Hi Justin, Regarding vendor neutrality, here is a more detailed breakdown of the affiliations among all 14 proposed PMC members: 7 are affiliated with Alibaba Cloud and Ververica. Notably, all seven originated from the initial Fluss development team [1]. In contrast, the majority of newly added committers and the additional PMC member [2] are not from Alibaba Group - specifically, only one is from Alibaba Cloud and two are from Taobao, while the remaining four, including the new PMC member, are from non-Alibaba companies.
* Becket Qin - Linkedin * Benchao Li - ByteDance * Feng Wang - *Alibaba Cloud* * Giannis Polyzos - *Ververica* * Jark Wu - *Alibaba Cloud* * Jean-Baptiste Onofré - Dremio * Jingsong Lee - *Alibaba Cloud* * Mehul Batra - DigitalOcean * Michael Koepf - Dynatrace * Nicholas Jiang - Ant Group * Yu Li - *Alibaba Cloud* * Yunhong Zheng - *Alibaba Cloud* * Yuxia Luo - *Alibaba Cloud* * Zili Chen - ScopeDB And according to my observation, the community has been operating in a vendor-neutral manner - consistent with the Apache Way - throughout the incubation period. All roadmap [3], release [4], feature [5] [6] discussions have taken place publicly on the dev mailing list, with no private decision-making occurring. Best Regards, Yu [1] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/FlussProposal [2] https://incubator.apache.org/projects/fluss.html [3] https://lists.apache.org/thread/x96oq2s7pt7752ozq0cdkjn6nygg6zxh [4] https://lists.apache.org/thread/ct4cx9s3rs14jb3ccxztdxgp7jzc1pob [5] https://lists.apache.org/thread/q24o2ylo35wtkczb4l28b0bk97vvqo3x [6] https://lists.apache.org/thread/s7xlcgtqgtvo656c6ggb0kd379qpzmw3 On Tue, 26 May 2026 at 00:40, Jean-Baptiste Onofré <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Justin, > > Regarding the distribution concerns you raised, I apologize that it wasn't > initially clear what steps the podling needed to take. My understanding was > that the project was using the "create release" button on GitHub; however, > since the podling follows standard distribution practices via > dist.apache.org, we can resolve these issues quickly. > > Regarding vendor neutrality and trademarking, those are excellent points. I > believe these will be relatively straightforward to address. In my > experience working with the PPMC members, even those with various corporate > affiliations act as individuals who are dedicated to advancing the project. > I am confident the PPMC members will provide more specific details > regarding the roster. > > Regards, > JB > > On Mon, May 25, 2026 at 10:27 AM Justin Mclean <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > The project looks in good shape as a graduation candidate, but I think we > > have some issues here. Fuss was recently mentioned in [1], and it appears > > the mentors/PPMC took no action, which is itself a concern. > > > > So your download page: > > • No closer.lua / [preferred] links for release artifacts. The page > is > > serving downloads but not routing through the ASF mirror network - this > > MUST be done. Is there a reason the project is not following policy here? > > • Some checksum and signature links do not use > > https://downloads.apache.org/. > > • No KEYS link pointing to https://downloads.apache.org/ was found. > > • No visible download verification instructions on the page. > > > > Docker Hub - The Docker Hub description does not include a visible > > incubation disclaimer text. > > > > Docker Hub: fluss/fluss -- needs attention - misuse of ASF trademarks. > > > > Maven Central - The POM descriptions don't include incubation disclaimer > > text. > > > > There are also some serious 3rd party branding concerns: > > > > Ververica (the commercial company behind Apache Flink, part of Alibaba) > is > > the biggest source of potential branding issues. The blog posts and > > announcements generally use "Apache Fluss™ (incubating)" correctly, with > a > > TM symbol, which is good. > > > > The Ververica documentation page [1] is titled simply "Fluss" with no > > "Apache" prefix throughout, which doesn't meet the ASF requirement to use > > "Apache Fluss" on first and prominent references. It also misses a > > trademark statement. The blog tag page uses "Fluss" as a category tag > > alongside "Apache Flink”, so it's inconsistently treated: Flink gets the > > "Apache” prefix, but "Fluss" doesn't. > > > > The Alibaba Cloud community blog has posts mixing pre-donation "Fluss" > > references with post-donation "Apache Fluss (Incubating)” references. > This > > could create confusion about the brand's ownership. Some post-incubator > > articles are also incorrect, e.g. > https://www.alibabacloud.com/blog/602412 > > > > Alibaba Cloud has just released a managed service for Apache Fluss. I am > > curious to know whether that follows the ASF's trademark and branding > > policies. > > > > I also have a concern about vendor neutrality. The project originated > > entirely within Alibaba Cloud, and Ververica is an Alibaba subsidiary, so > > they're one corporate family. Of the 14 proposed PMC members, I can see > > that several are Alibaba Cloud or Ververica employees. Can you provide an > > explicit company breakdown of all 14 PMC members, excluding mentors, > > counting Alibaba and Ververica as a single entity? While the figures of > 8+ > > companies and 44 unique committers are encouraging, I think it would be > > helpful to have a bit more detail here. > > > > Kind Regards, > > Justin > > > > 1. https://lists.apache.org/thread/xnb4lhjk82y3c0zd0f622ljgjrpdlydf > > 2. https://docs.ververica.com/introduction/about-ecosystem/fluss/ > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > > > > >
