Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Ross Gardler]

Again. If the PMC fails to bring board (and trademark) feedback to the 
community it is not a failing of the board. Board minutes are available. Review 
comments and actions over the last 12 months or so.

---
Twitter: @rgardler


From: Jeremy Hanna <jeremy.hanna1...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, November 5, 2016 8:30:20 AM
To: Jim Jagielski
Cc: dev@cassandra.apache.org; Łukasz Dywicki; Chris Mattmann; Kelly Sommers; 
Apache Board
Subject: Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

No it wasn't. You're citing the eventual and agreed upon outcome. I was talking 
about the approach which is clear in the dev and user list threads that the 
board was involved in. It is also apparently much more apparent in the private 
threads which apparently the PMC can make public.

> On Nov 5, 2016, at 10:02 AM, Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com> wrote:
>
> Which is what was done: 
> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwhimsy.apache.org%2Fboard%2Fminutes%2FCassandra.html=02%7C01%7CRoss.Gardler%40microsoft.com%7Ca198e6c0a658409b0b8208d406e21b78%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636141015575977801=xL7B%2F1xNDCfgnZ2pvTnuuhZWIymllsNV1Z0WNghuot4%3D=0
>
>> On Nov 5, 2016, at 10:48 AM, Jeremy Hanna <jeremy.hanna1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> If the ASF is at risk with a single company allowed to dominate a project 
>> then why couldn't the approach have been something like: "great job on 
>> building a successful project and community. We think there is great 
>> potential for more involvement at the core contribution level. How can we 
>> work together to augment the existing efforts to encourage contribution and 
>> bring in new contributors? By the way here are a couple of policy and 
>> trademark things that we need to get fixed."
>>
>> I didn't understand the assumption that DataStax was doing something 
>> nefarious nor the approach that was taken.  On a personal note I had tried 
>> to ask about evidence and the approach previously but was ignored: 
>> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mail-archive.com%2Fdev%40cassandra.apache.org%2Fmsg09101.html=02%7C01%7CRoss.Gardler%40microsoft.com%7Ca198e6c0a658409b0b8208d406e21b78%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636141015575977801=tvQacSr5ikOC8wgxR6iD2QdtqEYc13rjiA977Ic6FNM%3D=0
>>   Perhaps that was due to the volume of messages on that thread but I don't 
>> feel those questions were ever addressed.
>>
>> Regardless, I see a positive way forward for the project and am grateful to 
>> everyone working towards that.
>>
>

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Bertrand Delacretaz]

Hi,

On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 4:30 PM, Jeremy Hanna  wrote:
> ...It is also apparently much more apparent in the private threads which 
> apparently
> the PMC can make public

I have not followed all discussions about this so sorry if you already
got this information from someone else.

Making private discussion threads public is *not* ok, unless everybody
who wrote something in those threads provides explicit permission to
do that. Which is usually not practical for a whole thread, but people
could give permission for specific parts.

Summarizing the relevant parts of a private thread to a public list
can be ok if you're cautious about not violating the private nature of
the original discussion. In case of doubt, ask on the private thread
before proceeding.

That's all common sense, I just wanted to clarify as there might be
some confusion around this now.

-Bertrand

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jim Jagielski]

You are saying the the "nature of the communication as unnecessarily
antagonistic" and that I think it is necessary.

Neither of those are accurate. I do not characterize it
as "antagonistic" nor necessary.

> On Nov 6, 2016, at 1:39 PM, Jeffrey Jirsa  wrote:
> 
> Everything you said is accurate, and I don¹t think anyone¹s debating that.
> What I¹m hoping to convey is the method of communication is such that a
> SIGNIFICANT number of people interpret the nature of the communication as
> unnecessarily antagonistic. You seem to think it¹s necessary, but the
> reaction of the community clearly says otherwise.
> 
> A person can be 100% right and still come across as a jerk, and the CoC
> instructs people to avoid doing so, because it¹s damaging to the
> community. 
> 
> If you ask 100 random people who are neither Cassandra users/developers
> nor ASF members about whether or not the communication from the ASF board
> members is in this thread is professional, empathetic, friendly, and
> likely to build a community, I suspect you¹d find a significant number
> that would tell you the communication is none of those things. And THAT is
> a problem, too (and it¹s NOT on the same level as mark issues, but if the
> question is ³why did Datastax step back from the Apache Cassandra
> project², it certainly helps explain why a company might want to do that).
> 
> Let¹s build a community, Jim.
> 
> 
> 
> On 11/6/16, 12:00 PM, "Jim Jagielski"  wrote:
> 
>> Some clarification.
>> 
>> Basically, there had been issues w/ DataStax and the PMC for a long,
>> long time. It came somewhat to a head in Aug when there was
>> a PR/Email about the "Cassandra Summit" with nary a mention
>> of Apache at all. None.
>> 
>> This was after months and months in trying to get DataStax to
>> honor our marks. It was this final culmination which which
>> resulted in a board member saying "makes me want to jettison".
>> At which Jonathan Ellis expressed confusion on what the problem
>> was and asking about the context, oblivious to the concern. Someone
>> else noted that both the PMC and Cassandra had been "lectured" on
>> trademark violations before and said that "one would assume that
>> someone learned along the way." Someone then wondered whether
>> these recurring issues where due to some fault in the PMC or
>> just the normal, expect churn of their being a brand. He
>> further stated: "I don't see how we can make it the responsibility
>> of the PMC to catch these things". It was then noted that the
>> CTO of DataStax is the PMC Chair, as well as co-founder. There
>> was then further discussions and "education" on mark guidelines,
>> again, with Jake and Aleksey. Aleksey, at least, admitted that
>> "If your only success criteria is how well trademark policing is
>> performed, then sure, we all failed..."
>> 
>> More discussion.
>> 
>> Around this time, one board member referred to below most certainly
>> did characterize the "hammer-time" phrase as "premature and
>> inflammatory". Others did not. To support that position I will add
>> some cut/paste quotes from another director:
>> 
>> o Overall, there are a handful of issues here but they look to be easily
>>   fixable and - with a little education - preventable in the future.
>> o Given the numbers and seniority of DataStax employees involved with
>>   Apache Cassandra it is disappointing that these errors are being made
>>   but people make mistakes
>> o The lack of proactive policing of trademarks by the Cassandra
>>   PMC is what concerns me
>> o Given the history, I do think the board needs to take some form of
>>   action. It has been suggested that the board remove all DataStax
>>   employees from the PMC. I agree things are heading in that direction
>> but
>>   I don't think we are there yet.
>> 
>> It was after that that someone mentioned that they were on 3 PMC
>> and never saw any mark issues with any PMCs other than
>> Cassandra (this was a not a director speaking). That is when I
>> replied w/ the "I've seen such issues..." response.
>> 
>> Some take-aways:
>> 
>> o Mark compliance issues have been ongoing for a long, long
>>  time.
>> o The PMC and its chair had been involved in these concerns
>>  for a long, long time.
>> 
>> Once all this was done, and this particular issue resolved. The final
>> few Emails on the thread close it off with:
>> 
>> o Nobody has said commit privs should be removed. Some have discussed
>> the potential of removing PMC responsibilities
>> o I would like to see some positive action from the Apache Cassandra
>> PMC that they are working on managing this problem.
>> o We all seem to agree that the responsibility for enforcement falls
>> first to the PMC, then on VP Branding, and then on the President.
>> 
>> That is the saga of hammers.
>> 
>>> On Nov 6, 2016, at 12:57 PM, Jeff Jirsa  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Now that I have clarity on what can and can't be relayed to the
>>> community / dev@, I'm going 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jeffrey Jirsa]

Everything you said is accurate, and I don¹t think anyone¹s debating that.
What I¹m hoping to convey is the method of communication is such that a
SIGNIFICANT number of people interpret the nature of the communication as
unnecessarily antagonistic. You seem to think it¹s necessary, but the
reaction of the community clearly says otherwise.

A person can be 100% right and still come across as a jerk, and the CoC
instructs people to avoid doing so, because it¹s damaging to the
community. 

If you ask 100 random people who are neither Cassandra users/developers
nor ASF members about whether or not the communication from the ASF board
members is in this thread is professional, empathetic, friendly, and
likely to build a community, I suspect you¹d find a significant number
that would tell you the communication is none of those things. And THAT is
a problem, too (and it¹s NOT on the same level as mark issues, but if the
question is ³why did Datastax step back from the Apache Cassandra
project², it certainly helps explain why a company might want to do that).

Let¹s build a community, Jim.



On 11/6/16, 12:00 PM, "Jim Jagielski"  wrote:

>Some clarification.
>
>Basically, there had been issues w/ DataStax and the PMC for a long,
>long time. It came somewhat to a head in Aug when there was
>a PR/Email about the "Cassandra Summit" with nary a mention
>of Apache at all. None.
>
>This was after months and months in trying to get DataStax to
>honor our marks. It was this final culmination which which
>resulted in a board member saying "makes me want to jettison".
>At which Jonathan Ellis expressed confusion on what the problem
>was and asking about the context, oblivious to the concern. Someone
>else noted that both the PMC and Cassandra had been "lectured" on
>trademark violations before and said that "one would assume that
>someone learned along the way." Someone then wondered whether
>these recurring issues where due to some fault in the PMC or
>just the normal, expect churn of their being a brand. He
>further stated: "I don't see how we can make it the responsibility
>of the PMC to catch these things". It was then noted that the
>CTO of DataStax is the PMC Chair, as well as co-founder. There
>was then further discussions and "education" on mark guidelines,
>again, with Jake and Aleksey. Aleksey, at least, admitted that
>"If your only success criteria is how well trademark policing is
>performed, then sure, we all failed..."
>
>More discussion.
>
>Around this time, one board member referred to below most certainly
>did characterize the "hammer-time" phrase as "premature and
>inflammatory". Others did not. To support that position I will add
>some cut/paste quotes from another director:
>
>  o Overall, there are a handful of issues here but they look to be easily
>fixable and - with a little education - preventable in the future.
>  o Given the numbers and seniority of DataStax employees involved with
>Apache Cassandra it is disappointing that these errors are being made
>but people make mistakes
>  o The lack of proactive policing of trademarks by the Cassandra
>PMC is what concerns me
>  o Given the history, I do think the board needs to take some form of
>action. It has been suggested that the board remove all DataStax
>employees from the PMC. I agree things are heading in that direction
>but
>I don't think we are there yet.
>
>It was after that that someone mentioned that they were on 3 PMC
>and never saw any mark issues with any PMCs other than
>Cassandra (this was a not a director speaking). That is when I
>replied w/ the "I've seen such issues..." response.
>
>Some take-aways:
>
> o Mark compliance issues have been ongoing for a long, long
>   time.
> o The PMC and its chair had been involved in these concerns
>   for a long, long time.
>
>Once all this was done, and this particular issue resolved. The final
>few Emails on the thread close it off with:
>
>  o Nobody has said commit privs should be removed. Some have discussed
>the potential of removing PMC responsibilities
>  o I would like to see some positive action from the Apache Cassandra
>PMC that they are working on managing this problem.
>  o We all seem to agree that the responsibility for enforcement falls
>first to the PMC, then on VP Branding, and then on the President.
>
>That is the saga of hammers.
>
>> On Nov 6, 2016, at 12:57 PM, Jeff Jirsa  wrote:
>> 
>> Now that I have clarity on what can and can't be relayed to the
>>community / dev@, I'm going to reply to this email, and then I suspect
>>I'm done for today, because I'd rather watch football than reply to this
>>anymore.
>> 
>> 
>> On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 6:30 AM, Mark Struberg
>> wrote:
>> Having a bit insight how the board operates (being PMC-chair for 2
>>other TLPs) I can ensure you that the board did handle this very cleanly!
>> 
>> 
>> I'm going to disagree with this, in a way I hope lets 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jim Jagielski]

Some clarification.

