Cassandra Java Driver and DataStax

[Chris Mattmann]

Hi All,

I’m investigating something a few ASF members contacted
me about and pointed out, so I’m hoping you can help 
guide me here as a community. I have heard that a company,
DataStax, whose marketing material mentions it as the only
Cassandra vendor, “controls” the Java Driver for Apache 
Cassandra. 

Of course, no company “controls” our projects or its code,
so I told the folks that mentioned it to me that I’d investigate
with my board hat on.

I’d like to hear the community’s thoughts here on this. Does
anyone in the community see this “controlling” behavior going
on? Please speak up, as I’d like to get to the bottom of it,
and I’ll be around on the lists, doing some homework and reading
up on the archives to see what’s up.

Thanks for any help you can provide in rooting this out.

Cheers,
Chris

Re: Cassandra Java Driver and DataStax

[Chris Mattmann]

Thanks Jonathan. I’m starting to get a clearer idea of what’s
going on here. Do you think it was a walled garden in terms of
making reviews for incoming driver patches when you did have 
them in the tree? What you are talking about in the first paragraph
is precisely the reason that your community expands and that you 
create new PMC members and committers as they contribute things.
You inevitably as a community will run into that situation and
in those cases it’s time to make the new people PMC members and
committers especially if you didn’t have the expertise in the
code they are contributing to start with.

Furthermore, it sounds like you are saying for Java and Python
these weren’t “fly by” contributions and more work has gone on
in those drivers than e.g., compared to Clojure, C++, etc.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Chris




On 6/4/16, 5:38 AM, "Jonathan Ellis"  wrote:

>FWIW, in very very ancient history we actually had the drivers in tree.  It
>sucked, because the people who wanted to contribute to the drivers were for
>the most part not Committers, and the committers for the most part weren't
>interested in reviewing drivers patches, and you have different,
>non-overlapping sets of contributors for each driver.  (A C++ driver author
>generally isn't very interested in clojure and vice versa.)
>
>Two things really convinced us they didn't belong in tree, even if we
>wanted to live with the above drawbacks:
>
>- If it's in tree, then the Apache committers are viewed as responsible for
>maintaining it.  Never mind if the Perl driver was (hypothetically)
>contributed by some guy who disappeared after a month and none of the
>committers know Perl, we have by committing it implicitly promised to fix
>bugs and keep it up to date with new features.
>- The obvious solution to this problem is to just not commit any driver
>that we don't have enough expertise to maintain ourselves or are not
>sufficiently confident in the author's commitment.  But then you have a
>very clear distinction between "first class," in tree drivers (probably
>just Java, maybe Python too) and everyone else, which didn't sit right with
>us either.
>
>On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 10:47 PM, J. D. Jordan 
>wrote:
>
>> This is the way our community has operated for at least the 6ish years I
>> have been involved with it. The Apache project develops the database,
>> others in the community develop drivers. It's the way we have always
>> worked, I'm sorry if you don't like that.
>>
>
>-- 
>Jonathan Ellis
>Project Chair, Apache Cassandra
>co-founder, http://www.datastax.com
>@spyced

Re: Cassandra Java Driver and DataStax

[Chris Mattmann]

Thanks Jonathan.

I have seen several people replying back and citing general
technical benefits again to having different drivers hosted
elsewhere. I have also seen people say, “well it’s ALv2 
and open source, so people can fork it and blah and blah”. 

“Opensource” and “ALv2” don’t necessarily a community make and
I think that point is a little lost amongst people who are 
part of this Apache PMC.

Thanks for being willing to update the report as I asked and
I look forward to your thoughts and the community thinking
on this and reviewing it with my board hat on.

Cheers,
Chris




On 6/6/16, 3:19 PM, "Jonathan Ellis"  wrote:

>I’m happy to consult with my peers in other projects for the board report
>and summarize their ideas and Cassandra PMC's to improve contributor
>diversity.  I’ll plan to attend the meeting in person to discuss this
>further.
>
>On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 5:33 PM, Mattmann, Chris A (3980) <
>chris.a.mattm...@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the info Jonathan. I think have assessed based on
>> the replies thus far, my studying of the archives and
>> commit and project history the following situation.
>>
>> Unfortunately it seems like there is a bit of control going on
>> I’m going to call a spade a spade here. A key portion of your
>> software’s stack, a client driver to use it, exists outside of
>> Apache in separate communities. This is an inherent risk to the
>> project. Some of you cite flexibility and adaptability as reasons
>> for this - I’ve seen it in so many communities over the last 12+
>> years in the foundation - it’s not really due to those issues.
>> There is definitely some control going on. I would ask you all
>> this - has there been a PR or patch in the past year or two that
>> wasn’t singularly reviewed by DataStax committers and PMC? Also,
>> as to the composition of the PMC when was the last time a non
>> DataStax person was elected to the PMC and/or as a committer?
>>
>> By itself the diversity issues alone are not damning to the
>> project, but taken together with the citation to other project
>> communities even those outside of Apache (e.g., the comments
>> well “Postgres does it this way, so it’s a good example to
>> compare us to” or “these other 4 projects at the ASF do it
>> like this, so X”.. [sic]) and with the perception being created
>> to those that don’t work at DataStax, and there is an issue here.
>>
>> I would like to see a discussion in your next board report about
>> the diversity and health issues of the project, and also some
>> ideas about potential strategies for mitigation.
>>
>> I appreciate the open and honest conversation thus far. Let’s
>> keep it up.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Chris
>>
>> ++
>> Chris Mattmann, Ph.D.
>> Chief Architect
>> Instrument Software and Science Data Systems Section (398)
>> NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, CA 91109 USA
>> Office: 168-519, Mailstop: 168-527
>> Email: chris.a.mattm...@nasa.gov
>> WWW:  http://sunset.usc.edu/~mattmann/
>> ++
>> Director, Information Retrieval and Data Science Group (IRDS)
>> Adjunct Associate Professor, Computer Science Department
>> University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 USA
>> WWW: http://irds.usc.edu/
>> ++
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 6/5/16, 1:51 PM, "Jonathan Ellis"  wrote:
>>
>> >On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 8:32 AM, Mattmann, Chris A (3980) <
>> >chris.a.mattm...@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
>> >
>> >> 1. Is Apache Cassandra useful *without* a driver? That is, can
>> >> you use the database without a driver to connect to it or in the
>> >> real world would your users all have to download at least one
>> >> driver in order to use the DB?
>> >>
>> >
>> >The users do need to download a driver--but this is pretty normal for
>> >community-driven OSS databases.  Besides the Apache projects I listed,
>> >PostgreSQL also runs on a community-maintained driver model.
>> >
>> >
>> >> 2. To confirm again, at one point at least the Java driver code
>> >> lived in the code-base, and further, at one point, people did
>> >> submit some patches to add drivers, but the PMC didn’t want to
>> >> maintain that code (and apparently they didn’t want to create
>> >> any new PMC member

Re: Java Driver 3.0 for Apache Cassandra - Documentation Outdated?

[Chris Mattmann]

Excellent, why am I the first person to ask that, and why didn’t
a PMC member point that out right away and why did it take me asking
to point to the Apache docs.

This is what I am talking about in terms of the Apache community..





On 6/6/16, 4:47 PM, "Michael Kjellman"  wrote:

>http://cassandra.apache.org/doc/cql3/CQL.html
>
>On Jun 6, 2016, at 4:42 PM, Mattmann, Chris A (3980) 
>mailto:chris.a.mattm...@jpl.nasa.gov>> wrote:
>
>Hi,
>
>So, the core documentation for a key part of Cassandra is hosted
>at DataStax?
>
>Cheers,
>Chris
>
>++++++
>Chris Mattmann, Ph.D.
>Chief Architect
>Instrument Software and Science Data Systems Section (398)
>NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, CA 91109 USA
>Office: 168-519, Mailstop: 168-527
>Email: chris.a.mattm...@nasa.gov<mailto:chris.a.mattm...@nasa.gov>
>WWW:  http://sunset.usc.edu/~mattmann/
>++
>Director, Information Retrieval and Data Science Group (IRDS)
>Adjunct Associate Professor, Computer Science Department
>University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 USA
>WWW: http://irds.usc.edu/
>++
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>On 6/6/16, 7:32 AM, "Mahdi Mohammadi" 
>mailto:mah...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>Team,
>
>I was checking the documentation for TupleType in DataStax docs here
><https://docs.datastax.com/en/latest-java-driver/java-driver/reference/tupleTypes.html>
>and
>the code example was like this:
>
>TupleType theType = TupleType.of(DataType.cint(), DataType.text(),
>DataType.cfloat());
>
>
>But in the code, the *TupleType.of* has two additional parameters not
>mentioned in the documentation:
>
>
>*public static TupleType of(ProtocolVersion protocolVersion, CodecRegistry
>codecRegistry, DataType... types)*
>
>Maybe I am looking in the wrong place. Could someone please explain how can
>I instantiate a *TupleType*?
>
>I have the same question for *Map* type.
>
>Thanks for your help.
>
>===
>Best Regards
>

Re: Java Driver 3.0 for Apache Cassandra - Documentation Outdated?

[Chris Mattmann]

It’s not about whether DataStax has great documentation or not. 
That’s fine - it’s about the perception of the *first* place to
look for that documentation. If someone came to Apache OODT, 
Nutch, Tika, Lucene, Spark, etc., and we had great documentation 
at JPL to go along with these, as a PMC member for these projects
I would first point to the ASF documentation, or I would work to
make sure the ASF documentation got a look and set of updates 
first. Point them at the company docs, fine, but make sure the ASF
docs are also great as a priority.




