Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project
: Friday, April 02, 2010 4:08 PM To: pig-dev@hadoop.apache.org; Dmitriy Ryaboy Subject: Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project I agree with Alan and Dmitriy - Pig is tightly coupled with hadoop, and heavily influenced by its roadmap. I think it makes sense to continue as a sub-project of hadoop. -Thejas On 3/31/10 4:04 PM, Dmitriy Ryaboy dvrya...@gmail.com wrote: Over time, Pig is increasing its coupling to Hadoop (for good reasons), rather than decreasing it. If and when Pig becomes a viable entity without hadoop around, it might make sense as a TLP. As is, I think becoming a TLP will only introduce unnecessary administrative and bureaucratic headaches. So my vote is also -1. -Dmitriy On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Alan Gates ga...@yahoo-inc.com wrote: So far I haven't seen any feedback on this. Apache has asked the Hadoop PMC to submit input in April on whether some subprojects should be promoted to TLPs. We, the Pig community, need to give feedback to the Hadoop PMC on how we feel about this. Please make your voice heard. So now I'll head my own call and give my thoughts on it. The biggest advantage I see to being a TLP is a direct connection to Apache. Right now all of the Pig team's interaction with Apache is through the Hadoop PMC. Being directly connected to Apache would benefit Pig team members who would have a better view into Apache. It would also raise our profile in Apache and thus make other projects more aware of us. However, I am concerned about loosing Pig's explicit connection to Hadoop. This concern has a couple of dimensions. One, Hadoop and MapReduce are the current flavor of the month in computing. Given that Pig shares a name with the common farm animal, it's hard to be sure based on search statistics. But Google trends shows that hadoop is searched on much more frequently than hadoop pig or apache pig (see http://www.google.com/trends?q=hadoop%2Chadoop+pig). I am guessing that most Pig users come from Hadoop users who discover Pig via Hadoop's website. Loosing that subproject tab on Hadoop's front page may radically lower the number of users coming to Pig to check out our project. I would argue that this benefits Hadoop as well, since high level languages like Pig Latin have the potential to greatly extend the user base and usability of Hadoop. Two, being explicitly connected to Hadoop keeps our two communities aware of each others needs. There are features proposed for MR that would greatly help Pig. By staying in the Hadoop community Pig is better positioned to advocate for and help implement and test those features. The response to this will be that Pig developers can still subscribe to Hadoop mailing lists, submit patches, etc. That is, they can still be part of the Hadoop community. Which reinforces my point that it makes more sense to leave Pig in the Hadoop community since Pig developers will need to be part of that community anyway. Finally, philosophically it makes sense to me that projects that are tightly connected belong together. It strikes me as strange to have Pig as a TLP completely dependent on another TLP. Hadoop was originally a subproject of Lucene. It moved out to be a TLP when it became obvious that Hadoop had become independent of and useful apart from Lucene. Pig is not in that position relative to Hadoop. So, I'm -1 on Pig moving out. But this is a soft -1. I'm open to being persuaded that I'm wrong or my concerns can be addressed while still having Pig as a TLP. Alan. On Mar 19, 2010, at 10:59 AM, Alan Gates wrote: You have probably heard by now that there is a discussion going on in the Hadoop PMC as to whether a number of the subprojects (Hbase, Avro, Zookeeper, Hive, and Pig) should move out from under the Hadoop umbrella and become top level Apache projects (TLP). This discussion has picked up recently since the Apache board has clearly communicated to the Hadoop PMC that it is concerned that Hadoop is acting as an umbrella project with many disjoint subprojects underneath it. They are concerned that this gives Apache little insight into the health and happenings of the subproject communities which in turn means Apache cannot properly mentor those communities. The purpose of this email is to start a discussion within the Pig community about this topic. Let me cover first what becoming TLP would mean for Pig, and then I'll go into what options I think we as a community have. Becoming a TLP would mean that Pig would itself have a PMC that would report directly to the Apache board. Who would be on the PMC would be something we as a community would need to decide. Common options would be to say all active committers are on the PMC, or all active committers who have been a committer for at least a year. We would also need to elect a chair of the PMC. This lucky person would have no additional power
RE: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project
I agree with Ashutosh and Santhosh. Just based on the current direction of the project I think we are more closely tied with Hadoop now (with Pig 0.7, our load/store interfaces are very closely tied with Hadoop) - hence for now my vote would be a -1 to be a TLP - if there is change in that direction/philosophy to be really backend agnostic I think we should revisit this question. Pradeep -Original Message- From: Ashutosh Chauhan [mailto:ashutosh.chau...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 11:11 PM To: pig-dev@hadoop.apache.org Subject: Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project I concur with Santhosh here. I think main question we need to answer here is how close our ties are with Hadoop currently and how it will be in future ? When Pig was originally designed the intent was to keep it backend neutral, so much so that there was a reference backend implementation (also known as local engine) which had nothing to do with Hadoop. But things have changed since then. Hadoop's local mode is adopted in favor of Pig's own local mode. We have moved from being backend agnostic to hadoop favoring. And while this was happening, it seems we tried to keep Pig Latin language independent of hadoop backend while Pig runtime started to make use of hadoop concepts. Apart from design decisions, this move also has a practical impact on our codebase. Since we adopted Hadoop more closely, we got rid of an extra layer of abstraction and instead started using similar abstractions already existing in Hadoop. This has a positive impact that it simplified the codebase and provides tighter integration with Hadoop. So, if we are continuing in a direction where Hadoop is our only backend (or atleast a favored one), close ties to Hadoop are useful because of the reasons Alan and Dmitriy pointed out. if not, then I think moving out to TLP makes sense. Since, there is no efforts which I am aware of, is trying to plug in a different backend for Pig, I think maintaining close ties with Hadoop is useful for Pig. In future when there is a different distributed computing platform comes up which we want to use as backend, we can revisit our decision. So, as for things stand today I am -1 to move out of Hadoop. And I would also like to reiterate my point that though Pig runtime may continue to get closer to Hadoop, we shall keep Pig Latin completely backend agnostic. Ashutosh On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 12:43, Santhosh Srinivasan s...@yahoo-inc.com wrote: I see this as a multi-part question. Looking back at some of the significant roadmap/existential questions asked in the last 12 months, I see the following: 1. With the introduction of SQL, what is the philosophy of Pig (I sent an email about this approximately 9 months ago) 2. What is the approach to support backward compatibility in Pig (Alan had sent an email about this 3 months ago) 3. Should Pig be a TLP (the current email thread). Here is my take on answering the aforementioned questions. The initial philosophy of Pig was to be backend agnostic. It was designed as a data flow language. Whenever a new language is designed, the syntax and semantics of the language have to be laid out. The syntax is usually captured in the form of a BNF grammar. The semantics are defined by the language creators. Backward compatibility is then a question of holding true to the syntax and semantics. With Pig, in addition to the language, the Java APIs were exposed to customers to implement UDFs (load/store/filter/grouping/row transformation etc), provision looping since the language does not support looping constructs and also support a programmatic mode of access. Backward compatibility in this context is to support API versioning. Do we still intend to position as a data flow language that is backend agnostic? If the answer is yes, then there is a strong case for making Pig a TLP. Are we influenced by Hadoop? A big YES! The reason Pig chose to become a Hadoop sub-project was to ride the Hadoop popularity wave. As a consequence, we chose to be heavily influenced by the Hadoop roadmap. Like a good lawyer, I also have rebuttals to Alan's questions :) 1. Search engine popularity - We can discuss this with the Hadoop team and still retain links to TLP's that are coupled (loosely or tightly). 2. Explicit connection to Hadoop - I see this as logical connection v/s physical connection. Today, we are physically connected as a sub-project. Becoming a TLP, will not increase/decrease our influence on the Hadoop community (think Logical, Physical and MR Layers :) 3. Philosophy - I have already talked about this. The tight coupling is by choice. If Pig continues to be a data flow language with clear syntax and semantics then someone can implement Pig on top of a different backend. Do we intend to take this approach? I just wanted to offer a different opinion to this thread. I strongly believe that we should think about the original
Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project
intend to position as a data flow language that is backend agnostic? If the answer is yes, then there is a strong case for making Pig a TLP. Are we influenced by Hadoop? A big YES! The reason Pig chose to become a Hadoop sub-project was to ride the Hadoop popularity wave. As a consequence, we chose to be heavily influenced by the Hadoop roadmap. Like a good lawyer, I also have rebuttals to Alan's questions :) 1. Search engine popularity - We can discuss this with the Hadoop team and still retain links to TLP's that are coupled (loosely or tightly). 2. Explicit connection to Hadoop - I see this as logical connection v/s physical connection. Today, we are physically connected as a sub-project. Becoming a TLP, will not increase/decrease our influence on the Hadoop community (think Logical, Physical and MR Layers :) 3. Philosophy - I have already talked about this. The tight coupling is by choice. If Pig continues to be a data flow language with clear syntax and semantics then someone can implement Pig on top of a different backend. Do we intend to take this approach? I just wanted to offer a different opinion to this thread. I strongly believe that we should think about the original philosophy. Will we have a Pig standards committee that will decide on the changes to the language (think C/C++) if there are multiple backend implementations? I will reserve my vote based on the outcome of the philosophy and backward compatibility discussions. If we decide that Pig will be treated and maintained like a true language with clear syntax and semantics then we have a strong case to make it into a TLP. If not, we should retain our existing ties to Hadoop and make Pig into a data flow language for Hadoop. Santhosh -Original Message- From: Thejas Nair [mailto:te...@yahoo-inc.com] Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 4:08 PM To: pig-dev@hadoop.apache.org; Dmitriy Ryaboy Subject: Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project I agree with Alan and Dmitriy - Pig is tightly coupled with hadoop, and heavily influenced by its roadmap. I think it makes sense to continue as a sub-project of hadoop. -Thejas On 3/31/10 4:04 PM, Dmitriy Ryaboy dvrya...@gmail.com wrote: Over time, Pig is increasing its coupling to Hadoop (for good reasons), rather than decreasing it. If and when Pig becomes a viable entity without hadoop around, it might make sense as a TLP. As is, I think becoming a TLP will only introduce unnecessary administrative and bureaucratic headaches. So my vote is also -1. -Dmitriy On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Alan Gates ga...