Hi Natsukawa, I would like to remind some points: 1. At Apache, you contribute as an individual. 2. The PMC members manage the project, and the PMC Chair is actually a VP of the foundation reporting to the board (https://www.apache.org/foundation/governance/pmcs.html)
Ryan has our trust and respect as PMC Chair. Everything he's doing is for the best of the Iceberg project and committee, be sure about that. You are probably reacting with emotion to announcements because you like the project (and it's great to see such enthusiasm for Apache Iceberg). You can totally express questions/concerns, but I think it would have been more productive to send a message to the PMC members via the Iceberg private mailing list. Regarding your last sentence, I would suggest avoiding pointing to some people from the Iceberg committee. We have a very healthy and vibrant community, everyone should be proud and happy about that, and should preserve it. Again, I have complete trust in Ryan, and in our PMC members. If they consider changes are needed, they will act. Thanks Regards JB On Wed, Jun 5, 2024 at 4:13 AM Kanou Natsukawa <kanou.natsuk...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi community, > > I'm calling for Ryan Blue to step down as Iceberg PMC chair. With the recent > acquisition of Tabular by Databricks [1], I believe there is a natural > conflict of interest for him to continue to be the chair of the Iceberg > project. > > Tabular's official messages will likely come and say something in the line of > they will remain neutral, but in fact everyone knows that it is not possible > when they have signed a contract with the company owning the competing > project, and the contract has so much money involved. > > I have only contributed to Iceberg once, but I still see myself as a part of > the community. I really like how Iceberg used to be, just a very > well-designed table format. It started to change when Tabular was formed and > started to do their REST catalog, but Tabular has been a small player in the > industry that their control is in general not hurting the project. The > startup also did many great things like py-iceberg after all, and I guess > large companies also love the REST idea since they have the resource to build > one, it's just not every company is Netflix or Apple. With Databricks, I am > deeply worried about the direction of the project. > > I propose having someone from Apple (Russell, Anton, Yufei, Steven, Szehon), > or Jack Ye from AWS to take the PMC chair position instead, as they are very > active PMC members in the community, and have a much more neutral position to > safely lead the project in the right direction. > > And also to other Iceberg PMC members and committers from Tabular, you have > gained a lot of wealth from this, at this moment the best thing I hope you > can do is please keep this project alone and out of your hands. > > [1] https://www.databricks.com/blog/databricks-tabular > > Thanks > Natsukawa
