guess, so to recap what I said earlier, I did really think about making the commitment to start contributing to jclouds development and releases, but I feel that if I did so I would just be kidding myself and everyone else. I don't want to do that. I imagine others feel similarly. As regards > We've had plenty of emails from other project contributors indicating that they'd have to fork if jclouds move to the attic. It's not clear right now to us in Brooklyn what the implications of the change are. Forking (part of?) jclouds would be one option, but as you say, if we want to do that, why not just maintain the project? However, I'm not sure it is the likeliest of options. There are other possibilities, such as implementing a minimal subset of jclouds-like functionality within Brooklyn, just to cover our main use-cases. Other more radical options might even involve changing the Brooklyn model to an extent. Right now it's not clear. I have been meaning to kick off that discussion on dev@brooklyn.a.o and this has prompted me again. Regards to all, Geoff On Mon, 13 Feb 2023 at 17:17, Jean-Baptiste Onofré <j...@nanthrax.net> wrote: > Hi Rich, > > agree, it's what I bring to the thread multiple times (at least > Brooklyn and Pulsar communities are willing to help, or find an > alternative (fork or whatever)). > > Regards > JB > > On Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 2:33 PM Rich Bowen <rbo...@apache.org> wrote: > > > > Please talk with the Brooklyn folks before taking this step. In their > February board report they indicate that jclouds is one of their main > dependencies, and if you move to the attic, they would be compelled to > either find an alternative or reboot (or fork) the project. This indicates, > at least to me, that there are people in that project have both the > expertise and incentive to keep this project alive. As such, it would be > wise to reach out to them, and see whether any of them can augment the > project to keep it alive, or possibly some other solution. But please don't > take this step without at least speaking to them. Thanks. > > > > > > On 2023/01/29 08:07:48 Andrew Gaul wrote: > > > Retiring the project to the attic is not my preferred outcome but I > > > think accurately captures the current state of affairs. Let's run a > > > final release then we can proceed with a formal discussion and vote. > > > > > > On Fri, Jan 13, 2023 at 08:44:27AM +0100, Jean-Baptiste Onofré wrote: > > > > Hi Geoff, > > > > > > > > To Geoff and others, happy new year :) > > > > > > > > Yes, I agree: it seems the bandwidth is limited. > > > > > > > > So, I think it makes sense to move jclouds into attic; and let other > > > > projects find an alternative (forking part of jclouds, finding a > brand > > > > new alternative, ...). > > > > > > > > Regards > > > > JB > > > > > > > > On Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 6:28 PM Geoff Macartney <geom...@apache.org> > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > Hi JB > > > > > > > > > > It appears that we don't have the collective bandwidth to add new > active > > > > > contributors to the project, so, sadly, moving jclouds to the > attic does > > > > > seem to be the right thing to do. It will be up to each downstream > project > > > > > to figure out what it wants to do in consequence. > > > > > > > > > > Belated Happy New Year to all. > > > > > > > > > > Regards > > > > > Geoff > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Thu, 29 Dec 2022 at 05:38, Jean-Baptiste Onofré < > j...@nanthrax.net> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > Hi, > > > > > > > > > > > > Sorry to have been quiet, I'm "half off" for festive time ;) > > > > > > > > > > > > I'm still interested in helping maintain jclouds from a community > > > > > > standpoint. However, clearly, the current committers/PMC members > don't > > > > > > want to be involved anymore. > > > > > > > > > > > > As most of the volunteers are not jclouds PMC members (I think > I'm the > > > > > > only one), you have to accept the decision from PMC members. > > > > > > > > > > > > So, I see only three options for the projects using jclouds: > > > > > > 1. current PMC members accept to extend/expand the committer > list (and > > > > > > PMC) to have new people volunteer to maintain jclouds, so > projects can > > > > > > still use jclouds. I don't want to be pushy in this direction. > It's > > > > > > important to have the long time PMC members, if they want to move > > > > > > jclouds in the attic, it's fair and we have to accept that. > > > > > > 2. replace jclouds with something else. That's probably the > preferred > > > > > > approach, replacing jclouds directly with cloud providers APIs. > > > > > > 3. fork jclouds (or part of jclouds) in other projects (the part > > > > > > actually used in the project). For instance, we can imagine > having > > > > > > code from jclouds moved/forked in brooklyn. > > > > > > > > > > > > My prefered option is probably 2, according to the discussion in > this > > > > > > thread. > > > > > > > > > > > > Happy new year to all, > > > > > > Regards > > > > > > JB > > > > > > > > > > > > On Wed, Dec 28, 2022 at 9:11 PM Geoff Macartney < > geom...@apache.org> > > > > > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hi all, > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hope you had a restful Christmas break. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Andrew, thanks very much for these details, that is helpful to > scope the > > > > > > > effort required to maintain jclouds. Of course what takes 10 > hours for > > > > > > > Andrew, with his familiarity with jclouds, will take perhaps > > > > > > significantly > > > > > > > longer for those of us who are not yet familiar, even after an > initial > > > > > > > period of learning. You'll each have your own estimations I'm > sure. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > So - two questions to everyone who has expressed an interest > in this > > > > > > > discussion (have I missed anyone?): > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Alex, Andrey, Enrico, Francois, JB, Juan, Iuliana, and anyone > else for > > > > > > that > > > > > > > matter who hasn't yet spoken up. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 1. Who among us feels strongly enough about their need for > jclouds to > > > > > > > continue business as usual that they want to volunteer to > commit to the > > > > > > > time it will take to learn it and then maintain it going > forward > > > > > > (becoming > > > > > > > a committer)? This would not only include releases, as Andrew > outlined, > > > > > > but > > > > > > > also security fixes, and maintenance as dependencies age (e.g. > that gson > > > > > > > problem). It seems to me we need *at least* two volunteers for > jclouds to > > > > > > > continue; three would be better. