I am sorry for not responding to this sooner. I am tentatively voting -1
against retirement (even though I think my vote makes little difference at this
point if it still counts).
Frankly, when I initially saw this lengthy series of emails I wasn’t sure how I
should respond since I am pretty torn between both sides. I am not really sure
if my vote holds weight anymore since there are now already 3 votes in favor of
retirement, but I want to clarify on some points that Lewis and Jimmy have
previously stated as reasons for voting in favor retirement, since I think they
do not cover the full story. This will be lengthy so you may not feel the need
to read through all of this, but in summary I agree that activity is an issue,
but I disagree with the characterization of some that we have not been
transparent enough about our future plans.
First, I want to elaborate more on the refactoring that Kyo has mentioned. This
was an effort I had initially started in early 2018. This was originally
started by internal funding opportunities at JPL to create a replacement for
OCW which would use more modern libraries (xarray and dask), since it would not
only make it easy for us to handle big data use cases as we had long desired
but it would also make it easier for us to maintain the codebase in the long
run since it would make it much smaller. At JPL we have internally called this
prototype the “Big Climate Data Pipeline” (bcdp), and per JPL policy it was not
initially open source. We had to formally go through a process (applying for a
New Technology Release (NTR) and receiving approval. We did not receive the
formal approval to release BCDP to open source until late last year. In the
end, since I am the only person who is actively developing it, I decided it
would be more convenient to release it in its own github repository separate
from the main one (apache/climate) as this would allow me to make new releases
very quickly which was necessary for the work I was doing in testing it on a
Kubernetes cluster. Maybe it’s my misunderstanding, but some of the previous
conversation seems to imply that we were not being transparent and keeping
everything a secret which is not the case. We discussed BCDP many times on the
mailing list and the plan to eventually transition the BCDP codebase was also
made into a formal JIRA issue right around the time BCDP was released to open
source for the first time.
https://github.com/bcdp/bcdp
If taking this approach goes against ASF principles, then I apologize, but I do
not recall being told that this was the case.
So with all that out of the way, let’s talk about the other issue which is our
low activity. This is an undeniable truth and reality that I don’t see changing
anytime soon whether BCDP gets integrated into OCW or not. My stance from our
very discussion on this last year hasn’t changed, and I encourage anyone who
has read this far to also see what I have said back then:
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/climate-dev/201911.mbox/browser
The amount of discussion on this mailing list is being used as one metric of
activity which I think is understandable given that this is an open source
project, but in practice we have only two core developers (me and Kyo) who both
work at the same place. We have tried our best to make our plans transparent by
making the appropriate JIRA issues, but at the end of the day we have also had
many offline discussions with each other about the project out of convenience.
We’ve had one non-JPL person (Michael Anderson) contribute every now and then
with a few bug fixes, but otherwise this has been the reality of this project
for a very long time. I don’t know if the expectation for activity is for us to
be as vibrant as we were in 2012-2015, but that’s pretty unrealistic given that
we just don’t have sufficient time or funding, and that is also one of the
reasons BCDP integration has been so slow, and I don’t see this changing
anytime soon.
So with all that said, although I currently am voting against retirement, I
would like to stress that I am just a PMC member and am ignorant on many of the
policies for ASF projects, and am unsure if OCW is the right fit given that we
are ultimately a small project with a niche userbase, and I can’t really argue
the fact that our activity is low. I would appreciate if Lewis could provide
his take on this question one more time.
Thanks,
Alex
-----Original Message-----
From: Lee, Kyo (US 398L) <huikyo....@jpl.nasa.gov.INVALID>
Sent: Thursday, September 3, 2020 4:37 PM
To: dev@climate.apache.org
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: [VOTE] Board Resolution to move Apache OCW to the
Attic WAS Re: [DISCUSS] Future of Apache OCW
'No' from me.
I do not answer to any angry, emotional email suddenly written by members who
had not given any constructive resolution.
Best regards,
Kyo
On 9/3/20, 10:57 AM, "Omkar Reddy" <omkarreddy2...@gmail.com> wrote:
+1, apologies for the late response.
On Mon, 3 Aug 2020 at 10:50, Michael Joyce <mltjo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> +1
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 2:55 PM lewis john mcgibbney <lewi...@apache.org>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi dev@climate.a.o,
> >
> > This thread opens a VOTE thread for the creation of a Board Resolution
> > to move Apache OCW to the Attic.
> >
> > I will leave this VOTE open for a minimum of 72 hours before
> > attempting to insert the resolution into the next Board agenda.
> >
> >
> > ?. Terminate the Apache Open Climate Workbench (OCW) Project
> >
> > WHEREAS, the Project Management Committee of the Apache OCW
> > project has chosen by vote to recommend moving the project to the
> > Attic; and
> >
> > WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it no longer in the best
> > interest of the Foundation to continue the Apache OCW project
> > due to inactivity;
> >
> > NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Apache OCW
> > project is hereby terminated; and be it further
> >
> > RESOLVED, that the Attic PMC be and hereby is tasked with
> > oversight over the software developed by the Apache OCW
> > Project; and be it further
> >
> > RESOLVED, that the office of "Vice President, Apache OCW" is
> > hereby terminated; and be it further
> >
> > RESOLVED, that the Apache OCW PMC is hereby terminated.
> >
> >
> > Thanks in advance for VOTE'ing Here is my +1
> > lewismc
> >
>