On 6/6/16, 4:57 PM, "Michael Kjellman"  wrote:

>I think it comes down to having full time tech writers employed and paid. If 
>Datastax has the $$ to provide a significant benefit to the community (well 
>thought out documentation) that's better than little or no documentation (if 
>it was only done via developers who most likely won't document or do a poor 
>job at documentation).
>
>Having some documentation is much better for the community than the 
>alternative that "the code is the documentation".
>
>Nothing is free.
>
>On Jun 6, 2016, at 4:50 PM, Chris Mattmann 
>mailto:mattm...@apache.org>> wrote:
>
>Excellent, why am I the first person to ask that, and why didn’t
>a PMC member point that out right away and why did it take me asking
>to point to the Apache docs.
>
>This is what I am talking about in terms of the Apache community..
>
>
>
>
>
>On 6/6/16, 4:47 PM, "Michael Kjellman" 
>mailto:mkjell...@internalcircle.com>> wrote:
>
>http://cassandra.apache.org/doc/cql3/CQL.html
>
>On Jun 6, 2016, at 4:42 PM, Mattmann, Chris A (3980) 
>mailto:chris.a.mattm...@jpl.nasa.gov>> wrote:
>
>Hi,
>
>So, the core documentation for a key part of Cassandra is hosted
>at DataStax?
>
>Cheers,
>Chris
>
>++
>Chris Mattmann, Ph.D.
>Chief Architect
>Instrument Software and Science Data Systems Section (398)
>NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, CA 91109 USA
>Office: 168-519, Mailstop: 168-527
>Email: chris.a.mattm...@nasa.gov<mailto:chris.a.mattm...@nasa.gov>
>WWW:  http://sunset.usc.edu/~mattmann/
>++
>Director, Information Retrieval and Data Science Group (IRDS)
>Adjunct Associate Professor, Computer Science Department
>University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 USA
>WWW: http://irds.usc.edu/
>++
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>On 6/6/16, 7:32 AM, "Mahdi Mohammadi" 
>mailto:mah...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>Team,
>
>I was checking the documentation for TupleType in DataStax docs here
><https://docs.datastax.com/en/latest-java-driver/java-driver/reference/tupleTypes.html>
>and
>the code example was like this:
>
>TupleType theType = TupleType.of(DataType.cint(), DataType.text(),
>DataType.cfloat());
>
>
>But in the code, the *TupleType.of* has two additional parameters not
>mentioned in the documentation:
>
>
>*public static TupleType of(ProtocolVersion protocolVersion, CodecRegistry
>codecRegistry, DataType... types)*
>
>Maybe I am looking in the wrong place. Could someone please explain how can
>I instantiate a *TupleType*?
>
>I have the same question for *Map* type.
>
>Thanks for your help.
>
>===
>Best Regards
>
>
>

Re: NewBie Question ~ Book for Cassandra

[Chris Mattmann]

u should get used to) Cassandra should know
better. This isn’t a new Incubator project.

>
>You make mention, several times, of the community, and in this case the
>community has decided that the best source of documentation is the one that
>has had a company put financial investment into it.  You can't expect a
>community of unpaid volunteers to be able to coordinate and contribute
>something of that high quality.

Yes, I can. And yes, we do. That’s what we do at the ASF. It’s worked
for many, many years, before, Apache Cassandra. It will work long after 
it too.

>
>Full disclosure, I am *not* on the PMC, nor am I an employee of DataStax or
>any other company that provides support for an open source project. I am a
>member of the community that sees the highest probability of success of
>this project being that the PMC supports the development of the core
>product while the ancillary pieces like documentation and drivers get
>supported by those who are paid to support it.  Because lets all face the
>facts here, no one "likes" writing drivers and documentation, and I have
>done both for this project.

Plenty of people are paid to support OSS software, even OSS software at the
ASF. But we must be diligent to wear our $dayjob hats, in contrast to the
ASF hats, and to do what’s right for the effort at Apache, since in cases
such as this, it is the *Apache* project, its community, and its license,
that are friendly to downstream users (even companies).

>
>Suffice it to say, that in my opinion, these "companies" that you seem to
>be trying so hard to vilify are the future of projects like this. They fill
>the gap that the ASF leaves with its volunteer based model.
>
>Also, to address your thinly veiled and pointed comments as of late.  It
>seems you have already made up your mind about DataStax and are continuing
>in an effort to prove your point.  Doing this in a public manner is toxic
>for the community and will do nothing more than to divide it and risk
>failure of the project.  I suggest you confer with the PMC and the company
>*privately* to determine what is best for the project and ultimately the
>community.

This statement above, sadly, indicates how broken the governance of
this project is. 99% of all discussion in the ASF is public. The only
discussion in private is that adding new PMC members and/or committers.
Would have been nice for someone long long long before me, to tell you
that.

Cheers,
Chris

>
>Best,
>-Russell Bradberry
>
>On Sat, Jun 11, 2016 at 12:16 PM, Mattmann, Chris A (3980) <
>chris.a.mattm...@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
>
>> Hi Everyone,
>>
>> While this may be a current great source of documentation on
>> Cassandra, and while it exists externally, the PMC should be
>> be promoting (and hopefully ensuring) that the source of documentation
>> for Apache Cassandra is here at the ASF.
>>
>> I’m happy to be corrected that that is the case, and/or that
>> I’ve missed something, but the first reply to questions like
>> this from newbies shouldn’t be to point to an external website.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Chris
>>
>> ++
>> Chris Mattmann, Ph.D.
>> Chief Architect
>> Instrument Software and Science Data Systems Section (398)
>> NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, CA 91109 USA
>> Office: 168-519, Mailstop: 168-527
>> Email: chris.a.mattm...@nasa.gov
>> WWW:  http://sunset.usc.edu/~mattmann/
>> ++
>> Director, Information Retrieval and Data Science Group (IRDS)
>> Adjunct Associate Professor, Computer Science Department
>> University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 USA
>> WWW: http://irds.usc.edu/
>> ++
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 6/11/16, 8:54 AM, "Bhuvan Rawal"  wrote:
>>
>> >Hi Deepak,
>> >
>> >You can try Datastax Docs, they are most extensive and updated
>> >documentation available.
>> >As Cassandra is a fast developing technology I wonder if there is a Book
>> in
>> >the market which covers latest features like Materialized Views/ SASI
>> Index
>> >or new SSTable Format. I believe the best starting point would be the
>> >Academy Tutorials and further Planet Cassandra - A week in Cassandra
>> series
>> >provides good overview of blogs and developments by Cassandra Evangelists.
>> >It also provides link of top blogs which help understand internal working
>> >of the Database.
>> >
>> >H

Re: NewBie Question ~ Book for Cassandra

[Chris Mattmann]

Hi Harmeet,

The dev list is the lifeblood of an Apache project, and
projects here at the ASF conduct 99% of their business in
public, not in private. The ASF is a non-profit for the 
public good and we have a tradition of openness and 
transparency. 

Even if the business isn’t pleasant some times, it must
be discussed, in public. The committers and PMC members for

the code base - the name of which is *Apache* Cassandra as
the project is here at the *Apache Software Foundation* - 
are Apache Software Foundation committers first, when they
deal or steward the Apache code-base. Even before their 
$dayjobs. 

Cheers,
Chris


On 6/11/16, 11:54 PM, "mylistt...@gmail.com"  wrote:

>Dear All,
>
>I am user of Cassandra. I am grateful to each of you for providing your time 
>as committers to the code base for a great product.
>
>This is what I wanted to suggest - could you gentlemen not create a group 
>email   Id to discuss matters of such importance amongst yourselves. Using the 
>dev list I am not sure is the best place. I have been reading emails where 
>insinuations have being made - if a particular company may high jack the code 
>base etc.
>
>We are all developers , we love our code. I don't think this is right forum to 
>bring things out of this proportion , read wash dirty linen. 
>
>Pardon me if you think my opinion or inputs are wrong.
>
>I am newbie on Cassandra. I use it as an application developer. I don't have 
>any intention to judge your experiences or thoughts. Just saying this could be 
>done in a finer way without most if us getting to know about it.
>
>Regards, 
>Harmeet
>
>
>
>On Jun 12, 2016, at 2:31, Tom Barber  wrote:
>
>> Looking at that thread, I'm surprised you didn't call Dave out as well,
>> that attitude did no one any favours.
>> 
>>> Because lets all face the
>>> facts here, no one "likes" writing drivers and documentation, and I have
>>> done both for this project.
>> 
>> That's clearly incorrect, I (and I suspect other people) like writing docs
>> because it means people can use your tools in a much easier manner than
>> looking through the code or unit tests.
>> 
>> Tooling can be a burden but it doesn't excuse not writing docs, even if it
>> becomes a PMC type rule for committers to commit Docs for new features like
>> they should be committing unit tests. At least it improves what is shipped
>> with the Apache project in question.
>> 
>> Tom
>> 
>> On Sat, Jun 11, 2016 at 7:21 PM, Chris Mattmann  wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Russell,
>>> 
>>> [CC/board@, board members may want to join the
>>> Apache Cassandra lists for specifics and further
>>> engagement]
>>> 
>>> Multiple things that need to be addressed below, but TL;DR:
>>> 
>>> 1. I have asked the Apache Cassandra PMC, and its chair, to provide
>>> a detailed description on how the project *isn’t* controlled by an
>>> external entity in its next monthly board report. The below further
>>> re-enforces the control. Further, it re-enforces the vitriol and
>>> name calling attitude when questioned and when someone suggests
>>> pointing to the Apache documentation and making it better as a first
>>> step. I plan on making it very loudly known at our next board meeting
>>> that something is awry. CC/board@ ahead of time on that.
>>> 
>>> 2. You don’t seem to understand Apache. This is unfortunate.  I
>>> went to go look you up and see if you are a PMC member for Apache
>>> Cassandra. Funny enough, the main page doesn’t even link to the PMC
>>> (I couldn’t find a direct link). This isn’t even correct with respect
>>> to Apache branding guidelines here at the ASF. Shane, would you
>>> like to comment here? For an FYI to everyone, see:
>>> http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/pmcs.html
>>> 
>>> After a Google Search, I found this page:
>>> https://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/Committers
>>> 
>>> That looks way out of date. Luckily there is the project.apache.org
>>> ASF page: https://projects.apache.org/committee.html?cassandra
>>> 
>>> Which indicates you aren’t a committer or PMC member of the project.
>>> This is unfortunate. If you wrote a book for projects I work on, I
>>> would have hopefully long before and along the way got involved in
>>> the community, and encouraged you to contribute to the *core effort
>>> here at the ASF* and took you on the path towards becoming a PMC
>>> member in the *Apache project that is the core effort*.
>>> 

Re: MSc Project - compaction strategy

[Chris Mattmann]

Dev discussion about the project should ideally be on the dev list.

Further, all *decisions* must be on the dev list for the project.
JIRA has the negative impact that it is lost in many people’s email
filters and hard to parse the signal from the noise.

I would consider some well formed emails to the dev list as part
of your plan as well so that the community can follow along.

