You have probably heard by now that there is a discussion going on in
the Hadoop PMC as to whether a number of the subprojects (Hbase, Avro,
Zookeeper, Hive, and Pig) should move out from under the Hadoop
umbrella and become top level Apache projects (TLP). This discussion
has picked up recently since the Apache board has clearly communicated
to the Hadoop PMC that it is concerned that Hadoop is acting as an
umbrella project with many disjoint subprojects underneath it. They
are concerned that this gives Apache little insight into the health
and happenings of the subproject communities which in turn means
Apache cannot properly mentor those communities.
The purpose of this email is to start a discussion within the Pig
community about this topic. Let me cover first what becoming TLP
would mean for Pig, and then I'll go into what options I think we as a
community have.
Becoming a TLP would mean that Pig would itself have a PMC that would
report directly to the Apache board. Who would be on the PMC would be
something we as a community would need to decide. Common options
would be to say all active committers are on the PMC, or all active
committers who have been a committer for at least a year. We would
also need to elect a chair of the PMC. This lucky person would have
no additional power, but would have the additional responsibility of
writing quarterly reports on Pig's status for Apache board meetings,
as well as coordinating with Apache to get accounts for new
committers, etc. For more information see http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles
Becoming a TLP would not mean that we are ostracized from the Hadoop
community. We would continue to be invited to Hadoop Summits, HUGs,
etc. Since all Pig developers and users are by definition Hadoop
users, we would continue to be a strong presence in the Hadoop
community.
I see three ways that we as a community can respond to this:
1) Say yes, we want to be a TLP now.
2) Say yes, we want to be a TLP, but not yet. We feel we need more
time to mature. If we choose this option we need to be able to
clearly articulate how much time we need and what we hope to see
change in that time.
3) Say no, we feel the benefits for us staying with Hadoop outweigh
the drawbacks of being a disjoint subproject. If we choose this, we
need to be able to say exactly what those benefits are and why we feel
they will be compromised by leaving the Hadoop project.
There may other options that I haven't thought of. Please feel free
to suggest any you think of.
Questions? Thoughts? Let the discussion begin.
Alan.