Basically, there had been issues w/ DataStax and the PMC for a long,
long time. It came somewhat to a head in Aug when there was
a PR/Email about the "Cassandra Summit" with nary a mention
of Apache at all. None.

This was after months and months in trying to get DataStax to
honor our marks. It was this final culmination which which
resulted in a board member saying "makes me want to jettison".
At which Jonathan Ellis expressed confusion on what the problem
was and asking about the context, oblivious to the concern. Someone
else noted that both the PMC and Cassandra had been "lectured" on
trademark violations before and said that "one would assume that
someone learned along the way." Someone then wondered whether
these recurring issues where due to some fault in the PMC or
just the normal, expect churn of their being a brand. He
further stated: "I don't see how we can make it the responsibility
of the PMC to catch these things". It was then noted that the
CTO of DataStax is the PMC Chair, as well as co-founder. There
was then further discussions and "education" on mark guidelines,
again, with Jake and Aleksey. Aleksey, at least, admitted that
"If your only success criteria is how well trademark policing is
performed, then sure, we all failed..."

More discussion.

Around this time, one board member referred to below most certainly
did characterize the "hammer-time" phrase as "premature and
inflammatory". Others did not. To support that position I will add
some cut/paste quotes from another director:

  o Overall, there are a handful of issues here but they look to be easily
fixable and - with a little education - preventable in the future.
  o Given the numbers and seniority of DataStax employees involved with
Apache Cassandra it is disappointing that these errors are being made
but people make mistakes
  o The lack of proactive policing of trademarks by the Cassandra
PMC is what concerns me
  o Given the history, I do think the board needs to take some form of
action. It has been suggested that the board remove all DataStax
employees from the PMC. I agree things are heading in that direction but
I don't think we are there yet.

It was after that that someone mentioned that they were on 3 PMC
and never saw any mark issues with any PMCs other than
Cassandra (this was a not a director speaking). That is when I
replied w/ the "I've seen such issues..." response.

Some take-aways:

 o Mark compliance issues have been ongoing for a long, long
   time.
 o The PMC and its chair had been involved in these concerns
   for a long, long time.

Once all this was done, and this particular issue resolved. The final
few Emails on the thread close it off with:

  o Nobody has said commit privs should be removed. Some have discussed the 
potential of removing PMC responsibilities
  o I would like to see some positive action from the Apache Cassandra PMC that 
they are working on managing this problem.
  o We all seem to agree that the responsibility for enforcement falls first to 
the PMC, then on VP Branding, and then on the President.

That is the saga of hammers.

> On Nov 6, 2016, at 12:57 PM, Jeff Jirsa  wrote:
> 
> Now that I have clarity on what can and can't be relayed to the community / 
> dev@, I'm going to reply to this email, and then I suspect I'm done for 
> today, because I'd rather watch football than reply to this anymore.
> 
> 
> On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 6:30 AM, Mark Struberg  
> wrote:
> Having a bit insight how the board operates (being PMC-chair for 2 other 
> TLPs) I can ensure you that the board did handle this very cleanly!
> 
> 
> I'm going to disagree with this, in a way I hope lets everyone see where 
> things went wrong, and more importantly, the path forward to fix them.
> 
> The board correctly identified that Datastax had a majority of the PMC and 
> could exert control.
> The board correctly identified that Datastax violated trademark policies 
> (multiple times).
> The board correctly identified that the PMC was not adequately policing 
> Datastax (or really anyone, there were plenty of trademark issues to go 
> around).
> 
> The board appears to have incorrectly attributed the lack of policing to the 
> fact that Datastax controlled the PMC. This is an honest mistake. The real 
> blame lies somewhere closer to a lack of understanding of responsibilities, 
> and a lack of visibility into what other parts of Datastax were doing.
> 
> It's clear I'm not alone in this conclusion - you seem to say the same thing:
>  
> 
> PS: I strongly believe that the technical people at DataStax really tried to 
> do their best but got out-maneuvered by their marketing and sales people. The 
> current step was just part of a clean separation btw a company and their OSS 
> contributions. It was legally necessary and also important for the overall 
> Cassandra community!
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, when faced with an 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jim Jagielski]

And, as a reminder, this is my email in its entirety. Note
how when show in full, it is hardly the nefarious posting
one would have assumed from the small cutting shared so far.

"""

I've seen such issues come up before...

The problem is not, per se, that the issues pop up; it happens and
sometimes companies and their marketing/PR department just don't
grok how to use the Apache marks the way they should.

What IS a problem is when the PMC is lax in handling these issues
and especially when the company responsible also is "over-represented"
in the PMC itself.

In all cases, it is the company that is over-represented which should
be the leading, guiding example on how to do things right; they are
the company which should least likely have these issues and, when they
do pop up, be the most aggressive and active in getting these resolved.

Experience has shown that Datastax fails in these expectations very,
very frequently.

Now if the PMC cannot "reign in" Datastax, then the board will; but
the board's reaction will not be subtle. It will not be nuanced. The
board is a hammer, not a scalpel.

"""

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jeff Jirsa]

Now that I have clarity on what can and can't be relayed to the community /
dev@, I'm going to reply to this email, and then I suspect I'm done for
today, because I'd rather watch football than reply to this anymore.


On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 6:30 AM, Mark Struberg 
wrote:

> Having a bit insight how the board operates (being PMC-chair for 2 other
> TLPs) I can ensure you that the board did handle this very cleanly!
>
>
I'm going to disagree with this, in a way I hope lets everyone see where
things went wrong, and more importantly, the path forward to fix them.

The board correctly identified that Datastax had a majority of the PMC and
could exert control.
The board correctly identified that Datastax violated trademark policies
(multiple times).
The board correctly identified that the PMC was not adequately policing
Datastax (or really anyone, there were plenty of trademark issues to go
around).

The board appears to have incorrectly attributed the lack of policing to
the fact that Datastax controlled the PMC. This is an honest mistake. The
real blame lies somewhere closer to a lack of understanding of
responsibilities, and a lack of visibility into what other parts of
Datastax were doing.

It's clear I'm not alone in this conclusion - you seem to say the same
thing:


>
> PS: I strongly believe that the technical people at DataStax really tried
> to do their best but got out-maneuvered by their marketing and sales
> people. The current step was just part of a clean separation btw a company
> and their OSS contributions. It was legally necessary and also important
> for the overall Cassandra community!
>
>
Unfortunately, when faced with an example of a trademark issue, there were
two very senior members who replied with very hostile, unprofessional
responses. One forwarded the example to board@ and private@ with a blanket
statement about wanting to "jettison every single Datastax employee from
the Apache Cassandra PMC". Another replied with "hammer time?", and
 youtube links to Game of Thrones clips were sent. One member of the board
(properly, in my opinion) noted that their reactions were premature and
inflammatory. Other members of the ASF noted (correctly) that in any
sufficiently large organization, it takes process and time to make sure
marketing is aware of policies, and the fact that no such process exists
isn't cause to jettison the PMC, but it should be something that is
corrected.

What didn't happen, though, was any admission or acknowledgement that the
premature and inflammatory behavior was wrong on the part of the very
senior, very vocal folks that said it. Instead, they've continued making
inflammatory comments - often because problems continue to happen where
they need to be involved, but the tone is such that it's very easy to
interpret it as hostile, which makes it very difficult to keep peace in the
community.

It's often said that when the board acts, they act as a sledgehammer
because they have no scalpel. That's true, but the board never actually
swung the sledgehammer - they threatened it, but they never needed to
jettison every Datastax employee from the PMC, because the Datastax
employees actively worked in good faith to correct problems. Sometimes that
work was insufficient, and sometimes the PMC as a whole is less responsive
than we should be (because many of us are still learning). We (the PMC)
have been fairly open about acknowleding our shortcomings, and working to
correct them.

Unfortunately, while there was acknowledgement from the board that the PMC
acted to correct problems (visible in the minutes, we're TRYING to do
better), there's never been an acknowledgement that members of the board
acted inappropriately - there was, at most, a single statement that it was
out of frustration (which appears to be a half-acknowledgement that it may
be out of line, but nowhere near an apology for being out of line).

I can't speak for Datastax, but if I were in their shoes, and someone
threatened to jettison me from the PMC for something I had no prior
knowledge of, and then continued to act in an aggressive manner without
ever acknowledging that they, too, were wrong, I would also distance myself
from that group - not a "take my ball and go home" mentality, but a "these
people act in ways that I don't understand, they seem overly hostile, and I
should protect myself from them". What's frustrating is that it appears, in
many ways, that basic empathy and professionalism on the part of the ASF
board members could have potentially prevented this situation entirely. I
suspect that members of the ASF who believe the board handled this cleanly
re-evaluate that assertion, and ask themselves whether board members acted
with empathy, friendliness, and professionalism in their communication with
Datastax.

If the members of the board take that recommendation to heart, and re-read
threads on private@ in an objective manner, and agree with my assertion
that they have 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Łukasz Dywicki]

Dear Jeff and discussion participants,
Plase find my replies in line.

> From Jeff Jirsa  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 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Aleksey Yeschenko]

I’d say they are interwoven with inappropriate passages that should have never 
been typed,
and *all of them* came from ASF board members.

I feel like it would be in the interest of Apache Cassandra, and the greater 
Apache community,
to expose the way the board treats its volunteer PMC and committers - with no 
class, gratitude,
or any resemblance of professionalism one would normally expect from persons in 
such a role.

I’m one of the participants of those threads, and I have no objections to them 
being published as is.
Maybe doing so would make certain people think about what they type before they 
hit ‘Send’,
and show some respect to Apache volunteers in the future?

-- 
AY

On 5 November 2016 at 18:47:44, Marvin Humphrey (mar...@rectangular.com) wrote:

The recent conversations which took place on private lists regarding the 
Cassandra community are interwoven with passages which ought to stay private. 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Edward Capriolo]

On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 12:37 PM, Jeff Jirsa  wrote:

> My first reaction to seeing this come in was to laugh - not because it's
> funny, but because the only other thing I could think to do was cry. You've
> misinterpreted or misunderstood almost everything in this post, and instead
> of reflecting on your side of the interaction, you've attributed the
> outcome to selfishness on the opposite side.
>
> First, let's set aside tinkerpop. This is a Cassandra list, let's focus on
> Cassandra. Different committers, different PMCs, different project.
>
> 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.
> 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? 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.
>
> You then *materially mischaracterize* the interaction "Whole discussion
> 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*."
>
> 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.
>
> Here's an example where code was backported to a stable release against
> typical convention (new features don't go into stable releases)
> specifically to enable Stratio not to fork:
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-8717
> Here's an example where Datastax committers not only reached out to Stratio
> to ensure that their software would be compatible with the upcoming major
> engine rewrite, but actually did the engineering work to ensure
> compatibility FOR them: https://issues.apache.org/
> jira/browse/CASSANDRA-9459
> (note that it was designed by Datastax employed committers FOR Stratio, and
> that the patch came from Datastax  committers).
>
> 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 then assert that communication with former employees indicates that
> collaboration with the cassandra team was hard. Easy/Hard is subjective,
> but what I suggest is that collaboration with the former-apache-cassandra
> team at Datastax requires folks to conform to the open source workflow -
> Datastax teams didn't get to short-cut the process and push features into
> the DB, they had to open tickets and get code reviewed just like everyone
> else. That's how things are SUPPOSED to work. Is it more difficult than
> sending a patch and having 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Marvin Humphrey]

On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 7:44 AM, Benedict Elliott Smith
 wrote:
>  All I am demanding is that these "not public" actions be made
> "open" and public, inline with ASF ideals.