Cheers,
Chris




On 7/18/16, 10:42 PM, "steve landiss"  wrote:

>So much for compaction of information eh?   
>
>On Tuesday, July 12, 2016 10:06 AM, Pedro Gordo 
>  wrote:
> 
>
> Hi
>
>Yes, I just saw Marcus reply now, sorry for the duplicate email. The email
>filters were not set up correctly. Thanks to both!
>
>Best regards
>
>Pedro Gordo
>
>On 12 July 2016 at 12:39, Robert Stupp  wrote:
>
>> As Markus already mentioned, the best place to discuss the idea of your
>> compaction strategy is a lira ticket.
>> Best would be to include as much details (written, not coded) as necessary
>> to understand why this compaction strategy is useful and how it works.
>>
>> Implementation questions and clarifications on #cassandra-dev IRC
>>
>> Robert
>>
>> —
>> Robert Stupp
>> @snazy
>>
>> > On 12 Jul 2016, at 19:42, Pedro Gordo  wrote:
>> >
>> > Hi all
>> >
>> > I'm finishing an MSc in which my final project is to implement a new
>> > compaction strategy in Cassandra. I've discussed the main points of the
>> > strategy with other community members and received valuable feedback.
>> > However, I understand this will be a tough challenge for someone who has
>> > never worked with Cassandra, but after getting to know the technology,
>> I've
>> > found it fascinating. Since I wanted to contribute to an open source
>> > project in my MSc Project, this makes Cassandra the ideal technology to
>> go
>> > forward, and hence why I've chosen it.
>> >
>> > However, since this is my first time contributing to an open source
>> > project, I've some questions on how to proceed correctly. Looking at the
>> How
>> > To Contribute  page, I
>> > see that we're supposed to create a ticket before starting working on it,
>> > however, in this case, does someone need to validate the usefulness of
>> the
>> > strategy or can I just proceed and implement it, or do something else?
>> > Also, is this the correct mailing list to be asking this sort of
>> questions?
>> > :)
>> >
>> > As for the code itself, if I have a question like "Should we be using an
>> > abstract class for compaction classes?" or "What is this method supposed
>> to
>> > do?", can I ask it here? What is the best course of action to learn about
>> > the details of the code in Cassandra? I already saw that it has some
>> > comments, but probably won't be enough.
>> >
>> > The strategy I have in mind will be very simple until I finish the MSc.
>> > After the submission, I'll improve it with other features and feedback I
>> > got, but for the moment, I'll keep it at a basic level. The strategy will
>> > start only during certain periods of time (for example a time of the day
>> > where the cluster has little traffic (1)), during which, the rows will be
>> > made unique across all SSTables. These new tables will be capped at a
>> > configurable size, so after compaction, we can have multiple tables
>> > created. This operation only happens if, after a prior analysis, we find
>> > that the row exists in a number of SSTables above a certain threshold.
>> What
>> > I'm trying to address here is the continuous high CPU usage of the LCS
>> (1),
>> > but also the need for lots of disc space when we have big SSTables
>> > resulting from STCS. I suppose it's a naive strategy, but the aim here is
>> > to give me experience with C*, and of course I'll be happy to take
>> > suggestions. But I'll probably only use the ideas after delivering the
>> > project because, at the moment, I need to keep it simple. Otherwise, I'll
>> > never be able to submit it. :)
>> >
>> > Sorry for the long email, and thanks for all the help in advance! I'm
>> very
>> > excited about this project and look forward to being part of this
>> community!
>> >
>> > Best regards Pedro Gordo
>>
>>
>
>

Re: 20% off Cassandra training

[Chris Mattmann]

Yeah this is something that hopefully folks at DataStax can work to
update in its marketing material..





On 8/6/16, 2:54 PM, "James Carman"  wrote:

>I don't see any reference to the fact that it's "Apache Cassandra" here...
>
>-- Forwarded message -
>From: Cassandra Summit 2016 
>Date: Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 9:06 AM
>Subject: 20% off Cassandra training
>To: 
>
>
>
>Ready to lead your team's Cassandra efforts? We’re bringing the tools and
>trainers to Cassandra Summit 2016 to make sure you are. Summit’s exclusive
>Training Day will take you hands-on with DataStax experts; bringing you
>from beginner to a cloud apps expert.
>
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Special Report: August 2016

[Chris Mattmann]

Hi Apache Cassandra PMC,

I requested a special report last month that I never saw regarding
the issues going on in Cassandra regarding company control, etc.

Jonathan said he would be collecting the information and reporting
but perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. I didn’t want to wait until your
next reporting cycle. I think the issues were enough that an
out-of-band report was needed.

I now explicitly request a report this month for your project.
Please address:

1. Company control, specifically Datastax 
2. Planet Cassandra and its prominence on the website 
3. Issues like I’ve seen James Carman and others bring up about 
marketing material from DataStax 
4. PMC composition and overall approach to PMC and committers

Thank you.

Cheers, 
Chris Mattmann

Re: A proposal to move away from Jira-centric development

[Chris Mattmann]

Discussion belongs on the dev list. Putting discussion in JIRA, is fine, but 
realize,
there is a lot of noise in that signal and people may or may not be watching
the JIRA list. In fact, I don’t see JIRA sent to the dev list at all so you are 
basically
forking the conversation to a high noise list by putting it all in JIRA.





On 8/15/16, 10:11 AM, "Aleksey Yeschenko"  wrote:

I too feel like it would be sufficient to announce those major JIRAs on the 
dev@ list, but keep all discussion itself to JIRA, where it belongs.

You don’t need to follow every ticket this way, just subscribe to dev@ and 
then start watching the select major JIRAs you care about.

-- 
AY

On 15 August 2016 at 18:08:20, Jeremiah D Jordan 
(jeremiah.jor...@gmail.com) wrote:

I like keeping things in JIRA because then everything is in one place, and 
it is easy to refer someone to it in the future.  
But I agree that JIRA tickets with a bunch of design discussion and POC’s 
and such in them can get pretty long and convoluted.  

I don’t really like the idea of moving all of that discussion to email 
which makes it has harder to point someone to it. Maybe a better idea would be 
to have a “design/POC” JIRA and an “implementation” JIRA. That way we could 
still keep things in JIRA, but the final decision would be kept “clean”.  

Though it would be nice if people would send an email to the dev list when 
proposing “design” JIRA’s, as not everyone has time to follow every JIRA ever 
made to see that a new design JIRA was created that they might be interested in 
participating on.  

My 2c.  

-Jeremiah  


> On Aug 15, 2016, at 9:22 AM, Jonathan Ellis  wrote:  
>  
> A long time ago, I was a proponent of keeping most development 
discussions  
> on Jira, where tickets can be self contained and the threadless nature  
> helps keep discussions from getting sidetracked.  
>  
> But Cassandra was a lot smaller then, and as we've grown it has become  
> necessary to separate out the signal (discussions of new features and 
major  
> changes) from the noise of routine bug reports.  
>  
> I propose that we take advantage of the dev list to perform that  
> separation. Major new features and architectural improvements should be  
> discussed first here, then when consensus on design is achieved, moved to 
 
> Jira for implementation and review.  
>  
> I think this will also help with the problem when the initial idea proves 
 
> to be unworkable and gets revised substantially later after much  
> discussion. It can be difficult to figure out what the conclusion was, as 
 
> review comments start to pile up afterwards. Having that discussion on 
the  
> list, and summarizing on Jira, would mitigate this.  
>  
> --  
> Jonathan Ellis  
> Project Chair, Apache Cassandra  
> co-founder, http://www.datastax.com  
> @spyced  

Re: A proposal to move away from Jira-centric development

[Chris Mattmann]

On 8/15/16, 10:27 AM, "Jeremiah D Jordan"  wrote:

>  In fact, I don’t see JIRA sent to the dev list at all so you are 
basically
> forking the conversation to a high noise list by putting it all in JIRA.

This is why I proposed we send a link to the design lira’s to the dev list.

Sure, except I didn’t read that mail yet. Give me more than a few minutes to 
catch up. I saw Aleksey’s email, so I replied to it.

> Putting discussion in JIRA, is fine, but realize,
> there is a lot of noise in that signal and people may or may not be 
watching

I don’t see how a JIRA dedicated to a specific issue is “high noise” ?  
That single JIRA is much lower noise, it only has conversations around that 
specific ticket.  All conversations happening on the dev list at once seems 
much “higher noise” to me.

I never said that. I said that JIRA itself has high noise around it’s signal. 
You get
an email with links at the top, and you get dates, times, and a whole 
surrounding
envelope email that you have to dig through to find the actual conversation. 
Then,
to reply to it, I’ve got to click to an external site out of my mail browser, 
then possibly
log in, and then interact there.

The point being that it’s not as straight forward as simply email. Realize, 
that you
are trying to capture the minimum viable interaction and to try and be the most
inclusive for your dev community. Having convos on the dev list is part of that.

JIRA is a great tool for what it does – but it should not be the minimum entry 
point
for a (healthy) project. Sure you can cite X, Y, Z projects that do it. In most 
cases,
I can cite eventual community issues with doing that and a lot of pain/work to 
use
it correctly.

