Hi Russell, Thanks for starting this discussion. I believe it is very timely. The project has indeed come a long way since the start of incubation, and in addition to metrics, I personally see a lot of engagement from the users, quite a few of whom become active contributors over time.
As to the disagreements in the community, I do believe that having different opinions in the project is in fact good for the health of the community, and I believe that in most cases differing opinions actually fuel constructive discussions and promote project evolution. The cases where discussions got stuck or overheated are exceptional, IMHO. Moreover, I think we're at a stage when the community as a whole is capable of making progress on all complex discussions for the benefit of the project and all individuals involved. I'm looking forward to seeing Polaris graduate. Cheers, Dmitri. On Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 3:17 PM Russell Spitzer <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi y’all, > > It’s exciting to see how far the Apache Polaris (Incubating) project has > come in just over a year, and I think it’s time that we start considering > whether the podling is ready to graduate to a full-fledged Apache project. > > We’ve seen production releases, new persistence backends, OPA support, and > so much more. Most importantly, this work has been done with public design > and discussion, following the Apache model for community development. > Github Issues and PR review happen in an open and vendor-neutral manner. > There are many active committers and PPMC members from different > organizations working together and releasing quality software. I’ve seen > solid work done to protect the Apache Brand and ensure licensing is > appropriate, as well as some great handling of public events. Even as a > young project, Polaris has already hosted many successful meetups and has > been the subject of talks at a variety of conferences. We also have a > lively dev-list and lots of one-on-one discussions happening on the Slack > channel. In many cases, I think that the Apache Polaris Community is > functioning exactly how a top-level Apache project should > <https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/Graduation+Criteria > >. > > > For those interested in the statistics > > > - > > Apache Polaris has had 6 Releases (0.9, 1.0.0, 1.0.1, 1.1.0, 1.2.0, > 1.3.0) > - > > Our github is at 1.8k stars with 357 Forks > - > > We have closed 2819 PRs > - > > There are have been ~100 Contributors to the project > - > > The PPMC has 13 Members (6 elected during incubation period) and there > are 8 other committers (5 elected during incubation period) > - > > Representatives from Dremio, Snowflake, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, And > more! > > > > That said, I do still have some concerns about other areas of community > development. While I think we are having lots of great conversations about > the future of the project, we still seem to have difficult moments where > communication appears to be breaking down, and people are becoming a bit > more heated. We also seem to be lacking a bit of mutual trust and respect. > I want to make sure that the Polaris community is a welcoming one, where > engineers all respect each other’s contributions and, most importantly, act > in good faith. We’ve seen some instances where PRs may be perceived as > merged prematurely, or that there are double standards for what constitutes > a “blocker” on a PR. I want to know if others in the community feel this > way, and more importantly, if there are any constructive ideas on how to > help us get along and make the community as welcoming as possible. Please > do not take this lightly; I know it can be easy to just write off other > engineers as a “problem,” but that kind of attitude won’t help this project > move forward. I would encourage everyone to think about how they personally > can contribute to a better environment. If I’m alone in this sentiment, > feel free to ignore me, but I think it’s always a good exercise to think > about how I interact with others to make them feel as welcome as possible. > > I don’t mean to be all gloomy on this matter, though; I think some things > have been moving in the right direction. A great example is some of the > discussions we’ve seen lately on the mailing list. Although we had some > disagreements on a PR, there is now a pretty constructive dialogue > happening where I do feel like all of the community members are trying to > find common ground and listen to each other’s viewpoints without personal > judgment. This shows me that we are still having constructive engagements > even when there was prior disagreement. I wasn’t able to attend the recent > sprint planning meeting, but from what I have heard, that’s another > instance where it feels like folks came away from that meeting with a bit > more camaraderie than they had going in. > > All in all, I want what’s best for the community. I hope that by bringing > up graduation, and bringing some of my concerns into the public light, > we’ll be able to make progress and graduate the project. I want to know > everyone else’s feelings on the general maturity of the project, whether > they think it’s appropriate to graduate, and whether they have any other > suggestions for paths forward to make Polaris even better in the future. > > Thanks for your time, > > Russell Spitzer > > Resources: > > https://incubator.apache.org/guides/graduation.html > > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/Graduation+Criteria > > > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qBIxClspQA--uQB0MS3LQO-uEDjdXtbqMPSRNbgeKdk/edit?usp=sharing >