All of us on the Board feel very strongly about conversations happening in
public -- in harmony with ASF ideals, the will of the Members who elect us,
and the sentiments of the wider Apache community.

In fact, a staple of Board's oversight activities is to scan private lists
periodically looking for conversations that didn't need to be private and then
to remind the participants that such conversations need to be shunted onto
public lists.

However, there is a limited selection of topics which are appropriate for the
private lists: primarily those relating to open security issues, certain legal
concerns, and personnel. People who have access to those conversations
are expected to keep them in confidence.

The recent conversations which took place on private lists regarding the
Cassandra community are interwoven with passages which ought to stay private.
It would extraordinary and inappropriate to simply make them public.

Please bear in mind that there are actually several hundred people from a wide
variety of backgrounds who subscribe to the ostensibly "private"
board@apache list, so "private" is relative and the activities of the
ASF Board are in fact overwatched by many conscientious and unshrinking
participants.  Furthermore, although there are not as many subscribers to the
private@cassandra list, there are still hundreds of people with access to its
archives.

I am happy to state that a principle concern of mine as a Board member is
ensuring that our projects are governed by independent individuals and that no
one company exercises undue influence.  This is imperative because vendor
neutrality is fundamental to the ASF's value proposition, because it is a
legal requirement of our status as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity, and because
it has proven incredibly successful over time at fostering vibrant
communities who produce great software.

The principle of project independence applies to all Apache projects and
requires ongoing effort by our PMCs.  The wider Cassandra community should
look to the Cassandra PMC as the entity primarily responsible for upholding
this crucial principle.

Marvin Humphrey

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Ross Gardler]

Jim already replied but I want to remove any doubt...

If members of this community are unaware of the actions of the board in 
relation to this project it is a failing of the PMC not the board. See Jim's 
email for more...

---
Twitter: @rgardler


From: Benedict Elliott Smith <bened...@apache.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 5, 2016 5:12:18 AM
To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
Cc: bo...@apache.org; Łukasz Dywicki; Chris Mattmann; Kelly Sommers; Jim 
Jagielski
Subject: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

I would hope the board would engage with criticism substantively, and that 
"long emails" to boards@ would be responded to on their merit, without a 
grassroots effort to apply pressure.

In lieu of that, it is very hard for the community to "speak with one voice" 
because we do not know what actions the board has undertaken.  This is at odds 
with "The Apache Way" core tenet of Openness.

The actions I have seen on the public fora by both Chris and Mark make me doubt 
the actions in private were reasonable.

I reiterate that the board should make all of its discussions about DataStax, 
particularly those with the PMC-private list, public.  Otherwise the community 
cannot perform the function you ask.




On 5 November 2016 at 03:08, Ross Gardler <ross.gard...@microsoft.com> wrote:
[In the mail below I try not to cast judgement, I do not know enough of the 
background to have an opinion on this specific situation. My comments are in 
response to the question “Where are the board's guidelines then, or do they 
make it up as they go?”.]

The boards guidelines are the Apache Way. This is a fluid thing that adapts to 
individual project needs but has a few common pillars in all projects, e.g. PMC 
is responsible for community health and PMC members are expected to act as 
individuals in the interest of the community. The board is empowered, by the 
ASF membership (individuals with merit) to take any action necessary to ensure 
a PMC is carrying out its duty.

If a PMC is being ineffective then the board only has blunt instruments to work 
with. Their actions appear to cut deep because they have no scalpel with which 
to work. The scalpel should be in the hands of the PMC, but by definition if 
the board intervenes the PMC is failing to use the scalpel.

So how do we identify appropriate action? Well I can tell you that any action 
of the board will result in more dissatisfied PMC members than satisfied ones. 
This is because, by definition, if the board are acting it is because the PMC 
is failing in its duty to build a vendor neutral and healthy community. The 
measure is whether the broader community feel that the board are acting in 
their best interests – including those who have not been given the privilege of 
merit (yes, PMC membership and committership is a privilege not a right).

This is not to say the board are incapable of making a mistake. They are 9 
humans after all. However, I can assure you (based on painful experience) that 
getting 9 humans to agree to use a blunt instrument that will make a mess in 
the short term is extremely hard. That’s why we have a board of 9 rather than 5 
(or any other smaller number) it minimizes the chances of error. It’s also why 
the board is usually slower to move than one might expect.

However, should the board make a mistake the correct action is to get the 
community as a whole to express their concern. Demonstrate that the community, 
as a whole, feels that the board acted inappropriately. Don’t waste time with 
long emails to board@. The people here trust in the process and the board. We 
don’t know what’s been happening inside your project, we don’t pass judgement. 
To make us care you must have your community speak with one voice. Demonstrate 
that you have consensus around your opinions. Then, and only then, will the 
membership - the people who vote for the board and hold them accountable – 
accept your argument that the board have acted inappropriately.

Ross

From: Benedict Elliott Smith [mailto:bened...@apache.org]
Sent: Friday, November 4, 2016 7:08 PM
To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
Cc: Apache Board <bo...@apache.org>; Łukasz Dywicki <l...@code-house.org>; 
Chris Mattmann <mattm...@apache.org>; Kelly Sommers <kell.somm...@gmail.com>; 
Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com>
Subject: Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

Where are the board's guidelines then, or do they make it up as they go? Flame 
wars are a risk of every public forum and discussion, and doing everything in 
public is one of the tenets of the ASF.

Jim Jagielski stated to me on twitter that a bare minimum of discussions happen 
in private, and did not list this as one of the exceptions, despite it being 
the context. His statement was inline with the link I provided, and he is a 
board member.  So ostensibly a board member agrees, at least in principle.

Regardless, the issue in

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jeff Jirsa]

My first reaction to seeing this come in was to laugh - not because it's
funny, but because the only other thing I could think to do was cry. You've
misinterpreted or misunderstood almost everything in this post, and instead
of reflecting on your side of the interaction, you've attributed the
outcome to selfishness on the opposite side.

First, let's set aside tinkerpop. This is a Cassandra list, let's focus on
Cassandra. Different committers, different PMCs, different project.

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.
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? 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.

You then *materially mischaracterize* the interaction "Whole discussion
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*."

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.

Here's an example where code was backported to a stable release against
typical convention (new features don't go into stable releases)
specifically to enable Stratio not to fork:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-8717
Here's an example where Datastax committers not only reached out to Stratio
to ensure that their software would be compatible with the upcoming major
engine rewrite, but actually did the engineering work to ensure
compatibility FOR them: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-9459
(note that it was designed by Datastax employed committers FOR Stratio, and
that the patch came from Datastax  committers).

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 then assert that communication with former employees indicates that
collaboration with the cassandra team was hard. Easy/Hard is subjective,
but what I suggest is that collaboration with the former-apache-cassandra
team at Datastax requires folks to conform to the open source workflow -
Datastax teams didn't get to short-cut the process and push features into
the DB, they had to open tickets and get code reviewed just like everyone
else. That's how things are SUPPOSED to work. Is it more difficult than
sending a patch and having someone ninja it in? Absolutely. Does the team
of committers have fairly high standard as to what code they'll accept?
Absolutely. Is the bar TOO high? It's a distributed system with a lot of
nuanced edge cases, a lot of us 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Benedict Elliott Smith]

Thanks Jeff, that was very well put.

I would quibble on one point, though: the ship has never sailed on topics
of community.  How the board acts towards the PMC and companies in the
community matters a great deal for continuing relations, as well as for
other projects.

The question is: did the board members all behave in a manner that the PMC
felt was reasonable and impartial?  What I saw suggested they did not; if
the PMC members agree, then perhaps the discussions should be made public*
so the community can decide their view.  Because if it is the case, that is
a *serious* problem the ASF needs to address.  The board must be held to an
even higher standard than the PMCs it governs.

*as the board appears to have just invested you with the authority to do,
if Jim is to be believed.

On 5 November 2016 at 15:33, Jeff Jirsa  wrote:

> I'm going to attempt to give the most complete answer I can without
> posting comments that were said with the expectation of privacy - it's not
> my place to violate that expectation. Some things discussed here are things
> I wouldn't typically mention in public (notably the topic of trademark
> compliance), but since it has already been mentioned by others and posted
> in the minutes, I'm going to be as open and compete as I can for the sake
> of the community.
>
> For the record and for context, I'm a member of the PMC, voted into the
> PMC fairly recently, but neither a Datastax employee nor customer.
>
> The ASF has very strict guidelines in the way they expect projects to be
> run. Some of these guidelines are hard legal requirements (protecting brand
> trademarks), some are designed to protect the health of the project
> (ensuring diverse contributors, lack of control by a single corporate
> entity).
>
> For a very long time, the most active committers and PMC members were
> Datastax employees - as full time sponsored contributors, they drove the
> vast majority of features. In addition to sponsoring the full time
> contributors, Datastax also actively tried to grow the community - for
> their business to grow, they need adoption of Apache Cassandra, so they
> spent a lot of time and money actively trying to find more contributors and
> creating opportunities for people to learn about Cassandra.
>
> Unfortunately, two unrelated problems arose.
>
> First, apparently, folks like Lucasz'  frustration and decisions like not
> wanting to have in-tree drivers are misinterpreted (in my opinion) as
> inappropriate control. Additionally, the Apache Way calls for decisions to
> be made In public, where a record exists. Some (many?) decisions were
> happening in places like IRC (real time collaboration among full time
> developers) which, while not hidden or private, wasn't logged (it is now)
> and wasn't necessarily obvious to casual observers. While I'll respond to
> Lucasz's email directly in a moment (I find many parts of it incorrect),
> the APPEARANCE for people only barely familiar with the project is that
> Datastax was likely inappropriately controlling the project, a violation of
> ASF guidelines.
>
> Second, some of what Datastax perceived as well intentioned community
> building occasionally violated trademark guidelines. I suspect the most
> likely cause is that marketing materials were written by marketing folks
> who don't understand trademark law. This isn't subjective. The active
> members of the PMC (which, at the time, were primarily Datastax employees)
> ARE responsible for policing trademark and MUST (unambiguously) correct
> misuse - that didn't happen as often as it should have. My opinion is that
> it didn't happen because the PMC was heads down on code and focusing on the
> database, not the marketing, but that's not an acceptable answer.
>
> The combination of these two factors causes the ASF to become involved.
> Apache Cassandra isn't alone here - other big data platforms of various
> shapes are also having similar interactions with the ASF, likely for
> similar reasons. There has been (and will continue to be) communication to
> ensure that ASF trademarks are respected and that Datastax doesn't exert
> undue control over the project. That communication was not a one time
> message - it was back and forth communication for quite some time at the
> PMC level.
>
> Factual objective background out of the way, I'll switch to opinion and
> speculation.
>
> Because this isn't an isolated case (ASF has to deal with multiple
> projects having similar issues) and everyone involved has strong opinions
> that they're acting in the best interest of the project, I SUSPECT that
> frustration runs high, tempers are short, and occasionally things are said
> that shouldn't be said - some of which one may classify as "prematurely
> inflammatory". This serve[s|d] to drive a wedge between two groups that
> nominally have the same goal - a strong Apache Cassandra project.
>
> Ultimately, Datastax has an obligation to their investors to make money
> and 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jeremy Hanna]

Ultimately it doesn't matter now. The project has a bright future with the 
involvement of all individuals regardless of the company they work for. That's 
the important thing.