Chris


-Jeremiah

> On Aug 15, 2016, at 12:22 PM, Chris Mattmann  wrote:
> 
> Discussion belongs on the dev list. Putting discussion in JIRA, is fine, 
but realize,
> there is a lot of noise in that signal and people may or may not be 
watching
> the JIRA list. In fact, I don’t see JIRA sent to the dev list at all so 
you are basically
> forking the conversation to a high noise list by putting it all in JIRA.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 8/15/16, 10:11 AM, "Aleksey Yeschenko"  wrote:
> 
>I too feel like it would be sufficient to announce those major JIRAs 
on the dev@ list, but keep all discussion itself to JIRA, where it belongs.
> 
>You don’t need to follow every ticket this way, just subscribe to dev@ 
and then start watching the select major JIRAs you care about.
> 
>-- 
>AY
> 
>On 15 August 2016 at 18:08:20, Jeremiah D Jordan 
(jeremiah.jor...@gmail.com) wrote:
> 
>I like keeping things in JIRA because then everything is in one place, 
and it is easy to refer someone to it in the future.  
>But I agree that JIRA tickets with a bunch of design discussion and 
POC’s and such in them can get pretty long and convoluted.  
> 
>I don’t really like the idea of moving all of that discussion to email 
which makes it has harder to point someone to it. Maybe a better idea would be 
to have a “design/POC” JIRA and an “implementation” JIRA. That way we could 
still keep things in JIRA, but the final decision would be kept “clean”.  
> 
>Though it would be nice if people would send an email to the dev list 
when proposing “design” JIRA’s, as not everyone has time to follow every JIRA 
ever made to see that a new design JIRA was created that they might be 
interested in participating on.  
> 
>My 2c.  
> 
>-Jeremiah  
> 
> 
>> On Aug 15, 2016, at 9:22 AM, Jonathan Ellis  wrote:  
>> 
>> A long time ago, I was a proponent of keeping most development 
discussions  
>> on Jira, where tickets can be self contained and the threadless nature  
>> helps keep discussions from getting sidetracked.  
>> 
>> But Cassandra was a lot smaller then, and as we've grown it has become  
>> necessary to separate out the signal (discussions of new features and 
major  
>> changes) from the noise of routine bug reports.  
>> 
>> I propose that we take advantage of the dev list to perform that  
>> separation. Major new features and architectural improvements should be  
>> discussed first here, then when consensus on design is achieved, moved 
to  
>> Jira for implementation and review.  
>> 
>> I think this will also help with the problem when the initial idea 
proves  
>> to be unworkable and gets revised substantially later after much  
>> discussion. It can be difficult to figure out what the conclusion was, 
as  
>

Re: A proposal to move away from Jira-centric development

[Chris Mattmann]

This is a good outward flow of info to the dev list. However, there needs to be
inward flow too – having the convo on the dev list will be a good start to that.
I hope to see more inclusivity here.



On 8/15/16, 10:26 AM, "Aleksey Yeschenko"  wrote:

Well, if you read carefully what Jeremiah and I have just proposed, it 
wouldn’t be an issue.

The notable major changes would start off on dev@ (think, a summary, a link 
to the JIRA, and maybe an attached spec doc).

No need to follow the JIRA feed. Watch dev@ for those announcements and 
start watching the invidual JIRA tickets if interested.

This creates the least amount of noise: you miss nothing important, and at 
the same time you won’t be receiving mail from
dev@ for each individual comment - including those on proposals you don’t 
care about.

We aren’t doing it currently, but we could, and probably should.

-- 
AY

On 15 August 2016 at 18:22:36, Chris Mattmann (mattm...@apache.org) wrote:

Discussion belongs on the dev list. Putting discussion in JIRA, is fine, 
but realize,  
there is a lot of noise in that signal and people may or may not be 
watching  
the JIRA list. In fact, I don’t see JIRA sent to the dev list at all so you 
are basically  
forking the conversation to a high noise list by putting it all in JIRA.  





On 8/15/16, 10:11 AM, "Aleksey Yeschenko"  wrote:  

I too feel like it would be sufficient to announce those major JIRAs on the 
dev@ list, but keep all discussion itself to JIRA, where it belongs.  

You don’t need to follow every ticket this way, just subscribe to dev@ and 
then start watching the select major JIRAs you care about.  

--  
AY  

On 15 August 2016 at 18:08:20, Jeremiah D Jordan 
(jeremiah.jor...@gmail.com) wrote:  

I like keeping things in JIRA because then everything is in one place, and 
it is easy to refer someone to it in the future.  
But I agree that JIRA tickets with a bunch of design discussion and POC’s 
and such in them can get pretty long and convoluted.  

I don’t really like the idea of moving all of that discussion to email 
which makes it has harder to point someone to it. Maybe a better idea would be 
to have a “design/POC” JIRA and an “implementation” JIRA. That way we could 
still keep things in JIRA, but the final decision would be kept “clean”.  

Though it would be nice if people would send an email to the dev list when 
proposing “design” JIRA’s, as not everyone has time to follow every JIRA ever 
made to see that a new design JIRA was created that they might be interested in 
participating on.  

My 2c.  

-Jeremiah  


> On Aug 15, 2016, at 9:22 AM, Jonathan Ellis  wrote:  
>  
> A long time ago, I was a proponent of keeping most development 
discussions  
> on Jira, where tickets can be self contained and the threadless nature  
> helps keep discussions from getting sidetracked.  
>  
> But Cassandra was a lot smaller then, and as we've grown it has become  
> necessary to separate out the signal (discussions of new features and 
major  
> changes) from the noise of routine bug reports.  
>  
> I propose that we take advantage of the dev list to perform that  
> separation. Major new features and architectural improvements should be  
> discussed first here, then when consensus on design is achieved, moved to 
 
> Jira for implementation and review.  
>  
> I think this will also help with the problem when the initial idea proves 
 
> to be unworkable and gets revised substantially later after much  
> discussion. It can be difficult to figure out what the conclusion was, as 
 
> review comments start to pile up afterwards. Having that discussion on 
the  
> list, and summarizing on Jira, would mitigate this.  
>  
> --  
> Jonathan Ellis  
> Project Chair, Apache Cassandra  
> co-founder, http://www.datastax.com  
> @spyced  

Re: A proposal to move away from Jira-centric development

[Chris Mattmann]

It depends on the environment, right? It may not be friendly to folks who:

1. Don’t have an Apache account yet
2. Aren’t familiar with cross linking or specific terms in Apache Cassandra, or
with other JIRA issues

I have taught CS at the graduate academic level for many years, and have been at
NASA JPL for 16+ years, and I can tell you that most newcomers to software 
development
and to participating in open source tend to have trouble with SE tools and 
systems
to start with. There is a “startup cost” to do so. You reap much benefits in 
the end, but
realize that during that time you may have lost the contributor.

Famous quote from prior ASF Director Board member Henri Yandell from Amazon - 
words that I live by:

Projects begin by thinking they're in the software engineering business; after 
a while they realize they're in the recruiting business.
More committers, consensus driving, flatter committer/PMC ratios; all of these 
are tools in our #1 business of recruitment.

https://twitter.com/flamefew/statuses/36352411593351168
https://twitter.com/flamefew/statuses/36352484263858176

Some thoughts..



On 8/15/16, 10:34 AM, "Russell Bradberry"  wrote:

I would also like to add, that for posterity’s sake, JIRA is much more 
friendly.  People want to understand the reasoning behind the changes that have 
been made.  Like why did we default to G1GC?  These are all kept in the 
discussions on the JIRA tickets that implemented the features. Navigating 
through endless emails in the dev list and making sense of it is extremely 
tedious and very difficult to get the full picture around the decisions being 
made.





On 8/15/16, 1:27 PM, "Jeremiah D Jordan"  wrote:

>  In fact, I don’t see JIRA sent to the dev list at all so you are 
basically
> forking the conversation to a high noise list by putting it all in 
JIRA.

This is why I proposed we send a link to the design lira’s to the dev 
list.

> Putting discussion in JIRA, is fine, but realize,
> there is a lot of noise in that signal and people may or may not be 
watching

I don’t see how a JIRA dedicated to a specific issue is “high noise” ?  
That single JIRA is much lower noise, it only has conversations around that 
specific ticket.  All conversations happening on the dev list at once seems 
much “higher noise” to me.

-Jeremiah
    
    > On Aug 15, 2016, at 12:22 PM, Chris Mattmann  
wrote:
> 
> Discussion belongs on the dev list. Putting discussion in JIRA, is 
fine, but realize,
> there is a lot of noise in that signal and people may or may not be 
watching
> the JIRA list. In fact, I don’t see JIRA sent to the dev list at all 
so you are basically
> forking the conversation to a high noise list by putting it all in 
JIRA.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 8/15/16, 10:11 AM, "Aleksey Yeschenko"  wrote:
> 
>I too feel like it would be sufficient to announce those major 
JIRAs on the dev@ list, but keep all discussion itself to JIRA, where it 
belongs.
> 
>You don’t need to follow every ticket this way, just subscribe to 
dev@ and then start watching the select major JIRAs you care about.
> 
>-- 
>AY
> 
>On 15 August 2016 at 18:08:20, Jeremiah D Jordan 
(jeremiah.jor...@gmail.com) wrote:
> 
>I like keeping things in JIRA because then everything is in one 
place, and it is easy to refer someone to it in the future.  
>But I agree that JIRA tickets with a bunch of design discussion 
and POC’s and such in them can get pretty long and convoluted.  
> 
>I don’t really like the idea of moving all of that discussion to 
email which makes it has harder to point someone to it. Maybe a better idea 
would be to have a “design/POC” JIRA and an “implementation” JIRA. That way we 
could still keep things in JIRA, but the final decision would be kept “clean”.  
> 
>Though it would be nice if people would send an email to the dev 
list when proposing “design” JIRA’s, as not everyone has time to follow every 
JIRA ever made to see that a new design JIRA was created that they might be 
interested in participating on.  
> 
>My 2c.  
> 
>-Jeremiah  
> 
> 
>> On Aug 15, 2016, at 9:22 AM, Jonathan Ellis  
wrote:  
>> 
>> A long time ago, I was a proponent of keeping most development 
discussions  
>> on Jira, where tickets can be self contained and the threadless 
nature  
>> helps keep discussions from getting sidetracked.  

Re: A proposal to move away from Jira-centric development

[Chris Mattmann]

Realize it’s not just about committers and PMC members that are *already* 
on the PMC or that are developing the project. It’s about how to engage the
*entire* community including those that are not yet on the committer or
PMC roster. That is the future (and current) lifeblood of the project. The 
mailing
list aren’t just an unfortunate necessity of being an Apache project. They *are*
the lifeblood of the Apache project.



On 8/15/16, 10:44 AM, "Brandon Williams"  wrote:

I too, use this method quite a bit, almost every single day.