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 2. Or do you agree with Andrew that avoiding the attic doesn't > need to be > > > > > > > the goal? That everything has a natural lifetime and maybe the > attic is > > > > > > now > > > > > > > the right course for jclouds? Perhaps you feel your effort > would be > > > > > > better > > > > > > > directed toward adapting your own code to a world without > jclouds. E.g. > > > > > > > from a Brooklyn point of view maybe the time is near for > replacing > > > > > > > JCloudLocation with provider specific locations, or a new > abstraction. > > > > > > Who > > > > > > > knows, that might even remove a slew of dependencies and > assist us moving > > > > > > > on from Java 8. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Concretely: if you want to volunteer to commit to maintaining > jclouds, > > > > > > can > > > > > > > I ask you please to reply to this email to say so. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Kind regards to all, and wishing you a Happy New Year. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Geoff > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sun, 25 Dec 2022 at 01:12, Andrew Gaul <g...@apache.org> > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 03:25:04PM +0000, Geoff Macartney > wrote: > > > > > > > > > Can we try to get some data on what amount of effort is > required > > > > > > here? > > > > > > > > > Andrew, Ignasi, here are some questions for you. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > If we want to at least keep Jclouds going, without > necessarily doing > > > > > > much > > > > > > > > > fresh feature development on it: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 1. What do you think is a desirable *minimum* number of > active > > > > > > > > contributors > > > > > > > > > to the project (doing releases, dependency updates, > security fixes, > > > > > > > > > occasional important bug fixes)? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Apache projects need a quorum of 3 committers to make a > release which > > > > > > > > jclouds will soon lack. Mechanically, a single motivated > person could > > > > > > > > keep pushing releases with a few drive-by +1s. But > practically, the > > > > > > > > jclouds blobstore and compute scope is large enough that two > people > > > > > > > > should maintain the project with some domain expertise. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 2. How much work is that likely to involve? (Approx time > commitment). > > > > > > > > Let's > > > > > > > > > separate out how much effort it is to build, test and > publish a > > > > > > release > > > > > > > > > from other stuff which is going to be more ad-hoc. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I estimate that I spend 10 hours per release: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > * triaging blobstore issues (~1 hour) > > > > > > > > * reviewing/pushing forward outstanding PRs (~2 hours) > > > > > > > > * running integration tests (~1 hour) > > > > > > > > * dealing with jclouds tech debt and breakages (0-10 hours?) > > > > > > > > * Apache process and overhead (~1 hour) > > > > > > > > * fixes that help my project or look easy (? hours) > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 3. How much access to cloud providers/infrastructure is > required to > > > > > > test > > > > > > > > a > > > > > > > > > release? How expensive is it? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I have access to all the major blobstore providers and run > integration > > > > > > > > tests for them. I estimate this costs me less than $1 but > running > > > > > > > > compute tests may cost more. Note that there are flaky and > broken > > > > > > tests > > > > > > > > which require some judgment call so I only look at the diff > between > > > > > > > > releases. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > 4. How much work would it be for new contributors to learn > the > > > > > > codebase > > > > > > > > > well enough to contribute effectively? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > jclouds is a big project that uses a custom annotation > mechanism > > > > > > > > (RestAnnotationProcessor) and extensively (excessively?) > uses Guice > > > > > > > > which makes it hard for many people (including me!) to > understand. We > > > > > > > > could debate the merits of the technical approach but > socially this > > > > > > > > makes it hard to attract contributors. I also think that > the technical > > > > > > > > debt that jclouds has accrued generally makes it less > pleasant to work > > > > > > > > on than simpler or newer projects. I don't think this > answers your > > > > > > > > question but Ignasi and I now work outside the Java and cloud > > > > > > ecosystems > > > > > > > > and are not in a good position to explain/rediscover how > this all > > > > > > works. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I think if we know better how much it will take, we can > each more > > > > > > easily > > > > > > > > > ask ourselves, "could I do this"? If enough of us say > "yes", we may > > > > > > avoid > > > > > > > > > the attic yet. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I don't know that avoiding the attic should be the goal. If > there are > > > > > > > > motivated people that want to continue jclouds then please > do so. But > > > > > > > > currently no one is doing any work towards this end. > jclouds continues > > > > > > > > to accrue technical debt (e.g., gson 2.9.0 incompatibility) > and there > > > > > > is > > > > > > > > no one left to do this work. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I think it would be good for a new contributor to step back > and compare > > > > > > > > against similar multi-cloud projects like libcloud to > evaluate what > > > > > > > > jclouds does well and what it does not. I suspect that > reimplementing > > > > > > > > the REST APIs is not a good choice in 2022 and instead > jclouds or a > > > > > > > > similar library should reuse the vendor SDKs and focus only > on > > > > > > > > multi-cloud portability. And simplify the project so users > can become > > > > > > > > contributors more easily. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > > > > Andrew Gaul > > > > > > > > http://gaul.org/ > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > Andrew Gaul > > > http://gaul.org/ > > > >
