Given that ZK (and the rest of the hadoop ecosystem) will now have Apache created/maintained debian pkgs how/does that effect things?
Patrick On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 12:41 AM, Thomas Koch <[email protected]> wrote: > For those not following the thread on debian-devel, a copy of my mail there: > > Hi Ted, > > thank you a lot for your email! I really mean that. It would be wonderful to > get more communication going between Apache and Debian. I've learned that > these two large and important free software projects are nevertheless > different in many ways. > > I also appreciate very much the nice conversations we had last week. I could > learn a lot from you. > > About the ZooKeeper package and partly also Hadoop/HBase which I also > maintain(ed): > > a) The first and most important reason for orphaning these packages is, that I > did quit the job where I used them. It's neither possible nor adequate to > maintain a package that you don't use yourself. - So as long as there isn't > anybody else who'd like to maintain these packages, we can stop the discussion > here. > > b) I think that there is actually very little interest for > Hadoop/HBase/ZooKeeper packages in Debian. ( There is interest for packages > from Cloudera or Apache for Debian, but that's something else.) Even the > company I worked for switched to use the Cloudera distribution, because they > felt more confident about it. Now there'll be the Bigtop project and people > will rather use the "official" apache releases which are tested by > Yahoo/Facebook/Cloudera then the Debian packages. > So without any discussion about ZooKeepers Code quality, it might just not be > worth to do the packaging work if nobody wants to use it. > > [1] http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator- > general/201106.mbox/<[email protected]> > > c) A Debian stable release with ZooKeeper (/Hadoop/HBase) is not possible > without a long term support commitment from upstream. I don't see, how Debian > could fix bugs in ZooKeeper and test those without upstream helping with > insights and test infrastructure. > > d) From what I've heard, read and experienced about the history and culture of > Apache and Debian, quality has different priority in these two projects. > Debian has a "Culture of technical excellence"[2] and is very keen about its > independence from companies. I experienced the Hadoop projects as very company > driven where quality is not nearly as important as in Debian. > Now we have different priorities and standards. I propose we don't enter a > discussion about those as long as points a)-c) aren't resolved. > > [2] Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian Project Leader): "Debian: 18 years and > counting" http://conferences.ellak.gr/2011/files/2011/05/debian.pdf > > Thomas Koch, http://www.koch.ro >