On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 12:43 PM, Yuki Morishita  wrote:

> As an active committer, the most important thing for me is to be able
> to *look up* design discussion and decision easily later.
>
> I often look up the git history or CHANGES.txt for changes that I'm
> interested in, then look up JIRA by following JIRA ticket number
> written to the comment or text.
> If we move to dev mailing list, I would request to post permalink to
> that thread posted to JIRA, which I think is just one extra step that
> isn't necessary if we simply use JIRA.
>
> So, I'm +1 to just post JIRA link to dev list.
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 12:35 PM, Chris Mattmann 
> wrote:
> > This is a good outward flow of info to the dev list. However, there
> needs to be
> > inward flow too – having the convo on the dev list will be a good start
> to that.
> > I hope to see more inclusivity here.
> >
> >
> >
> > On 8/15/16, 10:26 AM, "Aleksey Yeschenko"  wrote:
> >
> > Well, if you read carefully what Jeremiah and I have just proposed,
> it wouldn’t be an issue.
> >
> > The notable major changes would start off on dev@ (think, a
> summary, a link to the JIRA, and maybe an attached spec doc).
> >
> > No need to follow the JIRA feed. Watch dev@ for those announcements
> and start watching the invidual JIRA tickets if interested.
> >
> > This creates the least amount of noise: you miss nothing important,
> and at the same time you won’t be receiving mail from
> > dev@ for each individual comment - including those on proposals you
> don’t care about.
> >
> > We aren’t doing it currently, but we could, and probably should.
> >
> > --
> > AY
> >
> > On 15 August 2016 at 18:22:36, Chris Mattmann (mattm...@apache.org)
> wrote:
> >
> > Discussion belongs on the dev list. Putting discussion in JIRA, is
> fine, but realize,
> > there is a lot of noise in that signal and people may or may not be
> watching
> > the JIRA list. In fact, I don’t see JIRA sent to the dev list at all
> so you are basically
> > forking the conversation to a high noise list by putting it all in
> JIRA.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 8/15/16, 10:11 AM, "Aleksey Yeschenko" 
> wrote:
> >
> > I too feel like it would be sufficient to announce those major JIRAs
> on the dev@ list, but keep all discussion itself to JIRA, where it
> belongs.
> >
> > You don’t need to follow every ticket this way, just subscribe to
> dev@ and then start watching the select major JIRAs you care about.
> >
> > --
> > AY
> >
> > On 15 August 2016 at 18:08:20, Jeremiah D Jordan (
> jeremiah.jor...@gmail.com) wrote:
> >
> > I like keeping things in JIRA because then everything is in one
> place, and it is easy to refer someone to it in the future.
> > But I agree that JIRA tickets with a bunch of design discussion and
> POC’s and such in them can get pretty long and convoluted.
> >
> > I don’t really like the idea of moving all of that discussion to
> email which makes it has harder to point someone to it. Maybe a better 
idea
> would be to have a “design/POC” JIRA and an “implementation” JIRA. That 
way
> we could still keep things in JIRA, but the final decision would be kept
> “clean”.
> >
> > Though it would be nice if people would send an email to the dev
> list when proposing “design” JIRA’s, as not everyone has time to follow
> every JIRA ever made to see that a new design JIRA was created that they
> might be interested in participating on.
> >
> > My 2c.
> >
> > -Jeremiah
> >
> >

Re: A proposal to move away from Jira-centric development

[Chris Mattmann]

I’m sorry but you are massively confused if you believe that the ASF mailing 
lists
aren’t the source of truth. They are. That’s not optional. If you are an ASF 
project,
mailing lists are the source of truth. Period.

On 8/15/16, 11:01 AM, "Michael Kjellman"  wrote:

I'm a big fan of mailing lists, but google makes issues very findable for 
new people to the project as JIRA gets indexed. They won't be able to find the 
same thing on an email they didn't get -- because they weren't in the project 
in the first place.

Mailing lists are good for broad discussion or bringing specific issues to 
the attention of the broader community. It should never be the source of truth.

best,
kjellman

Sent from my iPhone

    On Aug 15, 2016, at 2:57 PM, Chris Mattmann 
mailto:mattm...@apache.org>> wrote:

Realize it’s not just about committers and PMC members that are *already*
on the PMC or that are developing the project. It’s about how to engage the
*entire* community including those that are not yet on the committer or
PMC roster. That is the future (and current) lifeblood of the project. The 
mailing
list aren’t just an unfortunate necessity of being an Apache project. They 
*are*
the lifeblood of the Apache project.



On 8/15/16, 10:44 AM, "Brandon Williams" 
mailto:dri...@gmail.com>> wrote:

   I too, use this method quite a bit, almost every single day.

   On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 12:43 PM, Yuki Morishita 
mailto:mor.y...@gmail.com>> wrote:

As an active committer, the most important thing for me is to be able
to *look up* design discussion and decision easily later.

I often look up the git history or CHANGES.txt for changes that I'm
interested in, then look up JIRA by following JIRA ticket number
written to the comment or text.
If we move to dev mailing list, I would request to post permalink to
that thread posted to JIRA, which I think is just one extra step that
isn't necessary if we simply use JIRA.

So, I'm +1 to just post JIRA link to dev list.


On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 12:35 PM, Chris Mattmann 
mailto:mattm...@apache.org>>
wrote:
This is a good outward flow of info to the dev list. However, there
needs to be
inward flow too – having the convo on the dev list will be a good start
to that.
I hope to see more inclusivity here.



On 8/15/16, 10:26 AM, "Aleksey Yeschenko" 
mailto:alek...@apache.org>> wrote:

   Well, if you read carefully what Jeremiah and I have just proposed,
it wouldn’t be an issue.

   The notable major changes would start off on dev@ (think, a
summary, a link to the JIRA, and maybe an attached spec doc).

   No need to follow the JIRA feed. Watch dev@ for those announcements
and start watching the invidual JIRA tickets if interested.

   This creates the least amount of noise: you miss nothing important,
and at the same time you won’t be receiving mail from
   dev@ for each individual comment - including those on proposals you
don’t care about.

   We aren’t doing it currently, but we could, and probably should.

   --
   AY

   On 15 August 2016 at 18:22:36, Chris Mattmann 
(mattm...@apache.org<mailto:mattm...@apache.org>)
wrote:

   Discussion belongs on the dev list. Putting discussion in JIRA, is
fine, but realize,
   there is a lot of noise in that signal and people may or may not be
watching
   the JIRA list. In fact, I don’t see JIRA sent to the dev list at all
so you are basically
   forking the conversation to a high noise list by putting it all in
JIRA.





   On 8/15/16, 10:11 AM, "Aleksey Yeschenko" 
mailto:alek...@apache.org>>
wrote:

   I too feel like it would be sufficient to announce those major JIRAs
on the dev@ list, but keep all discussion itself to JIRA, where it
belongs.

   You don’t need to follow every ticket this way, just subscribe to
dev@ and then start watching the select major JIRAs you care about.

   --
   AY

   On 15 August 2016 at 18:08:20, Jeremiah D Jordan (
jeremiah.jor...@gmail.com<mailto:jeremiah.jor...@gmail.com>) wrote:

   I like keeping things in JIRA because then everything is in one
place, and it is easy to refer someone to it in the future.
   But I agree that JIRA tickets with a bunch of design discussion and
POC’s and such in them can get pretty long and convoluted.

   I don’t really like the idea of moving all of that discussion to
email which makes it has harder to point someone to it. Maybe a better idea
would be to have a “design/POC” JIRA and an “implementation” JIRA. That way
  

Re: A proposal to move away from Jira-centric development

[Chris Mattmann]

I don’t want to put words into Jonathan’s mouth, but my guess is that he’s 
trying
to strike a balance between Apache Cassandra’s almost exclusive use of JIRA and
like nil conversation on the dev@ list, with an incremental way to *get there* 
in terms of moving the project to actually use the dev list for discussion.

This isn’t an effort to kill JIRA. JIRA is fine as a *tool*. But, it is by no 
means the
ground truth for the project. The ground truth is, always has been, and will 
continue in the future to be, the mailing list. Project decisions are made on 
the mailing list.

Normally this is an easy concept for new projects to grok as they come through
the Incubator, and as they become Apache projects. Sometimes, projects need
to be instructed that this is the case. We have seen it many times before. 
However,
there seems to be a fundamental disconnect here in Apache Cassandra between
the project being mentored in the Apache way, versus “the way you have been
doing it for so long”. Just because that’s the way it’s been going on for so 
long, 
doesn’t mean it’s the correct way here at the ASF.



On 8/15/16, 11:05 AM, "Russell Bradberry"  wrote:

So then what was the point of Ellis’s proposal, and this discussion, if 
there was never a choice in the matter in the first place?


On 8/15/16, 2:03 PM, "Chris Mattmann"  wrote:

I’m sorry but you are massively confused if you believe that the ASF 
mailing lists
aren’t the source of truth. They are. That’s not optional. If you are 
an ASF project,
mailing lists are the source of truth. Period.

On 8/15/16, 11:01 AM, "Michael Kjellman"  
wrote:

I'm a big fan of mailing lists, but google makes issues very 
findable for new people to the project as JIRA gets indexed. They won't be able 
to find the same thing on an email they didn't get -- because they weren't in 
the project in the first place.

Mailing lists are good for broad discussion or bringing specific 
issues to the attention of the broader community. It should never be the source 
of truth.

best,
kjellman

Sent from my iPhone
    
    On Aug 15, 2016, at 2:57 PM, Chris Mattmann 
mailto:mattm...@apache.org>> wrote:

Realize it’s not just about committers and PMC members that are 
*already*
on the PMC or that are developing the project. It’s about how to 
engage the
*entire* community including those that are not yet on the 
committer or
PMC roster. That is the future (and current) lifeblood of the 
project. The mailing
list aren’t just an unfortunate necessity of being an Apache 
project. They *are*
the lifeblood of the Apache project.



On 8/15/16, 10:44 AM, "Brandon Williams" 
mailto:dri...@gmail.com>> wrote:

   I too, use this method quite a bit, almost every single day.

   On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 12:43 PM, Yuki Morishita 
mailto:mor.y...@gmail.com>> wrote:

As an active committer, the most important thing for me is to be 
able
to *look up* design discussion and decision easily later.

I often look up the git history or CHANGES.txt for changes that I'm
interested in, then look up JIRA by following JIRA ticket number
written to the comment or text.
If we move to dev mailing list, I would request to post permalink to
that thread posted to JIRA, which I think is just one extra step 
that
isn't necessary if we simply use JIRA.

So, I'm +1 to just post JIRA link to dev list.


On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 12:35 PM, Chris Mattmann 
mailto:mattm...@apache.org>>
wrote:
This is a good outward flow of info to the dev list. However, there
needs to be
inward flow too – having the convo on the dev list will be a good 
start
to that.
I hope to see more inclusivity here.



On 8/15/16, 10:26 AM, "Aleksey Yeschenko" 
mailto:alek...@apache.org>> wrote:

   Well, if you read carefully what Jeremiah and I have just 
proposed,
it wouldn’t be an issue.

   The notable major changes would start off on dev@ (think, a
summary, a link to the JIRA, and maybe an attached spec doc).

   No need to follow the JIRA feed. Watch dev@ for those 
announcements
and start watching the invidual JIRA tickets if interested.

   This creates the le

Re: A proposal to move away from Jira-centric development

[Chris Mattmann]

How is it harder to point someone to mail?

Have you seen lists.apache.org?

Specifically:
https://lists.apache.org/list.html?dev@cassandra.apache.org



On 8/15/16, 10:08 AM, "Jeremiah D Jordan"  wrote:

I like keeping things in JIRA because then everything is in one place, and 
it is easy to refer someone to it in the future.
But I agree that JIRA tickets with a bunch of design discussion and POC’s 
and such in them can get pretty long and convoluted.

I don’t really like the idea of moving all of that discussion to email 
which makes it has harder to point someone to it.  Maybe a better idea would be 
to have a “design/POC” JIRA and an “implementation” JIRA.  That way we could 
still keep things in JIRA, but the final decision would be kept “clean”.

Though it would be nice if people would send an email to the dev list when 
proposing “design” JIRA’s, as not everyone has time to follow every JIRA ever 
made to see that a new design JIRA was created that they might be interested in 
participating on.

My 2c.

-Jeremiah


> On Aug 15, 2016, at 9:22 AM, Jonathan Ellis  wrote:
> 
> A long time ago, I was a proponent of keeping most development discussions
> on Jira, where tickets can be self contained and the threadless nature
> helps keep discussions from getting sidetracked.
> 
> But Cassandra was a lot smaller then, and as we've grown it has become
> necessary to separate out the signal (discussions of new features and 
major
> changes) from the noise of routine bug reports.
> 
> I propose that we take advantage of the dev list to perform that
> separation.  Major new features and architectural improvements should be
> discussed first here, then when consensus on design is achieved, moved to
> Jira for implementation and review.
> 
> I think this will also help with the problem when the initial idea proves
> to be unworkable and gets revised substantially later after much
> discussion.  It can be difficult to figure out what the conclusion was, as
> review comments start to pile up afterwards.  Having that discussion on 
the
> list, and summarizing on Jira, would mitigate this.
> 
> -- 
> Jonathan Ellis
> Project Chair, Apache Cassandra
> co-founder, http://www.datastax.com
> @spyced

Re: A proposal to move away from Jira-centric development

[Chris Mattmann]

s/dev list followers//

That’s (one of) the disconnect(s). It’s not *you the emboldened, powerful PMC* 
and then everyone else.


On 8/15/16, 11:25 AM, "Jeremy Hanna"  wrote:

Regarding high level linking, if I’m in irc or slack or hipchat or a 
mailing list thread, it’s easy to reference a Jira ID and chat programs can 
link to it and bots can bring up various details.  I don’t think a hash id for 
a mailing list is as simple or memorable.

A feature of a mailing list thread is that it can go in different 
directions easily.  The burden is that it will be harder to follow in the 
future if you’re trying to sort out implementation details.  So for high level 
discussion, the mailing list is great.  When getting down to the actual work 
and discussion about that focused work, that’s where a tool like Jira comes in. 
 Then it is reference-able in the changes.txt and other things.

I think the approach proposed by Jonathan is a nice way to keep dev list 
followers informed but keeping ticket details focused.

> On Aug 15, 2016, at 1:12 PM, Chris Mattmann  wrote:
> 
> How is it harder to point someone to mail?
> 
> Have you seen lists.apache.org?
> 
> Specifically:
> https://lists.apache.org/list.html?dev@cassandra.apache.org
> 
> 
> 
> On 8/15/16, 10:08 AM, "Jeremiah D Jordan"  
wrote:
> 
>I like keeping things in JIRA because then everything is in one place, 
and it is easy to refer someone to it in the future.
>But I agree that JIRA tickets with a bunch of design discussion and 
POC’s and such in them can get pretty long and convoluted.
> 
>I don’t really like the idea of moving all of that discussion to email 
which makes it has harder to point someone to it.  Maybe a better idea would be 
to have a “design/POC” JIRA and an “implementation” JIRA.  That way we could 
still keep things in JIRA, but the final decision would be kept “clean”.
> 
>Though it would be nice if people would send an email to the dev list 
when proposing “design” JIRA’s, as not everyone has time to follow every JIRA 
ever made to see that a new design JIRA was created that they might be 
interested in participating on.
> 
>My 2c.
> 
>-Jeremiah
> 
> 
>> On Aug 15, 2016, at 9:22 AM, Jonathan Ellis  wrote:
>> 
>> A long time ago, I was a proponent of keeping most development 
discussions
>> on Jira, where tickets can be self contained and the threadless nature
>> helps keep discussions from getting sidetracked.
>> 
>> But Cassandra was a lot smaller then, and as we've grown it has become
>> necessary to separate out the signal (discussions of new features and 
major
>> changes) from the noise of routine bug reports.
>> 
>> I propose that we take advantage of the dev list to perform that
>> separation.  Major new features and architectural improvements should be
>> discussed first here, then when consensus on design is achieved, moved to
>> Jira for implementation and review.
>> 
>> I think this will also help with the problem when the initial idea proves
>> to be unworkable and gets revised substantially later after much
>> discussion.  It can be difficult to figure out what the conclusion was, 
as
>> review comments start to pile up afterwards.  Having that discussion on 
the
>> list, and summarizing on Jira, would mitigate this.
>> 
>> -- 
>> Jonathan Ellis
>> Project Chair, Apache Cassandra
>> co-founder, http://www.datastax.com
>> @spyced
> 
> 
> 
> 

Moderation

[Chris Mattmann]

Hi Folks,

Kelly Sommers sent a message to dev@cassandra and I'm trying to figure out if 
it's in moderation.

Can the moderators speak up? 

Cheers,
Chris

Re: Moderation

[Chris Mattmann]

So seriously, we're going to send now 4 emails talking about what a user of 
Apache Cassandra and possible community member could have done right or better 
or sooner, or that there is no time limit to moderating shit when it could have 
been as simple as literally sending a confirmation email to moderate it 
through? This is the definition of process over community. And it's the 
definition (wrongly so) of why people think it's "Apache" that induces the 
processes that make shit hard, and not the community itself. Seriously this is 
a joke. So what if she didn't do it right the first time. You think potentially 
moderating her mail through and then sending a kind email suggesting she look 
at the instructions for how to subscribe, which oh someone may not have found 
easy to do or simply not understood that simply sending an email to the list 
wouldn't have made it go through the first time? Is it that hard to figure out? 
Really?

This is the definition of making things hard and not making them easy or 
friendly. And this is also exactly what enables people to sound off on Twitter 
about a project, and loses the conversation that could have been had on Apache 
mailing lists. Kelly has been tweeting for days. I saw her tweets retweeted by 
someone in my feed, and yesterday asked her kindly to bring her conversation to 
the list. 12 hours later it's still in moderation, and we are arguing whether 
to f'ing moderate it through. Wow. Great job.

On 2016-11-04 09:37 (-0700), Edward Capriolo  wrote: 
> Is the message in moderation because
> 1) it was sent by someone not registered with the list
> 2) some other reason (anti-spam etc)
> 
> If it is is case 1: Isn't the correct process to inform and encourage
> someone list properly?
> If it is case 2: Is there an expected ETA for list moderation events?
> (probably not)
> 
> I see twitter mentioned. We know that sometimes news and sentiment in
> social media move fast and cause reactions on incorrect/unvetted
> information.
> 
> 
> On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 11:58 AM, Mattmann, Chris A (3010) <
> chris.a.mattm...@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
> 
> > Hmm. Not excessive but you have a situation where someone is tweeting
> > thinking her message didn't go through and conversation is happening there
> > when that same conversation could be had on list. If you are ok with that
> > continuing to happen then great but I am not. Can someone please moderate
> > the message through?
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> > > On Nov 4, 2016, at 8:54 AM, Mark Thomas  wrote:
> > >
> > >> On 04/11/2016 15:47, Chris Mattmann wrote:
> > >> Hi Folks,
> > >>
> > >> Kelly Sommers sent a message to dev@cassandra and I'm trying to figure
> > out if it's in moderation.
> > >>
> > >> Can the moderators speak up?
> > >
> > > Using my infra karma, I checked the mail server. That message is waiting
> > > for moderator approval. It has been in moderation for 12 hours which
> > > doesn't strike me as at all excessive.
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> >
> 

Re: Moderation

[Chris Mattmann]

On 2016-11-04 09:51 (-0700), Benedict Elliott Smith  
wrote: 
> Wow, that was quite the aggressive email. The thing is, it very much looks
> like the only reason you care about this delay is because Kellabyte is
> making the ASF board look bad on twitter.  If it weren't the case, it seems
> unlikely such a "slow" 12hr response would receive board notice, let alone
> ire.
> 
> I think the board forgets that all of these functions are fulfilled by
> volunteers (whoever the moderators are - I genuinely haven't a clue).
> Expecting volunteers to jump to it, because the board is looking bad, seems
> like a pretty clear *abuse* of process.
> 

 She is welcome to denigrate the Apache Board. In fact, if you go back and read 
the Tweets she was originally doing so to DataStax. That said, the whole 
premise is that this is a conversation happening on Twitter where potentially 
knowledge could be gained about *Apache* Cassandra. You know, the project here 
at the ASF? And not somewhere else? Yet again, here we are at the 6th email, 
and the 2 second task to moderate a message through that could enable a 
conversation to be had on the *Apache* lists rather than Twitter still remains 
not being had here. 

I have been subscribed to dev@cassandra for months. This is not a high volume 
list. AT ALL. Yet you act like it's volunteer time that's preventing moderating 
a message through in 12 hours. Instead of asking the real question - are there 
enough moderators for the list in different timezones that can appropriately 
ensure that conversation happens on the list? Is that your goal? Are you on the 
Apache Cassandra PMC? Do you think it's healthy to send emails trying to talk 
shit instead of simply moderating messages through that could ground the 
conversation here at the ASF? 

Clearly per your snark and email you are pleased with Kelly "making the board 
look bad" [sic] on Twitter. Why not increase the visibility of making the board 
look bad and do so here on the official list for the project? Or is Twitter the 
official list now? Go ahead, I'll wait.




