Hi, all, As one of the PPMC member, here is my point of view. I have faith in this project, now I am contributing with salary paid by my company Esgyn, but I believe I will contribute to it as far as it is still there. I have been working on this technology for over 8 years and still love it, and it is the best thing I can do. The cascades optimizer, the data-flow execution engine, the ACID capability, Trafodion deserve more attention. Because I always believe the spirit of open source is to share best technology to benefit the whole world. So good tech should be welcomed and adopted very naturally. I am very curious why such a good thing as Trafodion not successfully draw wide-spread attention. One thing we heard was: it is too hard to try it out, and we already have greatly improved it, but the very first interested people don't have much patience and try it again I guess. So we need investment in advertising maybe :-)
And what I saw is : the Trafodion community is growing, a little bit slowly, but we can see more and more people talking about Trafodion in China, and more and more customers. If one look at the developing activity, the code commit, Trafodion is a very healthy growing baby, as a software product. A small group of people and a small company did incredible job, I have to say. So for me, I think it needs the Apache Foundation to help us, advice us, we , at least myself, are not very good at Apache way, not sure what to do instead of coding day and night :-) It is very hard for me to decide graduate now or wait, I vote for wait for another few months to see if we can attract more people from other organizations, since I think we still have room to improve how to attract other people's attention. But it is still hard, as Rohit correctly pointed out. I saw some people spending a few months' study and can contribute key features to some other projects, but for Trafodion, it is much harder as my own experience. But there are some simpler components I believe, so we should find more tasks for beginners. thanks, Ming -----Original Message----- From: Pierre Smits [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2017 8:12 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [DISCUSSION] Work towards graduation First of all: I agree with statements made earlier about how St.Ack has been mentoring this podling. It goes to show that having one acting as he did/does can be enough. As for having more: you could call me (an informal) one. And you could call James Taylor (as participating ASF and IPMC Member) one. And then I could have missed some contributors... Like I said earlier activities regarding the code (bugs and other improvements) is healthy. Yes, there are opportunities to do more to make Trafodion the primary go-to-source for transactional SQL-on-HADOOP. We could have a page in our wiki showing who has adopted (using) Trafodion - either directly, or through a derivative - as it shows interested parties that more have gone the route. Similarly we could do with a page listing 3rd party implementation organisations to show that there is more than just community support. Both will (most likely) lead to more adoption (implementations), more supporters, more career opportunities, more contributors, more contributions, more downloads, more tweets, more 3rd party experiences shared, faster bugs fixed, etc. And this all is a chicken-egg situation. When I look at this thread I see not many PPMC Members sharing their viewpoints (and/or their commitment to this project). I would love to see more. It would help when we make the proposal for the IPMC. But before we formalise our request to graduate, the PPMC must ask itself if it doesn't need more members. Not only to show enough diversity, but also to strengthen itself against inactive participants (contributors come and go). And it must have an agreement on who the PPMC Chair (or at least the first PMC Chair) will be. The PPMC should look beyond the existing pool of code contributors, as anyone committed to the project (building the community, promoting the project/product) and the Apache Way should be regarded as potential PPMC Member.. I see contributors raising issues in this thread. These are not insurmountable, and not all need to be addressed before graduation. We just have to avoid them slipping from the table. All in all, I feel confident that all participating in this project will collaborate to mitigate those. Long story short: yes, we're somewhat ready (we need to address some minor aspects first, like the incubator status page [1]). When those are addressed, we can either advocate our case before the IPMC, or wait until we old and grey and this project (in incubation) withers towards retirement. [1] http://incubator.apache.org/projects/trafodion Best regards, Pierre Smits ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com> OFBiz based solutions & services OFBiz Extensions Marketplace http://oem.ofbizci.net/oci-2/ On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 7:01 AM, Stack <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 7:10 PM, Hans Zeller <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > Just wanted to comment on one thing in the email below: Stack, you call > > yourself a "deadbeat mentor". I want to disagree strongly with that and > say > > thank you for the many things you are continuously doing, from granting > > Karma to making connections to other projects to asking the right > questions > > and providing guidance (and probably many more things I don't know > about)! > > > > Also, a short comment on the subject of the thread: IMHO we should wait a > > bit more before asking for a graduation vote. My hope is that we will get > > some more and also more active committers outside of Esgyn and some more > > active users over the next year or so. > > > > Thanks again for being a great mentor, > > > > > Smile. If you saw what a good mentor does you might think different! > > Pierre, do you think the project ready to go up for a vote on the general > list on incubator? > > If we are going to be incubator a bit longer, lets try and get more > mentors. Would be good to have more around when discussion like this; good > to have variety of opinion. > > Lets try and figure how to do more outreach too. > > S > > > > > Hans > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of > Stack > > Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2017 3:33 PM > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: Re: [DISCUSSION] Work towards graduation > > > > On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 12:03 PM, Rohit Jain <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > > James, > > > > > > You bring up a very pertinent point that we brought up to Stack the > last > > > time. There are projects that one could argue may have the same risk > as > > > Trafodion of not prevailing if a company does not survive. But I guess > > > that risk is mitigated somewhat to where those companies, such as > > Cloudera, > > > are in their market presence versus Esgyn perhaps. But the other > reason > > > provided was the involvement of many folks associated with Kudu, as an > > > example, with other open source projects. Our committers have not had > as > > > much involvement with other projects, perhaps because the complexity > and > > > the backlog of what we need to accomplish for our customers is large > > enough > > > that it has not afforded us time to contribute towards other open > source > > > projects, even though we have always had the intent with HBase, ORC, > etc. > > > > > > We have a good number of customers in China and a modest presence in > the > > > US. But our customers so far themselves may not have the open source > > > culture, or the resources to contribute to the project itself. Plus, > > most > > > of our code is in C++, although we have provided guidance to new > > developers > > > on how to contribute towards the fair amount of code that we do have in > > > Java. So, certainly these have hindered the growth of the community. > > > > > > There is increasing frustration within Esgyn about open source and open > > > sourcing anything into Apache since there is a huge cost to the company > > of > > > maintaining an extra set of threads and versions, with no obvious path > to > > > TLP because of the reasons mentioned. It seems that satisfying the > > > decision makers, despite personal declarations of developers that they > > > would be involved with the project beyond Esgyn, and that it would be > > crazy > > > to think that no one would be interested in picking up such an > incredible > > > IP if anything were to happen to Esgyn -- this is decades of hundreds > of > > > million dollars of investment, into an incredible database technology, > > > capable of running TPC-C and TPC-DS at very impressive numbers compared > > to > > > the competition, with all queries executing while fully complying with > > the > > > specs on the syntax (that no other vendor has been able to achieve in > the > > > Big Data world). Full Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing > support > > > on Hadoop with unmatched performance on both ends of the spectrum. > Maybe > > > we are just horrible at Marketing that a jewel of an engine like > > Trafodion > > > must fight to get to TLP after all that we have done to try to make it > > > ready for it. > > > > > > So, this is an ongoing struggle. From what I understand all projects > are > > > supposed to have 2-3 mentors. We have had Stack who has done a great > > job. > > > But we need other strong mentors who can actively back the project and > > > present its value to the Apache Foundation and what we have > accomplished > > to > > > qualify for TLP. We have requested more mentors, but the same decision > > > makers on TLP, seem to have ignored those requests. So, go figure how > > the > > > Apache foundation and its community works. > > > > > > I probably have stepped beyond the line in what I have said out of my > own > > > frustrations. These in no way reflect the views of Esgyn but as an > > > individual associated with Apache Trafodion, as they should. > > > > > > > > Thanks Rohit for the straight perspective. > > > > * Yeah, the project needs more (active) mentors if we are going to be in > > incubator for some time to come. We have close to zero though I'd > consider > > what Pierre does, 1st quality mentor-work (Interesting is that incubator > is > > doing a bit of house cleaning of deadbeat mentors like myself these > times). > > We can ask again for mentors upstream? We might do better this time > around? > > (James, you interested?) > > * Mentors will not bring users and contributors though; they just > provide > > guidance. > > * If there are two repositories, an internal and an external one > (Apache), > > then, yeah, mirroring and upkeep is a tax on a small companies' > resources. > > If no contrib coming in from outside, I can see that folks would ask why > > bother. > > * All the issues apparent here while in incubator will be present when > you > > TLP; TLPing is not a project entering project paradise. > > * Apache, and incubator particularly, is about successful communities > > first. Many successful Apache projects are grounded upon tech that is > dodgy > > even, nowhere close to the jewel that Trafodion is. > > > > If folks here think we are ready, we can go for a vote to graduate but as > > is Pierre's experience, we'll be quizzed on "...whether the PPMC is > diverse > > enough to be regarded as independent of any outside affiliation." While > we > > have companies other than Esgyn listed as affiliations of PPMC members, > how > > many are active? One or two would be enough I'd think. Do we have any > users > > who'd be happy to talk up their use of Apache Trafodion publicly. > > > > Thanks, > > S > > > > > > > > > > > > > Rohit > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: James Taylor [mailto:[email protected]] > > > Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2017 12:28 PM > > > To: [email protected] > > > Subject: Re: [DISCUSSION] Work towards graduation > > > > > > On Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 4:55 PM, Stack <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > Is there general agreement with Pierre's belief? If there were no > > Esgyn, > > > > would Trafodion prevail? Asking here so we are prepared when question > > > > comes up on the general incubator list. > > > > > > > > > > > Did that question come up wrt Cloudera and Kudu for graduation? > > > > > >
