Thanks for taking a look, Justin. I appreciate playing devil's advocate here to ensure this is well thought through. I'll add replies inline.
On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 10:44 PM Justin Mclean <jus...@classsoftware.com> wrote: > Has the project filled in a maturity model? This is optional but give the > project and the IPMC more information about the project. > We have not done a formal self-assessment, but the mentors, PPMC, and ASF members on the dev list have agreed that the project is mature in terms of what we expect of Apache projects. Communication is open and decisions are made by the community; we have regular community sync meetings with notes published to the dev list; and some of the major features we are working on are the result of the community coming to an agreement on direction (notably, requirements for row-level deletes). In terms of releases, we have quality license documentation (I'll address concerns below) and have made releases with convenience binaries. I updated license documentation for both the Parquet and Avro top-level projects and we applied the same conventions for Iceberg. Our release process <https://iceberg.apache.org/how-to-release/> is well documented and our convenience binaries are produced from the source release itself. In the graduation discussion on our dev list, an Apache member brought up the number of new committers and we realize it would be ideal to have more. But we also don't think that this is something that is a problem affecting the maturity of the community. The community has demonstrated the ability to grow contributors into committers with the two that have been added, and we also emphasize timely reviews that give enough context to help a contributor improve on the path to becoming a committer. In terms of helping to develop contributors, I think the community is doing very well and that it is not necessary to wait until some committer threshold has been met. From the votes and discussion in the community, the community's mentors and (by my count) 3 non-mentor Apache members agree with this assessment. Last, I think representation in the PPMC is important to note. Of the active PPMC members, two companies both employ 3 PPMC members and there are two other members employed by other companies. There is no organization with a majority in the PPMC. > I notice a few minor things that may need to be sorted out/dicussed: > - The incubator disclaimer missing on your web site! > The disclaimer is present <https://iceberg.apache.org/disclaimer/>. Whimsy just doesn't pick it up because the text of the link doesn't match the text "Incubation is required of all newly accepted projects". That text is included in the disclaimer, but the link is labelled "Disclaimer". Whimsy does note that "The podling website scan does the best it can." > - You have only made two releases and the last one had some issue around > licensing and NOTICE files > We've applied the same policies that top-level projects use (Parquet and Avro). I think you missed my follow-up question about NOTICE files, but we're happy to fix any issues you find and point out. I'm just not sure what those are, since I've read through the ASF documentation many times, spoken with third party legal counsel, and have produced NOTICE files that comply with ASF policy and legal requirements from my experience. > - Download page links needs fixing > Can you be specific? We just updated it to use downloads.apache.org. I'm not aware of another migration. > - Several of the proposed PMC members don’t seem to be subscribed to the > projects private list > I'll look into this. I know that one mentor has not been active due to time constraints and may not be subscribed. > - I note this exists https://jitpack.io/p/netflix/iceberg which under > status claims "Iceberg is under active development at Netflix.” > Above that, it clearly states "Iceberg has moved! Iceberg has been donated to the Apache Software Foundation." I can update the README if there is an issue with the old text; although it is accurate to say that Apache Iceberg is under active development at Netflix. I don't personally don't think this is confusing. > - I also note some minor 3rd party branding issues e.g [1][2] > For the presentation at the first link <https://databricks.com/session_eu19/acid-orc-iceberg-and-delta-lake-an-overview-of-table-formats-for-large-scale-storage-and-analytics>, the slides correctly use "Apache Iceberg" headings. Maybe you're referring to the title of the presentation? I'm not sure that I would request changing the title of a talk (already presented) when it clearly refers to the ASF project. Do you think this is a serious trademark issue that the PPMC should address? The second presentation <https://conferences.oreilly.com/strata/strata-ny-2018/public/schedule/detail/69503> happened before the project was donated to Apache. In fact, both presentations occurred before the ASF signed the trademark agreement, on 2019-09-28. > - I note your last report stated "Add more committers and PPMC members” > and ”grow the community” as a graduation step. Has this happened since > last month report? > Growing the community and adding committers/PPMC members is a general aspiration. This was not intended to be a self-imposed requirement. > - The last Committer/PMC addition was over 9 months ago. Do you have any > currently people you might consider for committership? The last report > mentioned "A contributor has built support for Spark streaming, which is > under review”. > The last committer was added in February. Looks like we didn't update the date in our last report because August 2019 is when the previous committer was added. I addressed the broader question of maturity above. Yes, there are contributors on the path to committer but we don't see value in a requirement for some number of committers before graduation. -- Ryan Blue