@yahoo-inc.com wrote: So far I haven't seen any feedback on this. Apache has asked the Hadoop PMC to submit input in April on whether some subprojects should be promoted to TLPs. We, the Pig community, need to give feedback to the Hadoop PMC on how we feel about this. Please make your voice heard. So now I'll head my own call and give my thoughts on it. The biggest advantage I see to being a TLP is a direct connection to Apache. Right now all of the Pig team's interaction with Apache is through the Hadoop PMC. Being directly connected to Apache would benefit Pig team members who would have a better view into Apache. It would also raise our profile in Apache and thus make other projects more aware of us. However, I am concerned about loosing Pig's explicit connection to Hadoop. This concern has a couple of dimensions. One, Hadoop and MapReduce are the current flavor of the month in computing. Given that Pig shares a name with the common farm animal, it's hard to be sure based on search statistics. But Google trends shows that hadoop is searched on much more frequently than hadoop pig or apache pig (see http://www.google.com/trends?q=hadoop%2Chadoop+pig). I am guessing that most Pig users come from Hadoop users who discover Pig via Hadoop's website. Loosing that subproject tab on Hadoop's front page may radically lower the number of users coming to Pig to check out our project. I would argue that this benefits Hadoop as well, since high level languages like Pig Latin have the potential to greatly extend the user base and usability of Hadoop. Two, being explicitly connected to Hadoop keeps our two communities aware of each others needs. There are features proposed for MR that would greatly help Pig. By staying in the Hadoop community Pig is better positioned to advocate for and help implement and test those features. The response to this will be that Pig developers can still subscribe to Hadoop mailing lists, submit patches, etc. That is, they can still be part of the Hadoop community. Which reinforces my point that it makes more sense to leave Pig in the Hadoop community since Pig developers will need to be part of that community anyway. Finally, philosophically it makes sense to me that projects that are tightly connected belong together. It strikes me
Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project
Prognostication is a difficult business. Of course I'd love it if someday there is an ISO Pig Latin committee (with meetings in cool exotic places) deciding the official standard for Pig Latin. But that seems like saying in your start up's business plan, When we reach Google's size, then we'll do x. If there ever is an ISO Pig Latin standard it will be years off. As others have noted, staying tight to Hadoop now has many advantages, both in technical and adoption terms. Hence my advocacy of keeping Pig Latin Hadoop agnostic while tightly integrating the backend. Which is to say that in my view, Pig is Hadoop specific now, but there may come a day when that is no longer true. Whether Pig will ever move past just running on Hadoop to running in other parallel systems won't be known for years to come. Given that, do you think it makes sense to say that Pig stays a subproject for now, but if it someday grows beyond Hadoop only it becomes a TLP? I could agree to that stance. Alan. On Apr 3, 2010, at 12:43 PM, Santhosh Srinivasan wrote: I see this as a multi-part question. Looking back at some of the significant roadmap/existential questions asked in the last 12 months, I see the following: 1. With the introduction of SQL, what is the philosophy of Pig (I sent an email about this approximately 9 months ago) 2. What is the approach to support backward compatibility in Pig (Alan had sent an email about this 3 months ago) 3. Should Pig be a TLP (the current email thread). Here is my take on answering the aforementioned questions. The initial philosophy of Pig was to be backend agnostic. It was designed as a data flow language. Whenever a new language is designed, the syntax and semantics of the language have to be laid out. The syntax is usually captured in the form of a BNF grammar. The semantics are defined by the language creators. Backward compatibility is then a question of holding true to the syntax and semantics. With Pig, in addition to the language, the Java APIs were exposed to customers to implement UDFs (load/store/filter/grouping/row transformation etc), provision looping since the language does not support looping constructs and also support a programmatic mode of access. Backward compatibility in this context is to support API versioning. Do we still intend to position as a data flow language that is backend agnostic? If the answer is yes, then there is a strong case for making Pig a TLP. Are we influenced by Hadoop? A big YES! The reason Pig chose to become a Hadoop sub-project was to ride the Hadoop popularity wave. As a consequence, we chose to be heavily influenced by the Hadoop roadmap. Like a good lawyer, I also have rebuttals to Alan's questions :) 1. Search engine popularity - We can discuss this with the Hadoop team and still retain links to TLP's that are coupled (loosely or tightly). 2. Explicit connection to Hadoop - I see this as logical connection v/s physical connection. Today, we are physically connected as a sub-project. Becoming a TLP, will not increase/decrease our influence on the Hadoop community (think Logical, Physical and MR Layers :) 3. Philosophy - I have already talked about this. The tight coupling is by choice. If Pig continues to be a data flow language with clear syntax and semantics then someone can implement Pig on top of a different backend. Do we intend to take this approach? I just wanted to offer a different opinion to this thread. I strongly believe that we should think about the original philosophy. Will we have a Pig standards committee that will decide on the changes to the language (think C/C++) if there are multiple backend implementations? I will reserve my vote based on the outcome of the philosophy and backward compatibility discussions. If we decide that Pig will be treated and maintained like a true language with clear syntax and semantics then we have a strong case to make it into a TLP. If not, we should retain our existing ties to Hadoop and make Pig into a data flow language for Hadoop. Santhosh -Original Message- From: Thejas Nair [mailto:te...@yahoo-inc.com] Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 4:08 PM To: pig-dev@hadoop.apache.org; Dmitriy Ryaboy Subject: Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project I agree with Alan and Dmitriy - Pig is tightly coupled with hadoop, and heavily influenced by its roadmap. I think it makes sense to continue as a sub-project of hadoop. -Thejas On 3/31/10 4:04 PM, Dmitriy Ryaboy dvrya...@gmail.com wrote: Over time, Pig is increasing its coupling to Hadoop (for good reasons), rather than decreasing it. If and when Pig becomes a viable entity without hadoop around, it might make sense as a TLP. As is, I think becoming a TLP will only introduce unnecessary administrative and bureaucratic headaches. So my vote is also -1. -Dmitriy On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Alan Gates ga...@yahoo-inc.com wrote: So
Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project