> On Nov 5, 2016, at 10:30 AM, Jeremy Hanna  wrote:
> 
> No it wasn't. You're citing the eventual and agreed upon outcome. I was 
> talking about the approach which is clear in the dev and user list threads 
> that the board was involved in. It is also apparently much more apparent in 
> the private threads which apparently the PMC can make public.
> 
>> On Nov 5, 2016, at 10:02 AM, Jim Jagielski  wrote:
>> 
>> Which is what was done: 
>> https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/Cassandra.html
>> 
>>> On Nov 5, 2016, at 10:48 AM, Jeremy Hanna  
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> If the ASF is at risk with a single company allowed to dominate a project 
>>> then why couldn't the approach have been something like: "great job on 
>>> building a successful project and community. We think there is great 
>>> potential for more involvement at the core contribution level. How can we 
>>> work together to augment the existing efforts to encourage contribution and 
>>> bring in new contributors? By the way here are a couple of policy and 
>>> trademark things that we need to get fixed."
>>> 
>>> I didn't understand the assumption that DataStax was doing something 
>>> nefarious nor the approach that was taken.  On a personal note I had tried 
>>> to ask about evidence and the approach previously but was ignored: 
>>> https://www.mail-archive.com/dev@cassandra.apache.org/msg09101.html  
>>> Perhaps that was due to the volume of messages on that thread but I don't 
>>> feel those questions were ever addressed.
>>> 
>>> Regardless, I see a positive way forward for the project and am grateful to 
>>> everyone working towards that.
>>> 
>> 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jeff Jirsa]

I'm going to attempt to give the most complete answer I can without posting 
comments that were said with the expectation of privacy - it's not my place to 
violate that expectation. Some things discussed here are things I wouldn't 
typically mention in public (notably the topic of trademark compliance), but 
since it has already been mentioned by others and posted in the minutes, I'm 
going to be as open and compete as I can for the sake of the community. 

For the record and for context, I'm a member of the PMC, voted into the PMC 
fairly recently, but neither a Datastax employee nor customer.

The ASF has very strict guidelines in the way they expect projects to be run. 
Some of these guidelines are hard legal requirements (protecting brand 
trademarks), some are designed to protect the health of the project (ensuring 
diverse contributors, lack of control by a single corporate entity).

For a very long time, the most active committers and PMC members were Datastax 
employees - as full time sponsored contributors, they drove the vast majority 
of features. In addition to sponsoring the full time contributors, Datastax 
also actively tried to grow the community - for their business to grow, they 
need adoption of Apache Cassandra, so they spent a lot of time and money 
actively trying to find more contributors and creating opportunities for people 
to learn about Cassandra.

Unfortunately, two unrelated problems arose.

First, apparently, folks like Lucasz'  frustration and decisions like not 
wanting to have in-tree drivers are misinterpreted (in my opinion) as 
inappropriate control. Additionally, the Apache Way calls for decisions to be 
made In public, where a record exists. Some (many?) decisions were happening in 
places like IRC (real time collaboration among full time developers) which, 
while not hidden or private, wasn't logged (it is now) and wasn't necessarily 
obvious to casual observers. While I'll respond to Lucasz's email directly in a 
moment (I find many parts of it incorrect), the APPEARANCE for people only 
barely familiar with the project is that Datastax was likely inappropriately 
controlling the project, a violation of ASF guidelines.

Second, some of what Datastax perceived as well intentioned community building 
occasionally violated trademark guidelines. I suspect the most likely cause is 
that marketing materials were written by marketing folks who don't understand 
trademark law. This isn't subjective. The active members of the PMC (which, at 
the time, were primarily Datastax employees) ARE responsible for policing 
trademark and MUST (unambiguously) correct misuse - that didn't happen as often 
as it should have. My opinion is that it didn't happen because the PMC was 
heads down on code and focusing on the database, not the marketing, but that's 
not an acceptable answer. 

The combination of these two factors causes the ASF to become involved. Apache 
Cassandra isn't alone here - other big data platforms of various shapes are 
also having similar interactions with the ASF, likely for similar reasons. 
There has been (and will continue to be) communication to ensure that ASF 
trademarks are respected and that Datastax doesn't exert undue control over the 
project. That communication was not a one time message - it was back and forth 
communication for quite some time at the PMC level. 

Factual objective background out of the way, I'll switch to opinion and 
speculation. 

Because this isn't an isolated case (ASF has to deal with multiple projects 
having similar issues) and everyone involved has strong opinions that they're 
acting in the best interest of the project, I SUSPECT that frustration runs 
high, tempers are short, and occasionally things are said that shouldn't be 
said - some of which one may classify as "prematurely inflammatory". This 
serve[s|d] to drive a wedge between two groups that nominally have the same 
goal - a strong Apache Cassandra project. 

Ultimately, Datastax has an obligation to their investors to make money and the 
ASF has a mission of protecting it's project (where project includes the 
intellectual property, Apache Cassandra codebase and websites, mailing lists 
and community as a whole). It's apparent that some of the communication has 
caused Datastax to re-evaluate it's level of involvement - no committers have 
been removed by the ASF, no members of the PMC have been removed, though we 
collectively have been (repeatedly) instructed to follow the Apache Way.

While I'm unable to tell you Datastax's exact motivation (again, not a Datastax 
employee), I suspect it's a combination of limiting liability, 
anger/frustration at some of the tone/messaging, and deciding not to give away 
expensive, difficult work for free. 

And that's what most of us hoped would not happen, but it'll be OK. 

Supporters on the ASF board and members of the ASF will say that The Apache Way 
exists to protect the project against exactly this type of 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jeremy Hanna]

No it wasn't. You're citing the eventual and agreed upon outcome. I was talking 
about the approach which is clear in the dev and user list threads that the 
board was involved in. It is also apparently much more apparent in the private 
threads which apparently the PMC can make public.

> On Nov 5, 2016, at 10:02 AM, Jim Jagielski  wrote:
> 
> Which is what was done: https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/Cassandra.html
> 
>> On Nov 5, 2016, at 10:48 AM, Jeremy Hanna  wrote:
>> 
>> If the ASF is at risk with a single company allowed to dominate a project 
>> then why couldn't the approach have been something like: "great job on 
>> building a successful project and community. We think there is great 
>> potential for more involvement at the core contribution level. How can we 
>> work together to augment the existing efforts to encourage contribution and 
>> bring in new contributors? By the way here are a couple of policy and 
>> trademark things that we need to get fixed."
>> 
>> I didn't understand the assumption that DataStax was doing something 
>> nefarious nor the approach that was taken.  On a personal note I had tried 
>> to ask about evidence and the approach previously but was ignored: 
>> https://www.mail-archive.com/dev@cassandra.apache.org/msg09101.html  Perhaps 
>> that was due to the volume of messages on that thread but I don't feel those 
>> questions were ever addressed.
>> 
>> Regardless, I see a positive way forward for the project and am grateful to 
>> everyone working towards that.
>> 
> 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jim Jagielski]

Which is what was done: https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/Cassandra.html

> On Nov 5, 2016, at 10:48 AM, Jeremy Hanna  wrote:
> 
> If the ASF is at risk with a single company allowed to dominate a project 
> then why couldn't the approach have been something like: "great job on 
> building a successful project and community. We think there is great 
> potential for more involvement at the core contribution level. How can we 
> work together to augment the existing efforts to encourage contribution and 
> bring in new contributors? By the way here are a couple of policy and 
> trademark things that we need to get fixed."
> 
> I didn't understand the assumption that DataStax was doing something 
> nefarious nor the approach that was taken.  On a personal note I had tried to 
> ask about evidence and the approach previously but was ignored: 
> https://www.mail-archive.com/dev@cassandra.apache.org/msg09101.html  Perhaps 
> that was due to the volume of messages on that thread but I don't feel those 
> questions were ever addressed.
> 
> Regardless, I see a positive way forward for the project and am grateful to 
> everyone working towards that.
> 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jim Jagielski]

Please note that, yes, at time, there are discussion between
the PMC and the board which are done either or the board@ list
or in "private" on private@.

This is between the board and the PMC, of course.

However, why does it fall to the *board* to then bring that
conversation to "the public". Shouldn't it, logically, fall
to the PMC? The board is "responsible" for the healthy
operation of the PMC, but the PMC is responsible for the
healthy running of the project and the community. If a
PMC is so dysfunctional that it neglects to involve *its
own community* in what is going on, then it kind of shows that
the PMC did have issues, doesn't it?

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jeff Jirsa]

I agree - thanks for sending it, Lukasz. I think we can use it as a great 
learning opportunity - because nearly every point you made I find to be 
factually and objectively wrong, and the fact that members of the ASF take it 
at face value is part of the problem - poorly informed opinions on complicated 
matters create the appearance of impropriety and malice, and that's unfortunate.

I'll go through some of the finer points in the near future as time permits.

> On Nov 4, 2016, at 5:14 PM, Chris Mattmann  wrote:
> 
> Thank you for sending this. I am not going to reply in depth now, but will do 
> so to Kelly and
> others over the weekend, but this is *precisely* the reason that I have been 
> so emphatic
> about trying to get the PMC to see the road they have already gone done and 
> the ship that
> has already set sail. 
> 
> Those not familiar with Lucene and its vote to merge Lucene/Solr may want to 
> Google the
> Apache archives around 2010 and see some of the effects of Individual 
> organizations and
> vendors driving supposedly vendor neutral Apache projects. It’s not even 
> conjecture at this
> point in Cassandra. The Board has acted as Greg referred to else-thread, and 
> we asked Jonathan & the
> PMC to find a new chair (rotation is healthy yes, but we also need the chair 
> to be the eyes 
> and ears of the Board and we asked for a change there). Mark Thomas from the 
> Apache Board
> also has a set of actions that he is working with the PMC having to do with 
> trademarks and
> other items to move towards more independent governance.
> 
> Your experience that you cite below Lukasz is precisely one I found in 
> Lucene/Solr, Hadoop, 
> Maven, and other projects. Sometimes the ship has been righted – for example 
> in all of these
> projects they have moved towards much more independent governance, welcoming 
> to contributors,
> and shared community for the project. However, in other cases (see IBATIS), 
> it didn’t work out, for
> various reasons including community issues, but also misunderstandings as to 
> the way that the 
> ASF works. I know my own experience of being an unpaid, occasional 
> contributor to some open
> source projects has put me to a disadvantage even in some ASF projects driven 
> by a single vendor.
> I’ve also been paid to work on open source (at the ASF and elsewhere) and in 
> doing so, been on the
> other side of the code. That’s why ASF projects and my own work in particular 
> I strive to try and 
> remain neutral and to address these types of issues by being welcoming, lower 
> the bar to committership
> and PMC, and moving “contributors” to having a vote/shared governance of the 
> project at the ASF.
> 
> Thanks for sending this email and your insights are welcome below. The Apache 
> Board should hear this
> too so I am CC’ing them.
> 
> Cheers,
> Chris
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 11/4/16, 5:03 PM, "Łukasz Dywicki"  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 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jeremy Hanna]

