On 06/04/2015 10:30 AM, Marko Rodriguez wrote:
Hi David,
Perhaps the terminology is off -- a vendor is someone who builds a product on
TinkerPop. Is that product commercial/for sale? Is that product a personal
project or a company project? I dunno… Lets list them:
Titan: OLTP/OLAP graph database. Free product. Company product.
Neo4j: OLTP graph database. Commercial product. Company project.
OrientDB: OLTP graph database. Free product. Company project.
Gremlin-Scala: Gremlin language variant. Free product. Personal project.
Gremlin-JavaScript: Gremlin language variant. Free product. Personal
project.
Ogre: Gremlin language variant. Free product. Personal project.
Pacer: Gremlin language variant. Free product. Company project.
InfiniteGraph: OLTP graph database. Commercial product. Company project.
Bulbs: Python framework. Free product. Personal project.
SQLg: OLTP graph database. Free product. Personal project.
….
http://tinkerpop.incubator.apache.org/ (see community contributors)
A vendor is not about "making money" or being in a "company." A vendor is someone who
provides a TinkerPop-enabled application. TinkerPop is nothing without these vendors as TinkerPop is
pointless in and of itself, it needs to be integrated into other technologies to "do something."
Its like the JDBC -- if no relational database uses the JDBC, well, that was for naught.
To conclude, this has nothing do with money, who works for who… it has to do
with how is TinkerPop going to get the biggest outreach and satisfy the most
users. In other words, its about TinkerPop growing its community. TinkerPop
doesn't have a direct communication line to users, it has it via its vendors
who release TinkerPop-enabled products.
Perhaps a change of terminology would be best? Is there a better word than
"vendor" that will alleviate any semantic jitters in the ASF?
It's not so much about whether they're making money at it. It's that
participation in the ASF is always individual, not corporations. If
these organizations have someone that works with the product, works with
the code, writes documentation, whatever, they are likely a candidate
for the PMC, or as a committer, because they are a participant. Note
that one doesn't have to write *code* to be a PMC member. Anyone that
plays a critical role in deciding the direction of the project, and who
has earned the trust of the community, would be a reasonable person to
consider.
A "vendor" doesn't have a vote in the direction of the project, whether
or not their entire business relies on Tinkerpop. However, an individual
who works at that vendor can, and should, earn merit in the community so
that they have that vote.
Yes, it can feel like a slippery distinction.
--
Rich Bowen - [email protected] - @rbowen
http://apachecon.com/ - @apachecon
