I couldn't agree more.
On Mon, 1 Mar 2021, 15:08 Benjamin Bannier, <bbann...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Charles-François, > > thanks for your detailed message, you captured important points, and I > think I agree with your sentiment here. Mesos might still have a place, and > before thinking about what new features to add, the project first needs to > solve more fundamental issues. > > My previous pessimistic assessment on this list came from a similar angle > but I think with wider scope: a healthy project requires a healthy > community where users can find help, but also can have some hope that > important issues will get fixed. I have not been able to spend much time on > Mesos in the last year, but was following Slack and the mailing lists (the > ones with humans and the ones with bots). On the mailing lists I see users > ask for help with issues they run into or questions, but only rarely will > get a response from committers or other community members. Few new JIRA > issues were filed in the since fall 2020, but hardly any of them have been > triaged let alone fixed (this is on top of the existing bug backlog). I do > not think one needs to be a committer to improve on that situation if one > can get help getting patches discussed, reviewed and ultimately merged. It > looks like Andrei and Qian have committed to help on the latter, but I have > only rarely seen community members volunteer for the former. > > When I wrote that I thought starting a new project on top of Apache Mesos > today might be not a good idea, I mainly came from that angle. While the > software does work for many use cases it seems to be unmaintained with > hardly any folks active in taking it further globally, beyond their own > immediate needs, and willing to take on the needed work. Being a top-level > Apache project with a strong history, Apache Mesos still has a brand, but I > don't think it has lived up to the associated expectations. Similarly, big > ownership gaps (technical and project-wise) have developed which neither > active committers nor community members have filled. Again, one would not > need to be a committer to develop expertise and contribute, and actually > the natural and historic process was for folks to do exactly that with > committership being a thing only after getting involved (see > https://community.apache.org/newcommitter.html for Apache's high-level > view > on that). This is the issue of continued trust Renan mentioned in their > message to the user mailing list which I also believe is critical so the > project can live up to its promise (this is integral to being an Apache > project, see e.g., https://www.apache.org/theapacheway). > > As a non-user with emotional attachment to the historic Apache Mesos brand, > my list of areas in need of improvement to resurrect this project would be: > > - willingness of remaining active committers to be active on a regular > basis in engagements with the community, both on the user and contributor > side (in PRs, review requests, on mailing lists), > - transparent and active discussions in the community, among committers and > contributors, and among committers, in applicable form, beyond roll calls, > - timely and consistent process to address user issues, and > - consistent ownership of the bug and feature backlog. > > Note that work on new feature requests is absent from my list. That folks > want to discuss that here and now seems to me to be another sign that the > Mesos community is not in a good place given all its existing non-technical > issues. > > > Best, > > Benjamin >