ndividual project needs but has a few common pillars in all projects, 
>>> e.g. PMC is responsible for community health and PMC members are expected 
>>> to act as individuals in the interest of the community. The board is 
>>> empowered, by the ASF membership (individuals with merit) to take any 
>>> action necessary to ensure a PMC is carrying out its duty.
>>> 
>>> If a PMC is being ineffective then the board only has blunt instruments to 
>>> work with. Their actions appear to cut deep because they have no scalpel 
>>> with which to work. The scalpel should be in the hands of the PMC, but by 
>>> definition if the board intervenes the PMC is failing to use the scalpel.
>>> 
>>> So how do we identify appropriate action? Well I can tell you that any 
>>> action of the board will result in more dissatisfied PMC members than 
>>> satisfied ones. This is because, by definition, if the board are acting it 
>>> is because the PMC is failing in its duty to build a vendor neutral and 
>>> healthy community. The measure is whether the broader community feel that 
>>> the board are acting in their best interests – including those who have not 
>>> been given the privilege of merit (yes, PMC membership and committership is 
>>> a privilege not a right).
>>> 
>>> This is not to say the board are incapable of making a mistake. They are 9 
>>> humans after all. However, I can assure you (based on painful experience) 
>>> that getting 9 humans to agree to use a blunt instrument that will make a 
>>> mess in the short term is extremely hard. That’s why we have a board of 9 
>>> rather than 5 (or any other smaller number) it minimizes the chances of 
>>> error. It’s also why the board is usually slower to move than one might 
>>> expect.
>>> 
>>> However, should the board make a mistake the correct action is to get the 
>>> community as a whole to express their concern. Demonstrate that the 
>>> community, as a whole, feels that the board acted inappropriately. Don’t 
>>> waste time with long emails to board@. The people here trust in the process 
>>> and the board. We don’t know what’s been happening inside your project, we 
>>> don’t pass judgement. To make us care you must have your community speak 
>>> with one voice. Demonstrate that you have consensus around your opinions. 
>>> Then, and only then, will the membership - the people who vote for the 
>>> board and hold them accountable – accept your argument that the board have 
>>> acted inappropriately.
>>> 
>>> Ross
>>> 
>>> From: Benedict Elliott Smith [mailto:bened...@apache.org]
>>> Sent: Friday, November 4, 2016 7:08 PM
>>> To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
>>> Cc: Apache Board <bo...@apache.org>; Łukasz Dywicki <l...@code-house.org>; 
>>> Chris Mattmann <mattm...@apache.org>; Kelly Sommers 
>>> <kell.somm...@gmail.com>; Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com>
>>> Subject: Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF
>>> 
>>> Where are the board's guidelines then, or do they make it up as they go? 
>>> Flame wars are a risk of every public forum and discussion, and doing 
>>> everything in public is one of the tenets of the ASF.
>>> 
>>> Jim Jagielski stated to me on twitter that a bare minimum of discussions 
>>> happen in private, and did not list this as one of the exceptions, despite 
>>> it being the context. His statement was inline with the link I provided, 
>>> and he is a board member.  So ostensibly a board member agrees, at least in 
>>> principle.
>>> 
>>> Regardless, the issue in question is if the board was sufficiently hostile 
>>> to DataStax for them to rationally and reasonably feel the correct course 
>>> of action was to mitigate their business risk exposure to the ASF board. It 
>>> seems to me that may well be the case, but we cannot know for sure because 
>>> the board was doing it behind closed doors despite members of the board 
>>> suggesting this isn't how things work.
>>> 
>>> Given this inconsistency, and the fact that Mark Thomas (a board member) 
>>> apparently hadn't even read the ASF guidelines before wantonly enforcing 
>>> them, and the composure of Chris, as pointed out by Russel, I think it is 
>>> reasonable to doubt the boards' credibility entirely.
>>> 
>>> So, I'm asking for clarity.  Preferably, a complete publication of the 
>>> discussions that happened in private on the topic

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Benedict Elliott Smith]

gt;>The actions I have seen on the public fora by both Chris and Mark make
> me doubt the actions in private were reasonable.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>I reiterate that the board should make all of its discussions about
> DataStax, particularly those with the PMC-private list, public.  Otherwise
> the community cannot perform the function you ask.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>On 5 November 2016 at 03:08, Ross Gardler <ross.gard...@microsoft.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>[In the mail below I try not to cast judgement, I do not know enough of
> the background to have an opinion on this specific situation. My comments
> are in response to the question “Where are the board's guidelines then, or
> do they make it up as they go?”.]
> >>>>
> >>>>The boards guidelines are the Apache Way. This is a fluid thing that
> adapts to individual project needs but has a few common pillars in all
> projects, e.g. PMC is responsible for community health and PMC members are
> expected to act as individuals in the interest of the community. The board
> is empowered, by the ASF membership (individuals with merit) to take any
> action necessary to ensure a PMC is carrying out its duty.
> >>>>
> >>>>If a PMC is being ineffective then the board only has blunt
> instruments to work with. Their actions appear to cut deep because they
> have no scalpel with which to work. The scalpel should be in the hands of
> the PMC, but by definition if the board intervenes the PMC is failing to
> use the scalpel.
> >>>>
> >>>>So how do we identify appropriate action? Well I can tell you that any
> action of the board will result in more dissatisfied PMC members than
> satisfied ones. This is because, by definition, if the board are acting it
> is because the PMC is failing in its duty to build a vendor neutral and
> healthy community. The measure is whether the broader community feel that
> the board are acting in their best interests – including those who have not
> been given the privilege of merit (yes, PMC membership and committership is
> a privilege not a right).
> >>>>
> >>>>This is not to say the board are incapable of making a mistake. They
> are 9 humans after all. However, I can assure you (based on painful
> experience) that getting 9 humans to agree to use a blunt instrument that
> will make a mess in the short term is extremely hard. That’s why we have a
> board of 9 rather than 5 (or any other smaller number) it minimizes the
> chances of error. It’s also why the board is usually slower to move than
> one might expect.
> >>>>
> >>>>However, should the board make a mistake the correct action is to get
> the community as a whole to express their concern. Demonstrate that the
> community, as a whole, feels that the board acted inappropriately. Don’t
> waste time with long emails to board@. The people here trust in the
> process and the board. We don’t know what’s been happening inside your
> project, we don’t pass judgement. To make us care you must have your
> community speak with one voice. Demonstrate that you have consensus around
> your opinions. Then, and only then, will the membership - the people who
> vote for the board and hold them accountable – accept your argument that
> the board have acted inappropriately.
> >>>>
> >>>>Ross
> >>>>
> >>>>From: Benedict Elliott Smith [mailto:bened...@apache.org]
> >>>>Sent: Friday, November 4, 2016 7:08 PM
> >>>>To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
> >>>>Cc: Apache Board <bo...@apache.org>; Łukasz Dywicki <
> l...@code-house.org>; Chris Mattmann <mattm...@apache.org>; Kelly Sommers
> <kell.somm...@gmail.com>; Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com>
> >>>>Subject: Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF
> >>>>
> >>>>Where are the board's guidelines then, or do they make it up as they
> go? Flame wars are a risk of every public forum and discussion, and doing
> everything in public is one of the tenets of the ASF.
> >>>>
> >>>>Jim Jagielski stated to me on twitter that a bare minimum of
> discussions happen in private, and did not list this as one of the
> exceptions, despite it being the context. His statement was inline with the
> link I provided, and he is a board member.  So ostensibly a board member
> agrees, at least in principle.
> >>>>
> >>>>Regardless, the issu

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Mark Struberg]

ey 
>>>make it up as they go?”.]
>>>>
>>>>The boards guidelines are the Apache Way. This is a fluid thing that adapts 
>>>>to individual project needs but has a few common pillars in all projects, 
>>>>e.g. PMC is responsible for community health and PMC members are expected 
>>>>to act as individuals in the interest of the community. The board is 
>>>>empowered, by the ASF membership (individuals with merit) to take any 
>>>>action necessary to ensure a PMC is carrying out its duty.
>>>>
>>>>If a PMC is being ineffective then the board only has blunt instruments to 
>>>>work with. Their actions appear to cut deep because they have no scalpel 
>>>>with which to work. The scalpel should be in the hands of the PMC, but by 
>>>>definition if the board intervenes the PMC is failing to use the scalpel.
>>>>
>>>>So how do we identify appropriate action? Well I can tell you that any 
>>>>action of the board will result in more dissatisfied PMC members than 
>>>>satisfied ones. This is because, by definition, if the board are acting it 
>>>>is because the PMC is failing in its duty to build a vendor neutral and 
>>>>healthy community. The measure is whether the broader community feel that 
>>>>the board are acting in their best interests – including those who have not 
>>>>been given the privilege of merit (yes, PMC membership and committership is 
>>>>a privilege not a right).
>>>>
>>>>This is not to say the board are incapable of making a mistake. They are 9 
>>>>humans after all. However, I can assure you (based on painful experience) 
>>>>that getting 9 humans to agree to use a blunt instrument that will make a 
>>>>mess in the short term is extremely hard. That’s why we have a board of 9 
>>>>rather than 5 (or any other smaller number) it minimizes the chances of 
>>>>error. It’s also why the board is usually slower to move than one might 
>>>>expect.
>>>>
>>>>However, should the board make a mistake the correct action is to get the 
>>>>community as a whole to express their concern. Demonstrate that the 
>>>>community, as a whole, feels that the board acted inappropriately. Don’t 
>>>>waste time with long emails to board@. The people here trust in the process 
>>>>and the board. We don’t know what’s been happening inside your project, we 
>>>>don’t pass judgement. To make us care you must have your community speak 
>>>>with one voice. Demonstrate that you have consensus around your opinions. 
>>>>Then, and only then, will the membership - the people who vote for the 
>>>>board and hold them accountable – accept your argument that the board have 
>>>>acted inappropriately.
>>>>
>>>>Ross
>>>>
>>>>From: Benedict Elliott Smith [mailto:bened...@apache.org]
>>>>Sent: Friday, November 4, 2016 7:08 PM
>>>>To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
>>>>Cc: Apache Board <bo...@apache.org>; Łukasz Dywicki <l...@code-house.org>; 
>>>>Chris Mattmann <mattm...@apache.org>; Kelly Sommers 
>>>><kell.somm...@gmail.com>; Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com>
>>>>Subject: Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF
>>>>
>>>>Where are the board's guidelines then, or do they make it up as they go? 
>>>>Flame wars are a risk of every public forum and discussion, and doing 
>>>>everything in public is one of the tenets of the ASF.
>>>>
>>>>Jim Jagielski stated to me on twitter that a bare minimum of discussions 
>>>>happen in private, and did not list this as one of the exceptions, despite 
>>>>it being the context. His statement was inline with the link I provided, 
>>>>and he is a board member.  So ostensibly a board member agrees, at least in 
>>>>principle.
>>>>
>>>>Regardless, the issue in question is if the board was sufficiently hostile 
>>>>to DataStax for them to rationally and reasonably feel the correct course 
>>>>of action was to mitigate their business risk exposure to the ASF board. It 
>>>>seems to me that may well be the case, but we cannot know for sure because 
>>>>the board was doing it behind closed doors despite members of the board 
>>>>suggesting this isn't how things work.
>>>>
>>>>Given this inconsistency, and the fact that Mark Thomas (a board member) 
>>>>apparently hadn't eve