will reserve my vote based on the outcome of the philosophy and backward compatibility discussions. If we decide that Pig will be treated and maintained like a true language with clear syntax and semantics then we have a strong case to make it into a TLP. If not, we should retain our existing ties to Hadoop and make Pig into a data flow language for Hadoop. Santhosh -Original Message- From: Thejas Nair [mailto:te...@yahoo-inc.com] Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 4:08 PM To: pig-dev@hadoop.apache.org; Dmitriy Ryaboy Subject: Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project I agree with Alan and Dmitriy - Pig is tightly coupled with hadoop, and heavily influenced by its roadmap. I think it makes sense to continue as a sub-project of hadoop. -Thejas On 3/31/10 4:04 PM, Dmitriy Ryaboy dvrya...@gmail.com wrote: Over time, Pig is increasing its coupling to Hadoop (for good reasons), rather than decreasing it. If and when Pig becomes a viable entity without hadoop around, it might make sense as a TLP. As is, I think becoming a TLP will only introduce unnecessary administrative and bureaucratic headaches. So my vote is also -1. -Dmitriy On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Alan Gates ga...@yahoo-inc.com wrote: So far I haven't seen any feedback on this. Apache has asked the Hadoop PMC to submit input in April on whether some subprojects should be promoted to TLPs. We, the Pig community, need to give feedback to the Hadoop PMC on how we feel about this. Please make your voice heard. So now I'll head my own call and give my thoughts on it. The biggest advantage I see to being a TLP is a direct connection to Apache. Right now all of the Pig team's interaction with Apache is through the Hadoop PMC. Being directly connected to Apache would benefit Pig team members who would have a better view into Apache. It would also raise our profile in Apache and thus make other projects more aware of us. However, I am concerned about loosing Pig's explicit connection to Hadoop. This concern has a couple of dimensions. One, Hadoop and MapReduce are the current flavor of the month in computing. Given that Pig shares a name with the common farm animal, it's hard to be sure based on search statistics. But Google trends shows that hadoop is searched on much more frequently than hadoop pig or apache pig (see http://www.google.com/trends?q=hadoop%2Chadoop+pig). I am guessing that most Pig users come from Hadoop users who discover Pig via Hadoop's website. Loosing that subproject tab on Hadoop's front page may radically lower the number of users coming to Pig to check out our project. I would argue that this benefits Hadoop as well, since high level languages like Pig Latin have the potential to greatly extend the user base and usability of Hadoop. Two, being explicitly connected to Hadoop keeps our two communities aware of each others needs. There are features proposed for MR that would greatly help Pig. By staying in the Hadoop community Pig is better positioned to advocate for and help implement and test those features. The response to this will be that Pig developers can still subscribe to Hadoop mailing lists, submit patches, etc. That is, they can still be part of the Hadoop community. Which reinforces my point that it makes more sense to leave Pig in the Hadoop community since Pig developers will need to be part of that community anyway. Finally, philosophically it makes sense to me that projects that are tightly connected belong together. It strikes me as strange to have Pig as a TLP completely dependent on another TLP. Hadoop was originally a subproject of Lucene. It moved out to be a TLP when it became obvious that Hadoop had become independent of and useful apart from Lucene. Pig is not in that position relative to Hadoop. So, I'm -1 on Pig moving out. But this is a soft -1. I'm open to being persuaded that I'm wrong or my concerns can be addressed while still having Pig as a TLP. Alan. On Mar 19, 2010, at 10:59 AM, Alan Gates wrote: You have probably heard by now that there is a discussion going on in the Hadoop PMC as to whether a number of the subprojects (Hbase, Avro, Zookeeper, Hive, and Pig) should move out from under the Hadoop umbrella and become top level Apache projects (TLP). This discussion has picked up recently since the Apache board has clearly communicated to the Hadoop PMC that it is concerned that Hadoop is acting as an umbrella project with many disjoint subprojects underneath it. They are concerned that this gives Apache little insight into the health and happenings of the subproject communities which in turn means Apache cannot properly mentor those communities. The purpose of this email is to start a discussion within
Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project
that are coupled (loosely or tightly). 2. Explicit connection to Hadoop - I see this as logical connection v/s physical connection. Today, we are physically connected as a sub-project. Becoming a TLP, will not increase/decrease our influence on the Hadoop community (think Logical, Physical and MR Layers :) 3. Philosophy - I have already talked about this. The tight coupling is by choice. If Pig continues to be a data flow language with clear syntax and semantics then someone can implement Pig on top of a different backend. Do we intend to take this approach? I just wanted to offer a different opinion to this thread. I strongly believe that we should think about the original philosophy. Will we have a Pig standards committee that will decide on the changes to the language (think C/C++) if there are multiple backend implementations? I will reserve my vote based on the outcome of the philosophy and backward compatibility discussions. If we decide that Pig will be treated and maintained like a true language with clear syntax and semantics then we have a strong case to make it into a TLP. If not, we should retain our existing ties to Hadoop and make Pig into a data flow language for Hadoop. Santhosh -Original Message- From: Thejas Nair [mailto:te...@yahoo-inc.com] Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 4:08 PM To: pig-dev@hadoop.apache.org; Dmitriy Ryaboy Subject: Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project I agree with Alan and Dmitriy - Pig is tightly coupled with hadoop, and heavily influenced by its roadmap. I think it makes sense to continue as a sub-project of hadoop. -Thejas On 3/31/10 4:04 PM, Dmitriy Ryaboy dvrya...@gmail.com wrote: Over time, Pig is increasing its coupling to Hadoop (for good reasons), rather than decreasing it. If and when Pig becomes a viable entity without hadoop around, it might make sense as a TLP. As is, I think becoming a TLP will only introduce unnecessary administrative and bureaucratic headaches. So my vote is also -1. -Dmitriy On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Alan Gates ga...