I strongly disagree with asking Ryan to step down. For those who don't know me, I'm an Iceberg PMC member, Apache member, and was a mentor and champion for Iceberg when it entered the Apache Incubator <https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/IcebergProposal>. I've never worked at either Tabular or Databricks.
Over the years, I've had a lot of discussions with Ryan about Apache in general and Iceberg specifically. Ryan's always impressed me with his commitment to doing the right thing for the open source communities that he works in. In particular, I think Ryan's done an amazing job of encouraging Iceberg's community and technology. That said, one of the danger signs for open source projects is when a majority of the PMC members or committers are employed by a single company. Towards that end, I'd encourage Ryan in his next quarterly report to the Apache Board to mention the acquisition as a risk factor for Iceberg. On a side note, discussions about individuals on Apache projects should in general happen on the project's private list and not in public. .. Owen 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 >