> On 4 November 2016 at 16:44, Chris Mattmann  wrote:
> 
> > So seriously, we're going to send now 4 emails talking about what a user
> > of Apache Cassandra and possible community member could have done right or
> > better or sooner, or that there is no time limit to moderating shit when it
> > could have been as simple as literally sending a confirmation email to
> > moderate it through? This is the definition of process over community. And
> > it's the definition (wrongly so) of why people think it's "Apache" that
> > induces the processes that make shit hard, and not the community itself.
> > Seriously this is a joke. So what if she didn't do it right the first time.
> > You think potentially moderating her mail through and then sending a kind
> > email suggesting she look at the instructions for how to subscribe, which
> > oh someone may not have found easy to do or simply not understood that
> > simply sending an email to the list wouldn't have made it go through the
> > first time? Is it that hard to figure out? Really?
> >
> > This is the definition of making things hard and not making them easy or
> > friendly. And this is also exactly what enables people to sound off on
> > Twitter about a project, and loses the conversation that could have been
> > had on Apache mailing lists. Kelly has been tweeting for days. I saw her
> > tweets retweeted by someone in my feed, and yesterday asked her kindly to
> > bring her conversation to the list. 12 hours later it's still in
> > moderation, and we are arguing whether to f'ing moderate it through. Wow.
> > Great job.
> >
> > On 2016-11-04 09:37 (-0700), Edward Capriolo 
> > wrote:
> > > Is the message in moderation because
> > > 1) it was sent by someone not registered with the list
> > > 2) some other reason (anti-spam etc)
> > >
> > > If it is is case 1: Isn't the correct process to inform and encourage
> > > someone list properly?
> > > If it is case 2: Is there an expected ETA for list moderation events?
> > > (probably not)
> > >
> > > I see twitter mentioned. We know that sometimes news and sentiment in
> > > social media move fast and cause reactions on incorrect/unvetted
> > > information.
> > >
> > >
> > > On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 11:58 AM, Mattmann, Chris A (3010) <
> > > chris.a.mattm...@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hmm. Not excessive but you have a situation where someone is tweeting
> > > > thinking her message didn't go t

Re: Moderation

[Chris Mattmann]

I have apmail karma and can add moderators. 

Jason I can add you - please confirm you would like to be added. Did you file 
the ticket - if so point me to it. If you haven't yet, no worries I can still 
add you. Let me know. Thanks.

On 2016-11-04 09:54 (-0700), Jason Brown  wrote: 
> Gary,
> 
> I've just started looking into the moderator component due to this thread;
> I admit I did not know about it before (my fault). Yes, I would like to be
> added. Apparently, I need to file an INFRA ticket (as per
> https://www.apache.org/dev/committers.html#mailing-list-moderators), which
> I will do in the next few minutes.
> 
> -Jason
> 
> On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 9:51 AM, Gary Dusbabek  wrote:
> 
> > I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the only one with moderator privs. Any other
> > committer/PMCs interested?
> >
> > Sorry, it's a chore to begin with and I've been traveling this week.
> >
> > Gary.
> >
> > On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 3:47 PM, Chris Mattmann 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Folks,
> > >
> > > Kelly Sommers sent a message to dev@cassandra and I'm trying to figure
> > > out if it's in moderation.
> > >
> > > Can the moderators speak up?
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Chris
> > >
> > >
> >
> 

Re: Moderation

[Chris Mattmann]

I'm sorry that you feel I'm promoting the arguing. The point of this thread was 
a simple request - moderate the email. I suspected that there weren't enough 
moderators but didn't spend the time to check. Honestly this is the Apache 
Cassandra PMC's job to maintain a healthy set of moderators, ideally in diverse 
timezones. Some may not feel 12 hours is a long time. I can only provide 
answers from most of the other Apache communities I participate in (Tika, 
Nutch, OODT, Hadoop, Solr/Lucene, Incubator, etc.) and in those communities, 
that *is* a long time. That said, this was also elevated because I saw someone 
with real questions asking them on Twitter and not on ASF lists pertaining to 
the projects (Yes there was also denigrating statements about both DataStax and 
ASF in there too). So, regarding that, the grown up thing to do (and honestly 
the "Apache" thing to do) is to bring the conversation on list, and talk, 
rather than sound off in 25+ different mediums. 

Now we've added a least one more moderator, which will help the root of the 
problem. And Kelly's email is on list. I will try and reply with my knowledge 
as a concerned ASF member first, and Board Member second. It would be great for 
the Apache Cassandra PMC and community to reply as well.

Cheers,
Chris


On 2016-11-04 10:14 (-0700), Michael Kjellman  
wrote: 
> @Chris: instead of promoting the arguing going on on this thread could you 
> please help lead by example and reply to Kelly's questions in her email? 
> Thanks. 
> 
> I don't enjoy watching a community I care about continue to explode in front 
> of my eyes ☹️
> 
> best,
> kjellman
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> > On Nov 4, 2016, at 10:10 AM, Chris Mattmann  wrote:
> > 
> > I have apmail karma and can add moderators. 
> > 
> > Jason I can add you - please confirm you would like to be added. Did you 
> > file the ticket - if so point me to it. If you haven't yet, no worries I 
> > can still add you. Let me know. Thanks.
> > 
> >> On 2016-11-04 09:54 (-0700), Jason Brown  wrote: 
> >> Gary,
> >> 
> >> I've just started looking into the moderator component due to this thread;
> >> I admit I did not know about it before (my fault). Yes, I would like to be
> >> added. Apparently, I need to file an INFRA ticket (as per
> >> https://www.apache.org/dev/committers.html#mailing-list-moderators), which
> >> I will do in the next few minutes.
> >> 
> >> -Jason
> >> 
> >>> On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 9:51 AM, Gary Dusbabek  wrote:
> >>> 
> >>> I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the only one with moderator privs. Any 
> >>> other
> >>> committer/PMCs interested?
> >>> 
> >>> Sorry, it's a chore to begin with and I've been traveling this week.
> >>> 
> >>> Gary.
> >>> 
> >>> On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 3:47 PM, Chris Mattmann 
> >>> wrote:
> >>> 
> >>>> Hi Folks,
> >>>> 
> >>>> Kelly Sommers sent a message to dev@cassandra and I'm trying to figure
> >>>> out if it's in moderation.
> >>>> 
> >>>> Can the moderators speak up?
> >>>> 
> >>>> Cheers,
> >>>> Chris
> >>>> 
> >>>> 
> >>> 
> >> 
> 

Re: Moderation

[Chris Mattmann]

 I would like to formally complain about
your divisive rhetoric and overall unprofessional conduct within this
mailing list.

This list, and community, are made up of individuals and volunteers. I
believe, attacking them, even though you believe you may have been
attacked, detracts from the conversation and elevates tension in an already
tense community.  I encourage others to chime in if I am misreading here. I
personally feel that someone acting in a leadership capacity, such as a
board member, should be held to a higher standard of professionalism and
conduct when doing business; whether it is with their board member hat on
or not.  I would hate for it to be assumed that the entire Apache board
encourages, promotes, or even acts in this manner.

-Russ



On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 1:18 PM Mattmann, Chris A (3010) <
chris.a.mattm...@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:

> Mark Thomas got it done ✅
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Nov 4, 2016, at 10:13 AM, Jason Brown  wrote:
> >
> > s/sis/is
> >
> >> On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 10:12 AM, Jason Brown 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Chris,
> >>
> >> Yes, I would like to be added, and here sis the ticket I filed:
> >> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/INFRA-12858.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> -Jason
> >>
> >> On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 10:10 AM, Chris Mattmann 
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I have apmail karma and can add moderators.
> >>>
> >>> Jason I can add you - please confirm you would like to be added. Did
> you
> >>> file the ticket - if so point me to it. If you haven't yet, no worries
> I
> >>> can still add you. Let me know. Thanks.
> >>>
> >>>> On 2016-11-04 09:54 (-0700), Jason Brown 
> wrote:
> >>>> Gary,
> >>>>
> >>>> I've just started looking into the moderator component due to this
> >>> thread;
> >>>> I admit I did not know about it before (my fault). Yes, I would like
> to
> >>> be
> >>>> added. Apparently, I need to file an INFRA ticket (as per
> >>>> https://www.apache.org/dev/committers.html#mailing-list-moderators),
> >>> which
> >>>> I will do in the next few minutes.
> >>>>
> >>>> -Jason
> >>>>
> >>>> On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 9:51 AM, Gary Dusbabek 
> >>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the only one with moderator privs. 
Any
> >>> other
> >>>>> committer/PMCs interested?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Sorry, it's a chore to begin with and I've been traveling this week.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Gary.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 3:47 PM, Chris Mattmann 
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Hi Folks,
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Kelly Sommers sent a message to dev@cassandra and I'm trying to
> >>> figure
> >>>>>> out if it's in moderation.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Can the moderators speak up?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Cheers,
> >>>>>> Chris
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
>

Re: DataStax role in Cassandra and the ASF

[Chris Mattmann]

Thank you for sending this. I am not going to reply in depth now, but will do 
so to Kelly and
others over the weekend, but this is *precisely* the reason that I have been so 
emphatic
about trying to get the PMC to see the road they have already gone done and the 
ship that
has already set sail. 

Those not familiar with Lucene and its vote to merge Lucene/Solr may want to 
Google the
Apache archives around 2010 and see some of the effects of Individual 
organizations and
vendors driving supposedly vendor neutral Apache projects. It’s not even 
conjecture at this
point in Cassandra. The Board has acted as Greg referred to else-thread, and we 
asked Jonathan & the
PMC to find a new chair (rotation is healthy yes, but we also need the chair to 
be the eyes 
and ears of the Board and we asked for a change there). Mark Thomas from the 
Apache Board
also has a set of actions that he is working with the PMC having to do with 
trademarks and
other items to move towards more independent governance.

Your experience that you cite below Lukasz is precisely one I found in 
Lucene/Solr, Hadoop, 
Maven, and other projects. Sometimes the ship has been righted – for example in 
all of these
projects they have moved towards much more independent governance, welcoming to 
contributors,
and shared community for the project. However, in other cases (see IBATIS), it 
didn’t work out, for
various reasons including community issues, but also misunderstandings as to 
the way that the 
ASF works. I know my own experience of being an unpaid, occasional contributor 
to some open
source projects has put me to a disadvantage even in some ASF projects driven 
by a single vendor.
I’ve also been paid to work on open source (at the ASF and elsewhere) and in 
doing so, been on the
other side of the code. That’s why ASF projects and my own work in particular I 
strive to try and 
remain neutral and to address these types of issues by being welcoming, lower 
the bar to committership
and PMC, and moving “contributors” to having a vote/shared governance of the 
project at the ASF.

