Hi Nicholas,

On Thu, May 28, 2026 at 9:06 AM Nicholas Chammas <[email protected]>
wrote:

> I think repeatedly calling the contributors on this list a “cartel” is not
> conducive to a calm and amicable resolution.
>
I will try to be mindful of that,

>
> You may have some history built up that led you to use that word, but to
> the rest of us it comes out of nowhere; you in fact opened this thread with
> that attack. If you keep making your case in this manner, you will just
> turn everyone against you.
>
Valid point. Yes there is history and facts.

>
> If there is a history of what you feel is others stealing your work,
> please link to a few examples so we can see what you are seeing. If you
> can’t do that, then just focus on this current example. And try to refrain
> from calling people names unless your goal is just to have a fight, as
> opposed to resolving the problematic behavior so you can continue to
> contribute.
>
Exactly what "name" calling you mean?
I will give example in next email.



>
> I am not a committer and don’t have any special role in this community. I
> am speaking just as an observer and regular contributor to the project.
>
Appreciate that. I can understand you have different opinion. and I em
entitled to mine.

>
> > I have experienced this before, as recent as couple of months back (
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-54386)
>
> For others following along, I took a look at this ticket and the
> associated PRs: #53261 <https://github.com/apache/spark/pull/53261> /
> #53100 <https://github.com/apache/spark/pull/53100>
>
> It looks like Asif is upset that he submitted a fix for the same issue a
> week or so prior to the fix that eventually got merged. But the fixes are
> different, and the one that got merged is a lot shorter, though they are
> both simple. The PR that got merged was submitted by someone who appears to
> be employed by Databricks; perhaps this is part of the “cartel” accusation.
> The two PRs were reviewed by different committers, however, and the one
> that got merged was merged in by someone who does _not_ work for Databricks.
>
Have you taken a look at other PRs opened? Have you read the review
comments , if any?  I am ready to discuss each any every PR/ ticket which I
had opened, outside of this group, or within this group .

>
> I don’t see anything here other than the normal dynamic of a large and
> busy open source project. Committer attention is limited; things fall
> through the cracks; different contributors may occasionally work on the
> same thing without knowing about each other. A minor help to this specific
> problem would be to have some way of automatically linking issues that
> appear to be about the same thing.
>

Fair enough.. I respect your opinion.

>
> Nick
>
>
> On May 28, 2026, at 11:33 AM, Asif Shahid <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi Peter,
> Pls see inline for comments/ replies
>
> On Thu, May 28, 2026 at 6:11 AM Peter Toth <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Hey Asif,
>>
>> Are you referring to https://github.com/apache/spark/pull/49154/changes
>> vs. https://github.com/apache/spark/pull/55644/changes? Those are
>> definitely solving the same issue but I can assure you I wouldn't take any
>> code from your PR without consulting with you first.
>>
>  Yes Indeed Peter, I am referring to those.
> As for the fix, itself, is not indicative of any thing as its a one liner,
> test has uncanny resemblance.
>
>
>> As far as I remember, I opened SPARK-56694 /
>> https://github.com/apache/spark/pull/55644 because I ran into that minor
>> bug during the implementation of
>> https://github.com/apache/spark/pull/55298.
>>
>
>
>> Sorry, I didn't check whether a ticket or PR already existed.
>>
>
> The below I am addressing to the whole cartel.:
> I have experienced this before, as recent as couple of months back (
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-54386)
> I have experienced,  my personal effort ( going into weeks) to debug,
> reproduce issue reliably , being hijacked by members, without even
> discussing the fix proposed, ( by opening new PRs). ( If interested, I can
> provide details of the PRs / issues I am talking about)
> I have seen a perfectly valid PR being nixed , by following comment which
> essentially said
> "  my code of making the cache lookup more effective , would result in
> greater chances of stale cache being picked,  which already spark suffers
> from."
> Now the PR was related to collapsing the projects in analysis phase, and
> side effect was cache pick up being more sensitive.
> So this is such a frivolous reason to nix the PR , because "staleness" is
> an underlying existing issue which had nothing to do with my PR. And its
> more amusing , that if a DB is giving even one wrong result in millions,
> that makes all the results a suspect in any case. It does not matter at
> what frequency this occurs. To me the real reason was code complexity ( &
> more likely  the loss of control of the code to the outsider).
>
> The reason I call this open source community as cartel, is because, I have
> seen the way it works pretty closely and have experienced it in the email
> exchanges which happen on this group.
> For the same PR , same issue,  if advertently or inadvertently , other
> person ( especially a member) gets his changes pushed, by the virtue of his
> standing/position and the "for profit" company the person works, how would
> you give the credit to the original person who discovered the issue first /
> provided the fix?
> Why are issues filed by some immediately worked upon by members ( some of
> whom claim to be working full time on spark) ? Is it because certain
> companies / groups ( for profit companies, mind you )  exert undue
> control, or the petty newbee has to be in the good books of members ( with
> the hope that at some point they will also reach that position of power ?)
>
> Given the AI advent and such occurrences,  how will you give due credit to
> the original creators and how do you plan to prevent some member for taking
> up idea of any old open PR ( which for reasons of complexity and non
> technical reasons) ,  polishing it up and pushing it as their own?
>
> I am also curious , am I the only one who is troubled by all this, or
> there are others who have experienced it?
>
> Regards
> Asif
>
>
>> If you have further improvements please feel free to open a PR.
>>
>> Best,
>> Peter
>>
>> On Thu, May 28, 2026 at 8:20 AM Asif Shahid <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>> I had filed a bug
>>>  https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-45866
>>>
>>> I had also opened a PR for the same.
>>>
>>> Now I see that the ticket I  filed is still open, but the issue has been
>>> fixed using a new ticket
>>> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-56694
>>>
>>> and on top of that the bug test and ofcourse the fix ( which in any case
>>> would be same) has been taken from my PR for
>>> https://github.com/apache/spark/pull/49154/changes#diff-137d880ff73623bf7a452bb84f9c3dbbb27ba929e7f5e070c6bff68cfc8ec71f
>>>
>>> To me this is clear unethical conduct of cartel member, unless I am
>>> missing some valid reason.
>>>
>>> And the irony is that the fix is still incomplete, as I just found and
>>> filed a new ticket
>>> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-57126
>>>
>>> I know that atleast some cartel members are insecure and think of OSS as
>>> their fiefdom, but this sort of behaviour , I never expected.
>>> Regards
>>> Asif
>>>
>>
>

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