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Benedict Elliott Smith]

gt;So how do we identify appropriate action? Well I can tell you that any
> action of the board will result in more dissatisfied PMC members than
> satisfied ones. This is because, by definition, if the board are acting it
> is because the PMC is failing in its duty to build a vendor neutral and
> healthy community. The measure is whether the broader community feel that
> the board are acting in their best interests – including those who have not
> been given the privilege of merit (yes, PMC membership and committership is
> a privilege not a right).
> >>
> >>This is not to say the board are incapable of making a mistake. They are
> 9 humans after all. However, I can assure you (based on painful experience)
> that getting 9 humans to agree to use a blunt instrument that will make a
> mess in the short term is extremely hard. That’s why we have a board of 9
> rather than 5 (or any other smaller number) it minimizes the chances of
> error. It’s also why the board is usually slower to move than one might
> expect.
> >>
> >>However, should the board make a mistake the correct action is to get
> the community as a whole to express their concern. Demonstrate that the
> community, as a whole, feels that the board acted inappropriately. Don’t
> waste time with long emails to board@. The people here trust in the
> process and the board. We don’t know what’s been happening inside your
> project, we don’t pass judgement. To make us care you must have your
> community speak with one voice. Demonstrate that you have consensus around
> your opinions. Then, and only then, will the membership - the people who
> vote for the board and hold them accountable – accept your argument that
> the board have acted inappropriately.
> >>
> >>Ross
> >>
> >>From: Benedict Elliott Smith [mailto:bened...@apache.org]
> >>Sent: Friday, November 4, 2016 7:08 PM
> >>To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
> >>Cc: Apache Board <bo...@apache.org>; Łukasz Dywicki <l...@code-house.org>;
> Chris Mattmann <mattm...@apache.org>; Kelly Sommers <
> kell.somm...@gmail.com>; Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com>
> >>Subject: Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF
> >>
> >>Where are the board's guidelines then, or do they make it up as they go?
> Flame wars are a risk of every public forum and discussion, and doing
> everything in public is one of the tenets of the ASF.
> >>
> >>Jim Jagielski stated to me on twitter that a bare minimum of discussions
> happen in private, and did not list this as one of the exceptions, despite
> it being the context. His statement was inline with the link I provided,
> and he is a board member.  So ostensibly a board member agrees, at least in
> principle.
> >>
> >>Regardless, the issue in question is if the board was sufficiently
> hostile to DataStax for them to rationally and reasonably feel the correct
> course of action was to mitigate their business risk exposure to the ASF
> board. It seems to me that may well be the case, but we cannot know for
> sure because the board was doing it behind closed doors despite members of
> the board suggesting this isn't how things work.
> >>
> >>Given this inconsistency, and the fact that Mark Thomas (a board member)
> apparently hadn't even read the ASF guidelines before wantonly enforcing
> them, and the composure of Chris, as pointed out by Russel, I think it is
> reasonable to doubt the boards' credibility entirely.
> >>
> >>So, I'm asking for clarity.  Preferably, a complete publication of the
> discussions that happened in private on the topic.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>On Saturday, 5 November 2016, Tom Barber <tom.bar...@meteorite.bi o:tom.bar...@meteorite.bi>> wrote:
> >>You know you've linked to a PMC page, when the board isn't a PMC? For
> >>example, board member a, thinks project X isn't doing things correctly
> and
> >>their first course of action is to post notes on a public development
> >>mailing list? You'd have arguments and flame wars left right and centre.
> >>
> >>Having watched the discussion unfolding, whilst some discussion clearly
> >>went on on a private mailing list, the details pertinent to the PMC  were
> >>made available and I believe they were CC'd pretty regularly.
> >>
> >>I won't answer directly for the board for #2, but I suspect the answer
> >>would be, Cassandra has been through the incubation phase, so the PMC
> >>should understand how the project should be run, its not the boards job
> to
> >&g

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Mark Struberg]

umans to agree to use a blunt instrument that will make a 
>>mess in the short term is extremely hard. That’s why we have a board of 9 
>>rather than 5 (or any other smaller number) it minimizes the chances of 
>>error. It’s also why the board is usually slower to move than one might 
>>expect.
>>
>>However, should the board make a mistake the correct action is to get the 
>>community as a whole to express their concern. Demonstrate that the 
>>community, as a whole, feels that the board acted inappropriately. Don’t 
>>waste time with long emails to board@. The people here trust in the process 
>>and the board. We don’t know what’s been happening inside your project, we 
>>don’t pass judgement. To make us care you must have your community speak with 
>>one voice. Demonstrate that you have consensus around your opinions. Then, 
>>and only then, will the membership - the people who vote for the board and 
>>hold them accountable – accept your argument that the board have acted 
>>inappropriately.
>>
>>Ross
>>
>>From: Benedict Elliott Smith [mailto:bened...@apache.org]
>>Sent: Friday, November 4, 2016 7:08 PM
>>To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
>>Cc: Apache Board <bo...@apache.org>; Łukasz Dywicki <l...@code-house.org>; 
>>Chris Mattmann <mattm...@apache.org>; Kelly Sommers <kell.somm...@gmail.com>; 
>>Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com>
>>Subject: Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF
>>
>>Where are the board's guidelines then, or do they make it up as they go? 
>>Flame wars are a risk of every public forum and discussion, and doing 
>>everything in public is one of the tenets of the ASF.
>>
>>Jim Jagielski stated to me on twitter that a bare minimum of discussions 
>>happen in private, and did not list this as one of the exceptions, despite it 
>>being the context. His statement was inline with the link I provided, and he 
>>is a board member.  So ostensibly a board member agrees, at least in 
>>principle.
>>
>>Regardless, the issue in question is if the board was sufficiently hostile to 
>>DataStax for them to rationally and reasonably feel the correct course of 
>>action was to mitigate their business risk exposure to the ASF board. It 
>>seems to me that may well be the case, but we cannot know for sure because 
>>the board was doing it behind closed doors despite members of the board 
>>suggesting this isn't how things work.
>>
>>Given this inconsistency, and the fact that Mark Thomas (a board member) 
>>apparently hadn't even read the ASF guidelines before wantonly enforcing 
>>them, and the composure of Chris, as pointed out by Russel, I think it is 
>>reasonable to doubt the boards' credibility entirely.
>>
>>So, I'm asking for clarity.  Preferably, a complete publication of the 
>>discussions that happened in private on the topic.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>On Saturday, 5 November 2016, Tom Barber <tom.bar...@meteorite.bi>o:tom.bar...@meteorite.bi>> wrote:
>>You know you've linked to a PMC page, when the board isn't a PMC? For
>>example, board member a, thinks project X isn't doing things correctly and
>>their first course of action is to post notes on a public development
>>mailing list? You'd have arguments and flame wars left right and centre.
>>
>>Having watched the discussion unfolding, whilst some discussion clearly
>>went on on a private mailing list, the details pertinent to the PMC  were
>>made available and I believe they were CC'd pretty regularly.
>>
>>I won't answer directly for the board for #2, but I suspect the answer
>>would be, Cassandra has been through the incubation phase, so the PMC
>>should understand how the project should be run, its not the boards job to
>>fix it directly. Did the board act unreasonably? I don't think so. Did some
>>heated discussions take place? Undoubtedly.
>>
>>
>>
>>On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 12:28 AM, Benedict Elliott Smith 
>><bened...@apache.org
>>> wrote:
>>
>>> This discussion is bundling up two issues:
>>>
>>> 1) Did DataStax have an outsized role on the project which needed to be
>>> offset, preferably with increased participation?
>>>
>>> 2) Did the Board behave reasonably in trying to fix it?
>>>
>>> As far as I can tell the answers are 1) Yes, 2) No
>>>
>>> Can the board please now unequivocally answer if they followed protocol
>>> and kept all discussions around company involvement to public mailing lists?
>>>
>>> https://www.apac

RE: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Ross Gardler]

[In the mail below I try not to cast judgement, I do not know enough of the 
background to have an opinion on this specific situation. My comments are in 
response to the question “Where are the board's guidelines then, or do they 
make it up as they go?”.]

The boards guidelines are the Apache Way. This is a fluid thing that adapts to 
individual project needs but has a few common pillars in all projects, e.g. PMC 
is responsible for community health and PMC members are expected to act as 
individuals in the interest of the community. The board is empowered, by the 
ASF membership (individuals with merit) to take any action necessary to ensure 
a PMC is carrying out its duty.

If a PMC is being ineffective then the board only has blunt instruments to work 
with. Their actions appear to cut deep because they have no scalpel with which 
to work. The scalpel should be in the hands of the PMC, but by definition if 
the board intervenes the PMC is failing to use the scalpel.

So how do we identify appropriate action? Well I can tell you that any action 
of the board will result in more dissatisfied PMC members than satisfied ones. 
This is because, by definition, if the board are acting it is because the PMC 
is failing in its duty to build a vendor neutral and healthy community. The 
measure is whether the broader community feel that the board are acting in 
their best interests – including those who have not been given the privilege of 
merit (yes, PMC membership and committership is a privilege not a right).

This is not to say the board are incapable of making a mistake. They are 9 
humans after all. However, I can assure you (based on painful experience) that 
getting 9 humans to agree to use a blunt instrument that will make a mess in 
the short term is extremely hard. That’s why we have a board of 9 rather than 5 
(or any other smaller number) it minimizes the chances of error. It’s also why 
the board is usually slower to move than one might expect.

However, should the board make a mistake the correct action is to get the 
community as a whole to express their concern. Demonstrate that the community, 
as a whole, feels that the board acted inappropriately. Don’t waste time with 
long emails to board@. The people here trust in the process and the board. We 
don’t know what’s been happening inside your project, we don’t pass judgement. 
To make us care you must have your community speak with one voice. Demonstrate 
that you have consensus around your opinions. Then, and only then, will the 
membership - the people who vote for the board and hold them accountable – 
accept your argument that the board have acted inappropriately.

Ross

From: Benedict Elliott Smith [mailto:bened...@apache.org]
Sent: Friday, November 4, 2016 7:08 PM
To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
Cc: Apache Board <bo...@apache.org>; Łukasz Dywicki <l...@code-house.org>; 
Chris Mattmann <mattm...@apache.org>; Kelly Sommers <kell.somm...@gmail.com>; 
Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com>
Subject: Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

Where are the board's guidelines then, or do they make it up as they go? Flame 
wars are a risk of every public forum and discussion, and doing everything in 
public is one of the tenets of the ASF.

Jim Jagielski stated to me on twitter that a bare minimum of discussions happen 
in private, and did not list this as one of the exceptions, despite it being 
the context. His statement was inline with the link I provided, and he is a 
board member.  So ostensibly a board member agrees, at least in principle.

Regardless, the issue in question is if the board was sufficiently hostile to 
DataStax for them to rationally and reasonably feel the correct course of 
action was to mitigate their business risk exposure to the ASF board. It seems 
to me that may well be the case, but we cannot know for sure because the board 
was doing it behind closed doors despite members of the board suggesting this 
isn't how things work.

Given this inconsistency, and the fact that Mark Thomas (a board member) 
apparently hadn't even read the ASF guidelines before wantonly enforcing them, 
and the composure of Chris, as pointed out by Russel, I think it is reasonable 
to doubt the boards' credibility entirely.

So, I'm asking for clarity.  Preferably, a complete publication of the 
discussions that happened in private on the topic.







On Saturday, 5 November 2016, Tom Barber 
<tom.bar...@meteorite.bi<mailto:tom.bar...@meteorite.bi>> wrote:
You know you've linked to a PMC page, when the board isn't a PMC? For
example, board member a, thinks project X isn't doing things correctly and
their first course of action is to post notes on a public development
mailing list? You'd have arguments and flame wars left right and centre.

Having watched the discussion unfolding, whilst some discussion clearly
went on on a private mailing list, the details pertinent to the PMC  were
made available and I b

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jeremy Hanna]

"I’m sorry you had a bad experience, but it feels like that’s the normal ebb 
and flow of projects.”

I’m sorry - that should have been - I’m sorry some ideas were not accepted, but 
it feels like that’s the normal ebb and flow of projects.  I am sorry you had a 
bad experience - without any qualification :)

Kind regards,

Jeremy

> On Nov 4, 2016, at 10:58 PM, Jeremy Hanna  wrote:
> 
> Hi Łukasz,
> 
> I’m sorry you found the projects difficult to work with.  It sounds like in 
> this case it was about modularizing with Maven and making TinkerPop work 
> better with OSGI.  People in the project have been going back and forth about 
> the build process since before Riptano and DataStax existed and the decisions 
> by the PMC and community remained constant - they just wanted to stick with a 
> more explicit build system with ant - sure it’s preference based, but that’s 
> where things were before DataStax was even started.  With regard to OSGI, it 
> sounds like it was just not an item that they saw as a priority at the time 
> but were open to considering in the future.  I thought Stephen was very open 
> and generally he bends over backwards to help people as you can find in many 
> other interactions on Stack Overflow, various gremlin, titan, and tinkerpop 
> mailing lists.  I’ve opened a lot of TinkerPop tickets, some are accepted, 
> some aren’t.  I need to do better about doing my part as well to do things 
> with tickets that I commit to in TinkerPop.  I’m sorry you had a bad 
> experience, but it feels like that’s the normal ebb and flow of projects.  
> That said, we can do a better job in either explaining or being more 
> welcoming - that’s nothing to do with any company though.  That’s a community 
> thing.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Jeremy
> 
>> On Nov 4, 2016, at 8:03 PM, Łukasz Dywicki  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 
>> 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jeremy Hanna]

Hi Łukasz,

I’m sorry you found the projects difficult to work with.  It sounds like in 
this case it was about modularizing with Maven and making TinkerPop work better 
with OSGI.  People in the project have been going back and forth about the 
build process since before Riptano and DataStax existed and the decisions by 
the PMC and community remained constant - they just wanted to stick with a more 
explicit build system with ant - sure it’s preference based, but that’s where 
things were before DataStax was even started.  With regard to OSGI, it sounds 
like it was just not an item that they saw as a priority at the time but were 
open to considering in the future.  I thought Stephen was very open and 
generally he bends over backwards to help people as you can find in many other 
interactions on Stack Overflow, various gremlin, titan, and tinkerpop mailing 
lists.  I’ve opened a lot of TinkerPop tickets, some are accepted, some aren’t. 
 I need to do better about doing my part as well to do things with tickets that 
I commit to in TinkerPop.  I’m sorry you had a bad experience, but it feels 
like that’s the normal ebb and flow of projects.  That said, we can do a better 
job in either explaining or being more welcoming - that’s nothing to do with 
any company though.  That’s a community thing.

Kind regards,

Jeremy

> On Nov 4, 2016, at 8:03 PM, Łukasz Dywicki  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

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Benedict Elliott Smith]

Where are the board's guidelines then, or do they make it up as they go?
Flame wars are a risk of every public forum and discussion, and doing
everything in public is one of the tenets of the ASF.

Jim Jagielski stated to me on twitter that a bare minimum of
discussions happen in private, and did not list this as one of the
exceptions, despite it being the context. His statement was inline with the
link I provided, and he is a board member.  So ostensibly a board member
agrees, at least in principle.

Regardless, the issue in question is if the board was sufficiently hostile
to DataStax for them to rationally and reasonably feel the correct course
of action was to mitigate their business risk exposure to the ASF board. It
seems to me that may well be the case, but we cannot know for sure because
the board was doing it behind closed doors despite members of the
board suggesting this isn't how things work.

Given this inconsistency, and the fact that Mark Thomas (a board member)
apparently hadn't even read the ASF guidelines before wantonly enforcing
them, and the composure of Chris, as pointed out by Russel, I think it is
reasonable to doubt the boards' credibility entirely.

So, I'm asking for clarity.  Preferably, a complete publication of the
discussions that happened in private on the topic.







On Saturday, 5 November 2016, Tom Barber  wrote:

> You know you've linked to a PMC page, when the board isn't a PMC? For
> example, board member a, thinks project X isn't doing things correctly and
> their first course of action is to post notes on a public development
> mailing list? You'd have arguments and flame wars left right and centre.
>
> Having watched the discussion unfolding, whilst some discussion clearly
> went on on a private mailing list, the details pertinent to the PMC  were
> made available and I believe they were CC'd pretty regularly.
>
> I won't answer directly for the board for #2, but I suspect the answer
> would be, Cassandra has been through the incubation phase, so the PMC
> should understand how the project should be run, its not the boards job to
> fix it directly. Did the board act unreasonably? I don't think so. Did some
> heated discussions take place? Undoubtedly.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 12:28 AM, Benedict Elliott Smith <
> bened...@apache.org 
> > wrote:
>
> > This discussion is bundling up two issues:
> >
> > 1) Did DataStax have an outsized role on the project which needed to be
> > offset, preferably with increased participation?
> >
> > 2) Did the Board behave reasonably in trying to fix it?
> >
> > As far as I can tell the answers are 1) Yes, 2) No
> >
> > Can the board please now unequivocally answer if they followed protocol
> > and kept all discussions around company involvement to public mailing
> lists?
> >
> > https://www.apache.org/dev/pmc.html#mailing-list-private
> >
> > I'm certain they did not, and they cannot as a result claim to be
> > upholding ASF process and ideals.  Similarly to how Mark Thomas recently
> > attempted to misapply ASF policies, when policing user mailing
> > list discussions.
> >
> > I originally supported the ASF efforts to improve the project. I have
> > since lost all faith in the board.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Saturday, 5 November 2016, Chris Mattmann  > wrote:
> >
> >> Thank you for sending this. I am not going to reply in depth now, but
> >> will do so to Kelly and
> >> others over the weekend, but this is *precisely* the reason that I have
> >> been so emphatic
> >> about trying to get the PMC to see the road they have already gone done
> >> and the ship that
> >> has already set sail.
> >>
> >> Those not familiar with Lucene and its vote to merge Lucene/Solr may
> want
> >> to Google the
> >> Apache archives around 2010 and see some of the effects of Individual
> >> organizations and
> >> vendors driving supposedly vendor neutral Apache projects. It’s not even
> >> conjecture at this
> >> point in Cassandra. The Board has acted as Greg referred to else-thread,
> >> and we asked Jonathan & the
> >> PMC to find a new chair (rotation is healthy yes, but we also need the
> >> chair to be the eyes
> >> and ears of the Board and we asked for a change there). Mark Thomas from
> >> the Apache Board
> >> also has a set of actions that he is working with the PMC having to do
> >> with trademarks and
> >> other items to move towards more independent governance.
> >>
> >> Your experience that you cite below Lukasz is precisely one I found in
> >> Lucene/Solr, Hadoop,
> >> Maven, and other projects. Sometimes the ship has been righted – for
> >> example in all of these
> >> projects they have moved towards much more independent governance,
> >> welcoming to contributors,
> >> and shared community for the project. However, in other cases (see
> >> IBATIS), it didn’t work out, for
> >> various reasons including community issues, but also misunderstandings
> as
> >> to 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Tom Barber]

You know you've linked to a PMC page, when the board isn't a PMC? For
example, board member a, thinks project X isn't doing things correctly and
their first course of action is to post notes on a public development
mailing list? You'd have arguments and flame wars left right and centre.

Having watched the discussion unfolding, whilst some discussion clearly
went on on a private mailing list, the details pertinent to the PMC  were
made available and I believe they were CC'd pretty regularly.

I won't answer directly for the board for #2, but I suspect the answer
would be, Cassandra has been through the incubation phase, so the PMC
should understand how the project should be run, its not the boards job to
fix it directly. Did the board act unreasonably? I don't think so. Did some
heated discussions take place? Undoubtedly.



On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 12:28 AM, Benedict Elliott Smith  wrote:

> This discussion is bundling up two issues:
>
> 1) Did DataStax have an outsized role on the project which needed to be
> offset, preferably with increased participation?
>
> 2) Did the Board behave reasonably in trying to fix it?
>
> As far as I can tell the answers are 1) Yes, 2) No
>
> Can the board please now unequivocally answer if they followed protocol
> and kept all discussions around company involvement to public mailing lists?
>
> https://www.apache.org/dev/pmc.html#mailing-list-private
>
> I'm certain they did not, and they cannot as a result claim to be
> upholding ASF process and ideals.  Similarly to how Mark Thomas recently
> attempted to misapply ASF policies, when policing user mailing
> list discussions.
>
> I originally supported the ASF efforts to improve the project. I have
> since lost all faith in the board.
>
>
>
> On Saturday, 5 November 2016, Chris Mattmann  wrote:
>
>> Thank you for sending this. I am not going to reply in depth now, but
>> will do so to Kelly and
>> others over the weekend, but this is *precisely* the reason that I have
>> been so emphatic
>> about trying to get the PMC to see the road they have already gone done
>> and the ship that
>> has already set sail.
>>
>> Those not familiar with Lucene and its vote to merge Lucene/Solr may want
>> to Google the
>> Apache archives around 2010 and see some of the effects of Individual
>> organizations and
>> vendors driving supposedly vendor neutral Apache projects. It’s not even
>> conjecture at this
>> point in Cassandra. The Board has acted as Greg referred to else-thread,
>> and we asked Jonathan & the
>> PMC to find a new chair (rotation is healthy yes, but we also need the
>> chair to be the eyes
>> and ears of the Board and we asked for a change there). Mark Thomas from
>> the Apache Board
>> also has a set of actions that he is working with the PMC having to do
>> with trademarks and
>> other items to move towards more independent governance.
>>
>> Your experience that you cite below Lukasz is precisely one I found in
>> Lucene/Solr, Hadoop,
>> Maven, and other projects. Sometimes the ship has been righted – for
>> example in all of these
>> projects they have moved towards much more independent governance,
>> welcoming to contributors,
>> and shared community for the project. However, in other cases (see
>> IBATIS), it didn’t work out, for
>> various reasons including community issues, but also misunderstandings as
>> to the way that the
>> ASF works. I know my own experience of being an unpaid, occasional
>> contributor to some open
>> source projects has put me to a disadvantage even in some ASF projects
>> driven by a single vendor.
>> I’ve also been paid to work on open source (at the ASF and elsewhere) and
>> in doing so, been on the
>> other side of the code. That’s why ASF projects and my own work in
>> particular I strive to try and
>> remain neutral and to address these types of issues by being welcoming,
>> lower the bar to committership
>> and PMC, and moving “contributors” to having a vote/shared governance of
>> the project at the ASF.
>>
>> Thanks for sending this email and your insights are welcome below. The
>> Apache Board should hear this
>> too so I am CC’ing them.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Chris
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 11/4/16, 5:03 PM, "Łukasz Dywicki"  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 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Aleksey Yeschenko]

I have a feeling that you didn’t even bother to check out the mailing list 
threads that Łukasz linked to.