@yahoo-inc.com wrote: So far I haven't seen any feedback on this. Apache has asked the Hadoop PMC to submit input in April on whether some subprojects should be promoted to TLPs. We, the Pig community, need to give feedback to the Hadoop PMC on how we feel about this. Please make your voice heard. So now I'll head my own call and give my thoughts on it. The biggest advantage I see to being a TLP is a direct connection to Apache. Right now all of the Pig team's interaction with Apache is through the Hadoop PMC. Being directly connected to Apache would benefit Pig team members who would have a better view into Apache. It would also raise our profile in Apache and thus make other projects more aware of us. However, I am concerned about loosing Pig's explicit connection to Hadoop. This concern has a couple of dimensions. One, Hadoop and MapReduce are the current flavor of the month in computing. Given that Pig shares a name with the common farm animal, it's hard to be sure based on search statistics. But Google trends shows that hadoop is searched on much more frequently than hadoop pig or apache pig (see http://www.google.com/trends?q=hadoop%2Chadoop+pig). I am guessing that most Pig users come from Hadoop users who discover Pig via Hadoop's website. Loosing that subproject tab on Hadoop's front page may radically lower the number of users coming to Pig to check out our project. I would argue that this benefits Hadoop as well, since high level languages like Pig Latin have the potential to greatly extend the user base and usability of Hadoop. Two, being explicitly connected to Hadoop keeps our two communities aware of each others needs. There are features proposed for MR that would greatly help Pig. By staying in the Hadoop community Pig is better positioned to advocate for and help implement and test those features. The response to this will be that Pig developers can still subscribe to Hadoop mailing lists, submit patches, etc. That is, they can still be part of the Hadoop community. Which reinforces my point that it makes more sense to leave Pig in the Hadoop community since Pig developers will need to be part of that community anyway. Finally, philosophically it makes sense to me that projects that are tightly connected belong together. It strikes me as strange to have Pig as a TLP completely dependent on another TLP. Hadoop was originally a subproject of Lucene. It moved out to be a TLP when it became obvious that Hadoop had become independent of and useful apart from Lucene. Pig is not in that position
Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project
I agree with the stance that we remain in Hadoop until we see more compelling reasons, such as Pig go beyond Hadoop happens. Currently I cannot fully weight the advantage and disadvantage of becoming a TLP. But provides this is a point of no return, I don't want to move unless we do have a strong motivation. We can always choose to become TLP later when we feel more convinced to that. Daniel -- From: Santhosh Srinivasan s...@yahoo-inc.com Sent: Monday, April 05, 2010 12:22 PM To: pig-dev@hadoop.apache.org Subject: RE: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project Given that, do you think it makes sense to say that Pig stays a subproject for now, but if it someday grows beyond Hadoop only it becomes a TLP? I could agree to that stance. Bingo! Santhosh -Original Message- From: Alan Gates [mailto:ga...@yahoo-inc.com] Sent: Monday, April 05, 2010 11:37 AM To: pig-dev@hadoop.apache.org Subject: Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project Prognostication is a difficult business. Of course I'd love it if someday there is an ISO Pig Latin committee (with meetings in cool exotic places) deciding the official standard for Pig Latin. But that seems like saying in your start up's business plan, When we reach Google's size, then we'll do x. If there ever is an ISO Pig Latin standard it will be years off. As others have noted, staying tight to Hadoop now has many advantages, both in technical and adoption terms. Hence my advocacy of keeping Pig Latin Hadoop agnostic while tightly integrating the backend. Which is to say that in my view, Pig is Hadoop specific now, but there may come a day when that is no longer true. Whether Pig will ever move past just running on Hadoop to running in other parallel systems won't be known for years to come. Given that, do you think it makes sense to say that Pig stays a subproject for now, but if it someday grows beyond Hadoop only it becomes a TLP? I could agree to that stance. Alan. On Apr 3, 2010, at 12:43 PM, Santhosh Srinivasan wrote: I see this as a multi-part question. Looking back at some of the significant roadmap/existential questions asked in the last 12 months, I see the following: 1. With the introduction of SQL, what is the philosophy of Pig (I sent an email about this approximately 9 months ago) 2. What is the approach to support backward compatibility in Pig (Alan had sent an email about this 3 months ago) 3. Should Pig be a TLP (the current email thread). Here is my take on answering the aforementioned questions. The initial philosophy of Pig was to be backend agnostic. It was designed as a data flow language. Whenever a new language is designed, the syntax and semantics of the language have to be laid out. The syntax is usually captured in the form of a BNF grammar. The semantics are defined by the language creators. Backward compatibility is then a question of holding true to the syntax and semantics. With Pig, in addition to the language, the Java APIs were exposed to customers to implement UDFs (load/store/filter/grouping/row transformation etc), provision looping since the language does not support looping constructs and also support a programmatic mode of access. Backward compatibility in this context is to support API versioning. Do we still intend to position as a data flow language that is backend agnostic? If the answer is yes, then there is a strong case for making Pig a TLP. Are we influenced by Hadoop? A big YES! The reason Pig chose to become a Hadoop sub-project was to ride the Hadoop popularity wave. As a consequence, we chose to be heavily influenced by the Hadoop roadmap. Like a good lawyer, I also have rebuttals to Alan's questions :) 1. Search engine popularity - We can discuss this with the Hadoop team and still retain links to TLP's that are coupled (loosely or tightly). 2. Explicit connection to Hadoop - I see this as logical connection v/s physical connection. Today, we are physically connected as a sub-project. Becoming a TLP, will not increase/decrease our influence on the Hadoop community (think Logical, Physical and MR Layers :) 3. Philosophy - I have already talked about this. The tight coupling is by choice. If Pig continues to be a data flow language with clear syntax and semantics then someone can implement Pig on top of a different backend. Do we intend to take this approach? I just wanted to offer a different opinion to this thread. I strongly believe that we should think about the original philosophy. Will we have a Pig standards committee that will decide on the changes to the language (think C/C++) if there are multiple backend implementations? I will reserve my vote based on the outcome of the philosophy and backward compatibility discussions. If we decide that Pig will be treated and maintained like a true language with clear syntax and semantics then we have a strong case to make it into a TLP. If not, we should retain