Thanks for sending this email and your insights are welcome below. The Apache 
Board should hear this
too so I am CC’ing them.

Cheers,
Chris





On 11/4/16, 5:03 PM, "Łukasz Dywicki"  wrote:

Good evening,
I feel myself a bit called to table by both Kelly and Chris. Thing is I 
don’t know personally nor have any relationship with both of you. I’m not even 
ASF member. My tweet was simply reaction for Kelly complaints about ASF 
punishing out DataStax. Kelly timeline also contained statement such "forming a 
long term strategy to grow diversity around” which reminded me my attempts to 
collaborate on Cassandra and Tinkerpop projects to grow such diversity. I 
collected message links and quotes and put it into gist who could be read by 
anyone: 
https://gist.github.com/splatch/aebe4ad4d127922642bee0dc9a8b1ec1 

I don’t want to bring now these topics back and disscuss technical stuff 
over again. It happened to me in the past to refuse (or vote against) some 
change proposals in other Apache projects I am involved. I was on the other 
("bad guy") side multiple times. I simply collected public records of 
interactions with DataStax staff I was aware, simply because of my personal 
involvement. It shown how some ideas, yet cassandra mailing list don’t have 
many of these coming from externals, are getting put a side with very little or 
even lack of will to pull in others people work in. This is blocking point for 
anyone coming from external sides to get involved into project and help it 
growing. If someone changes requires moves in project core or it’s public APIs 
that person will require support from project members to get this done. If such 
help will not be given it any outside change will be ever completed and noone 
will invest time in doing something more than fixing typos or common programmer 
errors which we all do from time to time. Despite of impersonal nature of 
communications in Internet we still do have human interactions and we all have 
just one chance to make first impression. If we made it wrong at beginning its 
hard to fix it later on. 
Some decisions made in past by project PMCs lead to situation that project 
was forked and maintained outside ASF (ie. stratio cassandra which eventually 
ended up as lucene indexes plugin over a year ago), some other did hurt users 
running cassandra for long time (ie. discontinuation of thrift). Especially 
second decission was seen by outsiders, who do not desire billion writes per 
second, as marketing driven. This led to people looking and finding 
alternatives using compatible interface which might be, ironically, even faster 
(ie. scylladb).

And since there was quote battle on twitter between Jim Jagielski and 
Benedict, I can throw some in as well. Over conferences I attended and even 
during consultancy services I got, I’ve spoken with some people having records 
of Dat

Re: Moderation

[Chris Mattmann]

ound since 2004 and elected by the membership to the 
Board for the last three years based on merit …”

Here he is showing his superiority by way of tenure, or merit.

“You see I actually understand…”

The use of the term “actually” in this sense is to provide an attack 
against me in an effort to prove that I do not understand.

“…unfortunately you do not have a voice …”

Again, this is a blatant attempt to discredit me and provide proof that my 
word is of no worth because I am not on the PMC, nor a committer.

“You won’t have a vote in the next Apache Board election.”

Again

“You won’t have a vote in the next Members election.”

Again

“why haven’t you been elected to have a binding voice within the project? 
Please ask yourself that”

This is either an attempt to discredit me, in that I have not done enough 
to be elected, or an attempt to state the PMC hasn’t been doing their job in 
recognizing my efforts.

“please ask yourself – what is a “Cassandra MVP” compared to a member of 
the ASF which is home to the project””

This is not only insinuating that MVP is less than being a member of the 
ASF, and because I was given the MVP title, that somehow I am less than as 
well. (for the record, I have not asked for the MVP title, it was awarded, and 
I do not think that it should have any effect on the project from an Apache 
standpoint. Quite simply put, it is just another bullet point on a resume)

“I’ve been privy and voted on granting membership to within the foundation 
since 2011”

More attempts to discredit me by showing tenure.

Literally, the first portion of the response was a campaign to discredit me 
in order to demonstrate his merit.  The rest of the email goes to defend a 
point that I did not make.  

Again, I will assert that the complaints the board has are valid.  Datastax 
may have overstepped bounds and, as a result, put the project and ASF at risk.  
I am not an authority on the subject and have not been privy to the private 
messages between the board, PMC, and Datastax.  What I will say, is that the 
tone, vitriol, ad-hominem responses and other unprofessional conduct has caused 
a rift in this community.  Most of this is coming directly from the board, 
specifically Chris.  Furthermore, as Aleksey has pointed out, this occurs in 
the private lists as well.  This is a form of toxic-leadership and is proven to 
not only be ineffective, but also be directly harmful.  These issues can, and 
should, be resolved amicably. 

Professionalism and Respect, if aren’t, should be of the core tenets of any 
foundation, especially one of the caliber of Apache.



On 11/5/16, 9:38 AM, "Mark Struberg"  wrote:

Russel, I don't read that out of Chris' answer.
He just tried to show how community development might look like if done 
a bit more openly.

Do you mind going back to Chris' original reply and re-read it again?
I've not interpreted it as anyone trying to make you look bad. Au 
contraire!


txs and LieGrue,
strub





> On Saturday, 5 November 2016, 13:56, Russell Bradberry 
 wrote:
> > It seems that your tactic of argument is to discredit me at every 
level in order 
> to show your superiority of sorts.  Let me set this straight, I am 
not 
> attempting to say that I am an authority on ASF or that I know how 
things should 
> be run.  I also was not attempting to vilify you in front of the 
board or vilify 
> you in any way.  My complaint is that your rhetoric is 
unprofessional; and as a 
> representative of the board the language you use is, plainly, casting 
a bad 
> light on the ASF.
> 
> I understand all of your concerns and was not attempting to minimize 
them in any 
> way; they are legitimate concerns.  The way you are handling them is 
what I am 
> concerned with and the tone you take is what I believe is helping 
divide the 
> community.  Being the “villain” as you say is what is the problem.  
If you cast 
> yourself as the villain as a representative of the foundation you are 
then 
> making the foundation look bad.
> 
> Lastly, I may not have a vote, but I do have a voice.  Everyone in 
the community 
> does and can be heard, if not then it isn’t much of a community at 
all. I 
> wouldn’t have you voted off the board nor do I want you to be voted 
off the 
> board, I have not enough information to make a sound decision in that 
regard.  
> 
> All I ask if for some common professionalism and courtesy, nothing 
more.

Re: Moderation

[Chris Mattmann]

Sorry one typo below:

Where I said:

“The Cassandra MVP comment was also not a diss on you as much as it was me 
saying – ideally – I would hope that
the Apache Cassandra MVP people promote the concept of their community leaders 
becoming “ASF members”,
and that Cassandra MVPs are great – but secondary – to the responsibilities of 
the PMC to move towards ensuring
its community understands the Apache Way.”

I meant to say:

“The Cassandra MVP comment was also not a diss on you as much as it was me 
saying – ideally – I would hope that
the Apache Cassandra *PMC* people promote the concept of their community 
leaders becoming “ASF members”,
and that Cassandra MVPs are great – but secondary – to the responsibilities of 
the PMC to move towards ensuring
its community understands the Apache Way.”

Thanks.

Cheers,
Chris


On 11/6/16, 6:53 AM, "Chris Mattmann"  wrote:

For the record, your breakdown of the email trying to decipher what I meant 
is not 
correct. It’s not your fault, but email doesn’t convey tone, nor do you 
know what I am 
thinking or what I was trying to say. In fact, I was actually saying the 
PMC wasn’t doing its job, 
because (as I stated to you months ago), you (and many other community 
members of  
Cassandra) *should* have a binding vote. It wasn’t discrediting to you to 
point out that 
you don’t have the PMC or committer credentials; it was an example trying 
to point out 
that you *should* have them. And that you clearly care about the project as 
I believe you 
have developed a book on the subject of Apache Cassandra a while back IIRC 
which in Tika,
Nutch, OODT, and a number of other projects would have earned you the 
ability to have a
direct say in those Apache projects. And a lot of others.

It’s these systematic fracturing of the community under the guise of a 
single vendor who
has stated that they care about Cassandra (note the omission of Apache), 
but by demonstration
has shown they either don’t understand, or don’t care about the Apache part 
of the equation.
That’s what caused me to become frustrated when the following sequence of 
events
happened:

1. After the Board meeting Mark Thomas one of our Directors took point on 
engaging
the Apache Cassandra PMC with some of the concerns brought up over the past 
6
months and the role I was filling there became a back seat for me. 
2. I saw over the past few days on a Twitter feed retweeted by an ASF 
member that 
Kelly Sommers (whom I have never met in person and do not know previously) 
was asking
questions and stating negative things about the ASF that I believed could 
be much better
understood by bringing them here to the ASF mailing lists for Apache 
Cassandra. I suggested
on Twitter that she bring her concerns to the Apache lists and told her 
which email address
to send it to. Some of the same people that eventually came onto the thread 
were people 
who were communicating with her on Twitter – this was disappointing as they 
could have 
done the same thing, and suggested Kelly come to the lists, Apache 
Cassandra PMC or not.
3. After 12 hours I checked back with Kelly and the Twitter dialogue had 
continued with several
ASF members and even some Board members getting involved. Again, I asked 
Kelly why talk
there, and why not just talk to the email list which is the canonical home 
for Apache Cassandra?
She told me she sent the mail the prior night. 
4. So of course I checked (after having already guessed it was stuck in 
moderation) and yes it
was. What ensued was both frustration by my part and also email 
conversation that was heated
on both sides. I felt swiped on by a few emails where I had good intentions 
but I felt we were 
wasting time debating whether we *should* moderate something through – 
which to me was
a clear answer (yes). Where I failed there was to recognize that the real 
answer was that the Apache
Cassandra PMC did not have enough moderators and the people I was mostly 
going back and forth
with were not the moderators of the mailing lists. 
5. One positive thing that came from #4 was that at least there are more 
moderators now. I’m not sure
the reason for the lack of geographically diverse moderators, but it’s 
definitely something the PMC should
check from time to time. Not pointing fingers, simply identifying 
responsibility. 

In my emails I used the word “shi*t” and “f’ing”. I didn’t direct either of 
these words at anyone in particular.
I used them as color in expressing my frustration. It happens from time to 
time. Sorry. 

The Cassandra MVP comment was also not a diss on you as much as it was me 
saying – ideally – I would hope that
the Apache Cassandra MVP people promote the concept of their community 
leaders becoming “ASF members”, 
and that Cassandra MVPs are great – but secondar