Some perspective from someone who went through something similar with
Apache Aurora:
It's not as simple as electing new committers. It takes time to develop
the trust needed to add new members to the PMC, and that's the most
important aspect of keeping the project going under Apache (my
opinion/experience). Apache rules dictate that there must be 3 *active*
PMC members at all times.
Anything that the project does requires at least 3 PMC members to give a
+1. What happened to us in Aurora was that we got to a place where
people didn't want to see it die so we kept putting off moving the
Apache version of the project to the Attic and rebooting as a standalone
project.
There were several reasons for eventually moving the project to the
Attic but the most important one being we ran out of folks with enough
history with the project to step into the PMC role. The folks that did
step up, through no fault of their own, did not have the time to
dedicate to the project (I can only imagine Mesos demands way more time
than Aurora behind the scenes).
So all official operations ended up taking for ever due to the challenge
of finding the minimum number of votes, the overhead of writing reports
about the project status (not a huge burden, but someone has to do it),
and eventually, it was impossible to do anything. It was consistently
back to square one and trying to find PMC candidates until none were left.
And then it basically becomes a bootstrapping problem as
Charles-François Natal is experiencing right now. That is to say, you
can't get new contributors to shepherd into committer and into the PMC
if you don't have an active PMC.
I'm not saying Aurora is/was as popular of a project as Mesos, but I am
saying the reality is that it's hard to find the right folks to take the
reins this late in the game. Especially when so many qualified
contributors are moving on.
Given the circumstances, including Vinod looking to step down and D2iQ
sunsetting Mesos, and with many of the former contributors moving on, I
very much agree with Benjamin Bannier suggestion to move the project
into the Attic.
If someone still has the keys to https://github.com/mesos/ , an option
would be to revive that org and continue quality of life updates to
Mesos there.
-Renan
On 2/18/21 10:49 AM, Tomek Janiszewski wrote:
I think we can elect new committers. Currently we have 49 but most of
them have left the project long ago.
https://projects.apache.org/committee.html?mesos
czw., 18 lut 2021 o 18:18 Charles-François Natali <cf.nat...@gmail.com
<mailto:cf.nat...@gmail.com>> napisał(a):
Speaking as someone who contributed a few patches and would like
to get more involved, I find it a bit difficult to get MRs
reviewed and merged.
I think it's probably because the current committers have other
priorities now that D2iQ focus has shifted, which is
understandable but makes it harder for outsiders to contribute.
Is there anything which could be done about that?
Cheers,
On Thu, 18 Feb 2021, 14:30 Qian Zhang, <zhq527...@gmail.com
<mailto:zhq527...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Vinod,
I am still interested in the project. As other folks said, we
need to have a direction for the project. I think there are
still a lot of Mesos users/customers in the mail list, can you
please send another mail to collect their requirements / pain
points on Mesos, and then we can try to set up a roadmap for
the project to move forward.
Regards,
Qian Zhang
On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 9:16 PM Andrei Sekretenko
<asekrete...@apache.org <mailto:asekrete...@apache.org>> wrote:
IIUC, Attic is not intended for projects which still have
active users
and thus might be in need of fixing bugs.
Key items about moving project to Attic:
> It is not intended to:
> - Rebuild community
> - Make bugfixes
> - Make releases
>Projects whose PMC are unable to muster 3 votes for a
release, who have no active committers or are unable to
fulfill their reporting duties to the board are all good
candidates for the Attic.
As a D2iQ employee, I can say that if we find a bug
critical for our
customers, we will be interested in fixing that. Should
the project be
moved into Attic, the fix will be present only in forks
(which might
mean our internal forks).
I could imagine that other entities and people using Mesos
are in a
similar position with regards to bugfixes.
If this is true, then moving the project to Attic in the
near future
is not a proper solution to the issue of insufficient
bandwidth of the
active PMC members/chair.
---
A long-term future of the project is a different story,
which, in my
personal view, will "end" either in moving the project
into Attic or
in shifting the project direction from what it used to be
in the
recent few years to something substantially different.
IMO, this
requires a _separate_ discussion.
Damien's questions sound like a good starting point for that
discussion, I'll try to answer them from my committer/PMC
member
perspective when I have enough time.
On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 12:49, Charles-François Natali
<cf.nat...@gmail.com <mailto:cf.nat...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Thanks Tomek, that's what I suspected.
> It would therefore make it much more difficult for
anyone to carry on since it would effectively have to be a
fork, etc.
> I think it'd be a bit of a shame, but I understand
Benjamin's point.
> I hope it can be avoided.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>
> On Thu, 18 Feb 2021, 11:02 Tomek Janiszewski,
<jani...@gmail.com <mailto:jani...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Moving to attic is making project read only
>> https://attic.apache.org/
>> https://attic.apache.org/projects/aurora.html
>>
>> czw., 18 lut 2021, 11:56 użytkownik Charles-François
Natali <cf.nat...@gmail.com <mailto:cf.nat...@gmail.com>>
napisał:
>>>
>>> I'm not familiar with the attic but would it still
allow to actually
>>> develop, make commits to the repository etc?
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 18 Feb 2021, 08:27 Benjamin Bannier,
<bbann...@apache.org <mailto:bbann...@apache.org>> wrote:
>>>
>>> > Hi Vinod,
>>> >
>>> > > I would like to start a discussion around the
future of the Mesos
>>> > project.
>>> > >
>>> > > As you are probably aware, the number of active
committers and
>>> > contributors
>>> > > to the project have declined significantly over
time. As of today,
>>> > there's
>>> > > no active development of any features or a public
release planned. On the
>>> > > flip side, I do know there are a few companies who
are still actively
>>> > using
>>> > > Mesos.
>>> >
>>> > Thanks for starting this discussion Vinod. Looking
at Slack, mailing
>>> > lists, JIRA and reviewboard/github the project has
wound down a lot in
>>> > the last 12+ months.
>>> >
>>> > > Given that, we need to assess if there's interest
in the community to
>>> > keep
>>> > > this project moving forward. Specifically, we need
some active committers
>>> > > and PMC members who are going to manage the
project. Ideally, these would
>>> > > be people who are using Mesos in some capacity and
can make code
>>> > > contributions.
>>> >
>>> > While I have seen a few non-committer folks
contribute patches in the
>>> > last months, I feel it might be too late to
bootstrap an active
>>> > community at this point.
>>> >
>>> > Apache Mesos is still mentioned prominently in the
docs of a number of
>>> > other projects which gives off the impression of an
active and
>>> > maintained project. In reality almost nobody is
working on issues or
>>> > available to help users, and basing a new project on
Apache Mesos these
>>> > days is probably not a good idea. I honestly do not
see that to change
>>> > should new people step up and IMO the most honest
way forward would be
>>> > to move the project to the attic to clearly
communicate that the project
>>> > has moved into another phase; this wouldn't preclude
folks from using or
>>> > further developing Apache Mesos, but would give a
clear signal to users.
>>> >
>>> > > If there is no active interest, we will likely
need to figure out steps
>>> > for
>>> > > retiring the project.
>>> > >
>>> > > *Call for action: If you are interested in
becoming a committer/PMC
>>> > member
>>> > > (including PMC chair) and actively maintain the
project, please reply to
>>> > > this email.*
>>> >
>>> > Like I wrote above, I would be in favor of a vote to
move Apache Mesos
>>> > to the attic.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Cheers,
>>> >
>>> > Benjamin
>>> >