I encourage you, and others, to first do so, instead of blindly assuming that 
their content is inappropriate.

-- 
AY

On 5 November 2016 at 00:14:42, Chris Mattmann (mattm...@apache.org) wrote:

Thank you for sending this. I am not going to reply in depth now, but will do 
so to Kelly and  
others over the weekend, but this is *precisely* the reason that I have been so 
emphatic  
about trying to get the PMC to see the road they have already gone done and the 
ship that  
has already set sail.  

Those not familiar with Lucene and its vote to merge Lucene/Solr may want to 
Google the  
Apache archives around 2010 and see some of the effects of Individual 
organizations and  
vendors driving supposedly vendor neutral Apache projects. It’s not even 
conjecture at this  
point in Cassandra. The Board has acted as Greg referred to else-thread, and we 
asked Jonathan & the  
PMC to find a new chair (rotation is healthy yes, but we also need the chair to 
be the eyes  
and ears of the Board and we asked for a change there). Mark Thomas from the 
Apache Board  
also has a set of actions that he is working with the PMC having to do with 
trademarks and  
other items to move towards more independent governance.  

Your experience that you cite below Lukasz is precisely one I found in 
Lucene/Solr, Hadoop,  
Maven, and other projects. Sometimes the ship has been righted – for example in 
all of these  
projects they have moved towards much more independent governance, welcoming to 
contributors,  
and shared community for the project. However, in other cases (see IBATIS), it 
didn’t work out, for  
various reasons including community issues, but also misunderstandings as to 
the way that the  
ASF works. I know my own experience of being an unpaid, occasional contributor 
to some open  
source projects has put me to a disadvantage even in some ASF projects driven 
by a single vendor.  
I’ve also been paid to work on open source (at the ASF and elsewhere) and in 
doing so, been on the  
other side of the code. That’s why ASF projects and my own work in particular I 
strive to try and  
remain neutral and to address these types of issues by being welcoming, lower 
the bar to committership  
and PMC, and moving “contributors” to having a vote/shared governance of the 
project at the ASF.  

Thanks for sending this email and your insights are welcome below. The Apache 
Board should hear this  
too so I am CC’ing them.  

Cheers,  
Chris  





On 11/4/16, 5:03 PM, "Łukasz Dywicki"  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 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Jeff Jirsa]

Note also the work on https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-9459 , 
reaching out to other “competitors” before major versions to ensure 
compatibility and awareness.

I think there’s a ton of evidence supporting the assertion that 
datastax-employed committers and PMC members acted in good faith when it comes 
to code going into the database. I would wager that most of the ‘wont fix’ 
tickets in JIRA were opened by Datastax employees, so folks claiming bias 
because committers refused to merge a patch are assigning malice when there is 
none (perhaps too high a bar for contributions, but as a user, I appreciate 
that high bar).


On 11/4/16, 5:31 PM, "Aleksey Yeschenko"  wrote:

>You got this one completely wrong, my friend.
>
>It’s the PMC who reached out to stratio and helped them get the changes they 
>required into Cassandra,
>so that they could abandon the fork.
>
>I know because I was that PMC member.
>
>cc Andres from Stratio
>
>-- 
>AY
>
>On 5 November 2016 at 00:14:42, Chris Mattmann (mattm...@apache.org) wrote:
>
>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)


smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Aleksey Yeschenko]

You got this one completely wrong, my friend.

It’s the PMC who reached out to stratio and helped them get the changes they 
required into Cassandra,
so that they could abandon the fork.

I know because I was that PMC member.

cc Andres from Stratio

-- 
AY

On 5 November 2016 at 00:14:42, Chris Mattmann (mattm...@apache.org) wrote:

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)

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Benedict Elliott Smith]

This discussion is bundling up two issues:

1) Did DataStax have an outsized role on the project which needed to be
offset, preferably with increased participation?

2) Did the Board behave reasonably in trying to fix it?

As far as I can tell the answers are 1) Yes, 2) No

Can the board please now unequivocally answer if they followed protocol and
kept all discussions around company involvement to public mailing lists?

https://www.apache.org/dev/pmc.html#mailing-list-private

I'm certain they did not, and they cannot as a result claim to be upholding
ASF process and ideals.  Similarly to how Mark Thomas recently attempted to
misapply ASF policies, when policing user mailing list discussions.

I originally supported the ASF efforts to improve the project. I have since
lost all faith in the board.



On Saturday, 5 November 2016, Chris Mattmann  wrote:

> Thank you for sending this. I am not going to reply in depth now, but will
> do so to Kelly and
> others over the weekend, but this is *precisely* the reason that I have
> been so emphatic
> about trying to get the PMC to see the road they have already gone done
> and the ship that
> has already set sail.
>
> Those not familiar with Lucene and its vote to merge Lucene/Solr may want
> to Google the
> Apache archives around 2010 and see some of the effects of Individual
> organizations and
> vendors driving supposedly vendor neutral Apache projects. It’s not even
> conjecture at this
> point in Cassandra. The Board has acted as Greg referred to else-thread,
> and we asked Jonathan & the
> PMC to find a new chair (rotation is healthy yes, but we also need the
> chair to be the eyes
> and ears of the Board and we asked for a change there). Mark Thomas from
> the Apache Board
> also has a set of actions that he is working with the PMC having to do
> with trademarks and
> other items to move towards more independent governance.
>
> Your experience that you cite below Lukasz is precisely one I found in
> Lucene/Solr, Hadoop,
> Maven, and other projects. Sometimes the ship has been righted – for
> example in all of these
> projects they have moved towards much more independent governance,
> welcoming to contributors,
> and shared community for the project. However, in other cases (see
> IBATIS), it didn’t work out, for
> various reasons including community issues, but also misunderstandings as
> to the way that the
> ASF works. I know my own experience of being an unpaid, occasional
> contributor to some open
> source projects has put me to a disadvantage even in some ASF projects
> driven by a single vendor.
> I’ve also been paid to work on open source (at the ASF and elsewhere) and
> in doing so, been on the
> other side of the code. That’s why ASF projects and my own work in
> particular I strive to try and
> remain neutral and to address these types of issues by being welcoming,
> lower the bar to committership
> and PMC, and moving “contributors” to having a vote/shared governance of
> the project at the ASF.
>
> Thanks for sending this email and your insights are welcome below. The
> Apache Board should hear this
> too so I am CC’ing them.
>
> Cheers,
> Chris
>
>
>
>
>
> On 11/4/16, 5:03 PM, "Łukasz Dywicki" >
> 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
> 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Chris Mattmann]

Thank you for sending this. I am not going to reply in depth now, but will do 
so to Kelly and
others over the weekend, but this is *precisely* the reason that I have been so 
emphatic
about trying to get the PMC to see the road they have already gone done and the 
ship that
has already set sail. 

Those not familiar with Lucene and its vote to merge Lucene/Solr may want to 
Google the
Apache archives around 2010 and see some of the effects of Individual 
organizations and
vendors driving supposedly vendor neutral Apache projects. It’s not even 
conjecture at this
point in Cassandra. The Board has acted as Greg referred to else-thread, and we 
asked Jonathan & the
PMC to find a new chair (rotation is healthy yes, but we also need the chair to 
be the eyes 
and ears of the Board and we asked for a change there). Mark Thomas from the 
Apache Board
also has a set of actions that he is working with the PMC having to do with 
trademarks and
other items to move towards more independent governance.

Your experience that you cite below Lukasz is precisely one I found in 
Lucene/Solr, Hadoop, 
Maven, and other projects. Sometimes the ship has been righted – for example in 
all of these
projects they have moved towards much more independent governance, welcoming to 
contributors,
and shared community for the project. However, in other cases (see IBATIS), it 
didn’t work out, for
various reasons including community issues, but also misunderstandings as to 
the way that the 
ASF works. I know my own experience of being an unpaid, occasional contributor 
to some open
source projects has put me to a disadvantage even in some ASF projects driven 
by a single vendor.
I’ve also been paid to work on open source (at the ASF and elsewhere) and in 
doing so, been on the
other side of the code. That’s why ASF projects and my own work in particular I 
strive to try and 
remain neutral and to address these types of issues by being welcoming, lower 
the bar to committership
and PMC, and moving “contributors” to having a vote/shared governance of the 
project at the ASF.

Thanks for sending this email and your insights are welcome below. The Apache 
Board should hear this
too so I am CC’ing them.

Cheers,
Chris





On 11/4/16, 5:03 PM, "Łukasz Dywicki"  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 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Edward Capriolo]

On Thu, Nov 3, 2016 at 11:44 PM, Kelly Sommers 
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 

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Michael Kjellman]

And to add one additional thought to follow up: I generally am personally 
motivated to fix problems and bugs that reduce my chance of getting paged at 
3am in the morning. This is important for my mental health but also for the 
perceived stability of our products (obviously). 

Features are important as they provide gateways for adoption of all the other 
code by new customers.

Stability and performance is one of those things that doesn't "sell" well to 
new adopters (but sells very well to existing customers).

Luckily most people are on 2.1 and 3.0 and there are tons of features already 
in releases for people to adopt so we've got the "features" thing under control 
for at least a year in my opinion. 

best,
kjellman

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 4, 2016, at 10:33 AM, Michael Kjellman  
> wrote:
> 
> "Avalon. The database" yes autocorrect. That's exactly what I wanted. 
> 
> That should read "scaling the database and stability." Sorry. I'm typing this 
> while walking up a big ass hill in San Francisco heading to the office. 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
>> On Nov 4, 2016, at 10:31 AM, Michael Kjellman  
>> wrote:
>> 
>> Avalon. The database

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Michael Kjellman]

"Avalon. The database" yes autocorrect. That's exactly what I wanted. 

That should read "scaling the database and stability." Sorry. I'm typing this 
while walking up a big ass hill in San Francisco heading to the office. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 4, 2016, at 10:31 AM, Michael Kjellman  
> wrote:
> 
> Avalon. The database

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Michael Kjellman]

Hi Kelly-

I can't speak to many of your questions as it's not my position to do so. What 
I can say is that at Apple we are doubling down on open source. We have tons of 
code in flight -- really big ones in fact -- many already out for review. Our 
list of enhancements we want to do grows all the time so there is no shortage 
of work to do. We also have a really great team built up with an incredible 
amount of in house knowledge. 

The stuff we work on generally is focused on Avalon. The database and 
stabilizing it. I'm not sure how much "feature" work we will do in comparison 
(although things like SASI obviously is). 

It's unfortunate how things have played out -- but let's remind ourselves this 
is a database and we're in it for the long haul. The last thing we want is to 
have the project stagnate due to infighting. 

For the foreseeable future Apple and The Last Pickle will step up a bit more of 
an active role as much as we can. 

I have no doubt in my mind this will change the project. The rate of releases 
-- what gets worked on -- bandwidth to fix low hanging fruit tickets... but at 
least I see a path forward. 

So let's try to be positive here and lead by example. It's the only thing we 
can do right now. 

best,
kjellman



Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 4, 2016, at 9:47 AM, Kelly Sommers  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