RE: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project
I see this as a multi-part question. Looking back at some of the significant roadmap/existential questions asked in the last 12 months, I see the following: 1. With the introduction of SQL, what is the philosophy of Pig (I sent an email about this approximately 9 months ago) 2. What is the approach to support backward compatibility in Pig (Alan had sent an email about this 3 months ago) 3. Should Pig be a TLP (the current email thread). Here is my take on answering the aforementioned questions. The initial philosophy of Pig was to be backend agnostic. It was designed as a data flow language. Whenever a new language is designed, the syntax and semantics of the language have to be laid out. The syntax is usually captured in the form of a BNF grammar. The semantics are defined by the language creators. Backward compatibility is then a question of holding true to the syntax and semantics. With Pig, in addition to the language, the Java APIs were exposed to customers to implement UDFs (load/store/filter/grouping/row transformation etc), provision looping since the language does not support looping constructs and also support a programmatic mode of access. Backward compatibility in this context is to support API versioning. Do we still intend to position as a data flow language that is backend agnostic? If the answer is yes, then there is a strong case for making Pig a TLP. Are we influenced by Hadoop? A big YES! The reason Pig chose to become a Hadoop sub-project was to ride the Hadoop popularity wave. As a consequence, we chose to be heavily influenced by the Hadoop roadmap. Like a good lawyer, I also have rebuttals to Alan's questions :) 1. Search engine popularity - We can discuss this with the Hadoop team and still retain links to TLP's that are coupled (loosely or tightly). 2. Explicit connection to Hadoop - I see this as logical connection v/s physical connection. Today, we are physically connected as a sub-project. Becoming a TLP, will not increase/decrease our influence on the Hadoop community (think Logical, Physical and MR Layers :) 3. Philosophy - I have already talked about this. The tight coupling is by choice. If Pig continues to be a data flow language with clear syntax and semantics then someone can implement Pig on top of a different backend. Do we intend to take this approach? I just wanted to offer a different opinion to this thread. I strongly believe that we should think about the original philosophy. Will we have a Pig standards committee that will decide on the changes to the language (think C/C++) if there are multiple backend implementations? I will reserve my vote based on the outcome of the philosophy and backward compatibility discussions. If we decide that Pig will be treated and maintained like a true language with clear syntax and semantics then we have a strong case to make it into a TLP. If not, we should retain our existing ties to Hadoop and make Pig into a data flow language for Hadoop. Santhosh -Original Message- From: Thejas Nair [mailto:te...@yahoo-inc.com] Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 4:08 PM To: pig-dev@hadoop.apache.org; Dmitriy Ryaboy Subject: Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project I agree with Alan and Dmitriy - Pig is tightly coupled with hadoop, and heavily influenced by its roadmap. I think it makes sense to continue as a sub-project of hadoop. -Thejas On 3/31/10 4:04 PM, Dmitriy Ryaboy dvrya...@gmail.com wrote: Over time, Pig is increasing its coupling to Hadoop (for good reasons), rather than decreasing it. If and when Pig becomes a viable entity without hadoop around, it might make sense as a TLP. As is, I think becoming a TLP will only introduce unnecessary administrative and bureaucratic headaches. So my vote is also -1. -Dmitriy On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Alan Gates ga...@yahoo-inc.com wrote: So far I haven't seen any feedback on this. Apache has asked the Hadoop PMC to submit input in April on whether some subprojects should be promoted to TLPs. We, the Pig community, need to give feedback to the Hadoop PMC on how we feel about this. Please make your voice heard. So now I'll head my own call and give my thoughts on it. The biggest advantage I see to being a TLP is a direct connection to Apache. Right now all of the Pig team's interaction with Apache is through the Hadoop PMC. Being directly connected to Apache would benefit Pig team members who would have a better view into Apache. It would also raise our profile in Apache and thus make other projects more aware of us. However, I am concerned about loosing Pig's explicit connection to Hadoop. This concern has a couple of dimensions. One, Hadoop and MapReduce are the current flavor of the month in computing. Given that Pig shares a name with the common farm animal, it's hard to be sure based on search statistics. But Google trends shows that hadoop is searched on much more frequently than hadoop pig
Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project
I agree with Alan and Dmitriy - Pig is tightly coupled with hadoop, and heavily influenced by its roadmap. I think it makes sense to continue as a sub-project of hadoop. -Thejas On 3/31/10 4:04 PM, Dmitriy Ryaboy dvrya...@gmail.com wrote: Over time, Pig is increasing its coupling to Hadoop (for good reasons), rather than decreasing it. If and when Pig becomes a viable entity without hadoop around, it might make sense as a TLP. As is, I think becoming a TLP will only introduce unnecessary administrative and bureaucratic headaches. So my vote is also -1. -Dmitriy On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Alan Gates ga...@yahoo-inc.com wrote: So far I haven't seen any feedback on this. Apache has asked the Hadoop PMC to submit input in April on whether some subprojects should be promoted to TLPs. We, the Pig community, need to give feedback to the Hadoop PMC on how we feel about this. Please make your voice heard. So now I'll head my own call and give my thoughts on it. The biggest advantage I see to being a TLP is a direct connection to Apache. Right now all of the Pig team's interaction with Apache is through the Hadoop PMC. Being directly connected to Apache would benefit Pig team members who would have a better view into Apache. It would also raise our profile in Apache and thus make other projects more aware of us. However, I am concerned about loosing Pig's explicit connection to Hadoop. This concern has a couple of dimensions. One, Hadoop and MapReduce are the current flavor of the month in computing. Given that Pig shares a name with the common farm animal, it's hard to be sure based on search statistics. But Google trends shows that hadoop is searched on much more frequently than hadoop pig or apache pig (see http://www.google.com/trends?q=hadoop%2Chadoop+pig). I am guessing that most Pig users come from Hadoop users who discover Pig via Hadoop's website. Loosing that subproject tab on Hadoop's front page may radically lower the number of users coming to Pig to check out our project. I would argue that this benefits Hadoop as well, since high level languages like Pig Latin have the potential to greatly extend the user base and usability of Hadoop. Two, being explicitly connected to Hadoop keeps our two communities aware of each others needs. There are features proposed for MR that would greatly help Pig. By staying in the Hadoop community Pig is better positioned to advocate for and help implement and test those features. The response to this will be that Pig developers can still subscribe to Hadoop mailing lists, submit patches, etc. That is, they can still be part of the Hadoop community. Which reinforces my point that it makes more sense to leave Pig in the Hadoop community since Pig developers will need to be part of that community anyway. Finally, philosophically it makes sense to me that projects that are tightly connected belong together. It strikes me as strange to have Pig as a TLP completely dependent on another TLP. Hadoop was originally a subproject of Lucene. It moved out to be a TLP when it became obvious that Hadoop had become independent of and useful apart from Lucene. Pig is not in that position relative to Hadoop. So, I'm -1 on Pig moving out. But this is a soft -1. I'm open to being persuaded that I'm wrong or my concerns can be addressed while still having Pig as a TLP. Alan. On Mar 19, 2010, at 10:59 AM, Alan Gates wrote: You have probably heard by now that there is a discussion going on in the Hadoop PMC as to whether a number of the subprojects (Hbase, Avro, Zookeeper, Hive, and Pig) should move out from under the Hadoop umbrella and become top level Apache projects (TLP). This discussion has picked up recently since the Apache board has clearly communicated to the Hadoop PMC that it is concerned that Hadoop is acting as an umbrella project with many disjoint subprojects underneath it. They are concerned that this gives Apache little insight into the health and happenings of the subproject communities which in turn means Apache cannot properly mentor those communities. The purpose of this email is to start a discussion within the Pig community about this topic. Let me cover first what becoming TLP would mean for Pig, and then I'll go into what options I think we as a community have. Becoming a TLP would mean that Pig would itself have a PMC that would report directly to the Apache board. Who would be on the PMC would be something we as a community would need to decide. Common options would be to say all active committers are on the PMC, or all active committers who have been a committer for at least a year. We would also need to elect a chair of the PMC. This lucky person would have no additional power, but would have the additional responsibility of writing quarterly reports on Pig's status for Apache board meetings, as well as coordinating with
Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project
So far I haven't seen any feedback on this. Apache has asked the Hadoop PMC to submit input in April on whether some subprojects should be promoted to TLPs. We, the Pig community, need to give feedback to the Hadoop PMC on how we feel about this. Please make your voice heard. So now I'll head my own call and give my thoughts on it. The biggest advantage I see to being a TLP is a direct connection to Apache. Right now all of the Pig team's interaction with Apache is through the Hadoop PMC. Being directly connected to Apache would benefit Pig team members who would have a better view into Apache. It would also raise our profile in Apache and thus make other projects more aware of us. However, I am concerned about loosing Pig's explicit connection to Hadoop. This concern has a couple of dimensions. One, Hadoop and MapReduce are the current flavor of the month in computing. Given that Pig shares a name with the common farm animal, it's hard to be sure based on search statistics. But Google trends shows that hadoop is searched on much more frequently than hadoop pig or apache pig (see http://www.google.com/trends?q=hadoop%2Chadoop +pig). I am guessing that most Pig users come from Hadoop users who discover Pig via Hadoop's website. Loosing that subproject tab on Hadoop's front page may radically lower the number of users coming to Pig to check out our project. I would argue that this benefits Hadoop as well, since high level languages like Pig Latin have the potential to greatly extend the user base and usability of Hadoop. Two, being explicitly connected to Hadoop keeps our two communities aware of each others needs. There are features proposed for MR that would greatly help Pig. By staying in the Hadoop community Pig is better positioned to advocate for and help implement and test those features. The response to this will be that Pig developers can still subscribe to Hadoop mailing lists, submit patches, etc. That is, they can still be part of the Hadoop community. Which reinforces my point that it makes more sense to leave Pig in the Hadoop community since Pig developers will need to be part of that community anyway. Finally, philosophically it makes sense to me that projects that are tightly connected belong together. It strikes me as strange to have Pig as a TLP completely dependent on another TLP. Hadoop was originally a subproject of Lucene. It moved out to be a TLP when it became obvious that Hadoop had become independent of and useful apart from Lucene. Pig is not in that position relative to Hadoop. So, I'm -1 on Pig moving out. But this is a soft -1. I'm open to being persuaded that I'm wrong or my concerns can be addressed while still having Pig as a TLP. Alan. On Mar 19, 2010, at 10:59 AM, Alan Gates wrote: You have probably heard by now that there is a discussion going on in the Hadoop PMC as to whether a number of the subprojects (Hbase, Avro, Zookeeper, Hive, and Pig) should move out from under the Hadoop umbrella and become top level Apache projects (TLP). This discussion has picked up recently since the Apache board has clearly communicated to the Hadoop PMC that it is concerned that Hadoop is acting as an umbrella project with many disjoint subprojects underneath it. They are concerned that this gives Apache little insight into the health and happenings of the subproject communities which in turn means Apache cannot properly mentor those communities. The purpose of this email is to start a discussion within the Pig community about this topic. Let me cover first what becoming TLP would mean for Pig, and then I'll go into what options I think we as a community have. Becoming a TLP would mean that Pig would itself have a PMC that would report directly to the Apache board. Who would be on the PMC would be something we as a community would need to decide. Common options would be to say all active committers are on the PMC, or all active committers who have been a committer for at least a year. We would also need to elect a chair of the PMC. This lucky person would have no additional power, but would have the additional responsibility of writing quarterly reports on Pig's status for Apache board meetings, as well as coordinating with Apache to get accounts for new committers, etc. For more information see http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles Becoming a TLP would not mean that we are ostracized from the Hadoop community. We would continue to be invited to Hadoop Summits, HUGs, etc. Since all Pig developers and users are by definition Hadoop users, we would continue to be a strong presence in the Hadoop community. I see three ways that we as a community can respond to this: 1) Say yes, we want to be a TLP now. 2) Say yes, we want to be a TLP, but not yet. We feel we need more time to mature. If we
Re: Begin a discussion about Pig as a top level project
Over time, Pig is increasing its coupling to Hadoop (for good reasons), rather than decreasing it. If and when Pig becomes a viable entity without hadoop around, it might make sense as a TLP. As is, I think becoming a TLP will only introduce unnecessary administrative and bureaucratic headaches. So my vote is also -1. -Dmitriy On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Alan Gates ga...@yahoo-inc.com wrote: So far I haven't seen any feedback on this. Apache has asked the Hadoop PMC to submit input in April on whether some subprojects should be promoted to TLPs. We, the Pig community, need to give feedback to the Hadoop PMC on how we feel about this. Please make your voice heard. So now I'll head my own call and give my thoughts on it. The biggest advantage I see to being a TLP is a direct connection to Apache. Right now all of the Pig team's interaction with Apache is through the Hadoop PMC. Being directly connected to Apache would benefit Pig team members who would have a better view into Apache. It would also raise our profile in Apache and thus make other projects more aware of us. However, I am concerned about loosing Pig's explicit connection to Hadoop. This concern has a couple of dimensions. One, Hadoop and MapReduce are the current flavor of the month in computing. Given that Pig shares a name with the common farm animal, it's hard to be sure based on search statistics. But Google trends shows that hadoop is searched on much more frequently than hadoop pig or apache pig (see http://www.google.com/trends?q=hadoop%2Chadoop+pig). I am guessing that most Pig users come from Hadoop users who discover Pig via Hadoop's website. Loosing that subproject tab on Hadoop's front page may radically lower the number of users coming to Pig to check out our project. I would argue that this benefits Hadoop as well, since high level languages like Pig Latin have the potential to greatly extend the user base and usability of Hadoop. Two, being explicitly connected to Hadoop keeps our two communities aware of each others needs. There are features proposed for MR that would greatly help Pig. By staying in the Hadoop community Pig is better positioned to advocate for and help implement and test those features. The response to this will be that Pig developers can still subscribe to Hadoop mailing lists, submit patches, etc. That is, they can still be part of the Hadoop community. Which reinforces my point that it makes more sense to leave Pig in the Hadoop community since Pig developers will need to be part of that community anyway. Finally, philosophically it makes sense to me that projects that are tightly connected belong together. It strikes me as strange to have Pig as a TLP completely dependent on another TLP. Hadoop was originally a subproject of Lucene. It moved out to be a TLP when it became obvious that Hadoop had become independent of and useful apart from Lucene. Pig is not in that position relative to Hadoop. So, I'm -1 on Pig moving out. But this is a soft -1. I'm open to being persuaded that I'm wrong or my concerns can be addressed while still having Pig as a TLP. Alan. On Mar 19, 2010, at 10:59 AM, Alan Gates wrote: You have probably heard by now that there is a discussion going on in the Hadoop PMC as to whether a number of the subprojects (Hbase, Avro, Zookeeper, Hive, and Pig) should move out from under the Hadoop umbrella and become top level Apache projects (TLP). This discussion has picked up recently since the Apache board has clearly communicated to the Hadoop PMC that it is concerned that Hadoop is acting as an umbrella project with many disjoint subprojects underneath it. They are concerned that this gives Apache little insight into the health and happenings of the subproject communities which in turn means Apache cannot properly mentor those communities. The purpose of this email is to start a discussion within the Pig community about this topic. Let me cover first what becoming TLP would mean for Pig, and then I'll go into what options I think we as a community have. Becoming a TLP would mean that Pig would itself have a PMC that would report directly to the Apache board. Who would be on the PMC would be something we as a community would need to decide. Common options would be to say all active committers are on the PMC, or all active committers who have been a committer for at least a year. We would also need to elect a chair of the PMC. This lucky person would have no additional power, but would have the additional responsibility of writing quarterly reports on Pig's status for Apache board meetings, as well as coordinating with Apache to get accounts for new committers, etc. For more information see http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles Becoming a TLP would not mean that we are ostracized from the Hadoop community. We would continue to be invited to Hadoop
