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This is not quite what happened. Datastax employees were the controlling influence on the PMC, and the PMC failed to police copyright issues (including with Da

This is not quite what happened. Datastax employees were the controlling influence on the PMC, and the PMC failed to police copyright issues (including with Datastax marketing materials), mostly because they did not know this was their duty (and partially, in at least the case of some individuals, because they did not have any desire to participate in this duty on a volunteer basis). They were also seen to have poorly nurtured other involvement from the wider community. To some greater or lesser extent these charges were valid, and the community (not just the board, at least on the non-trademark issues) felt improvements would be welcome. But certain members of the board behaved in what appeared to be a very hostile and childish manner, by threatening Datastax with removal of every employee from the project. (I've been in heated arguments with these individuals for their behaviour, and I'll note they disavow any intended hostility, though do not disavow their actions) The ASF did not remove Datastax from anything, although they were I think involved in Jonathan Ellis (Datastax CTO) being replaced as chair. Datastax recently posted that they were planning to put much of their new feature development into their commercial version. They claim this all had nothing to do with stepping back from the project, but in all likelihood this is a "rising above it" PR position. That said, it probably is a good business decision, and may have happened sooner or later anyway.

SOLAR_FIELDS 10y ago
Reading this apparently biased article in favor of DataStax, it seems like no one is coming out of this situation looking good. I personally believe that DataStax may have overplayed their hand here since several of the high-powered Silicon Valley companies use Cassandra. If DS' commercial offerings aren't up to snuff, one of them will undoubtedly step in to help steer development of the source in a direction that benefits them. Cassandra is one of the better big datastore offerings out there, and the doom and gloom narrative played by the article seems a bit disingenuous to say the least.
- x0x0 10y ago
  There's a difference between use and pay the bills to develop; fundamentally, the companies paying the engineers and testers and hardware bills thereof will control the direction of the project regardless of what the pmc wants. Or the company footing the bill for all the documentation and code samples [1]. It is also a little weird that java driver development seems to be run by DataStax and not the apache community. Hopefully this won't cause datastax to fork from apache cassandra. [1] http://www.datastax.com/2016/10/take-a-bow-planet-cassandra http://www.datastax.com/2016/10/take-a-bow-planet-cassandra
- _benedict 10y ago
  I honestly don't see how companies, that aren't monetising Cassandra, providing resources to the project is a major risk to Datastax. This only improves Cassandra's mindshare in (and share of) the market, while leaving them to corner the large corporate client base as well as target their engineering efforts on things that can directly yield revenue. Although I think you overestimate the inclination and ability of these corporations to invest - at least to date, only Apple has demonstrated any capacity or willingness to do so, and they are fairly slow about it. Their lawyers and antiquated deployments lead to very few (but quite big) improvements, and so far all of them have needed help from Datastax to be incorporated. This is despite a largeish team of people with direct experience of participating in the project; no other SV company has any such employee at present, and bootstrapping such a team would be non-trivial. Instaclustr claims they intend to do this, but it remains to be seen how successful they will be.
  - jjirsa 10y ago
    I've committed a few Instaclustr patches in the past month - they weren't huge, but they exist (and I appreciate that). Also some patches coming out of FB/Instagram (with a new committer as well).
- jjirsa 10y ago
  > the doom and gloom narrative played by the article seems a bit disingenuous to say the least Would you have read it if it said "a bunch of nerds argued about nerdy things on the internet, and in the end, everything will be OK" ?
jrochkind1 10y ago
Nothing is stopping Datastax from creating a non-ASF open source fork if they want, right? The apache license is quite permissive.
- jjirsa 10y ago
  Datastax sells Datastax enterprise, which is a closed source fork. Yes, they could have a non-ASF open source fork, but what's the purpose? What do they gain? That just fractures the community - the same community they need in order to sell DSE to users.
  - jrochkind1 10y ago
    They would gain control over the management of the open source project, which is apparently what they wanted? If they don't want an open source version they have control over the management of, then that's fine too of course. But yes, forks of open source projects are never something one wants, they are a last resort, but one you always have with open source.
    - jjirsa 10y ago
      Apparently what they wanted? There's no evidence they ever tried to use their overwhelming majority in the PMC to do anything that even remotely resembled control. What they did was fail to enforce rules, primarily around trademarks - they never did anything at the technical/engineering level that was even remotely controlling (and in many cases, they openly worked with engineers from their competitors to make it easier for those competitors to avoid forking). - non-Datastax Member of the PMC
      - jrochkind1 10y ago
        True, I over-stated it, sorry. I didn't mean to suggest they were controlling. All I meant was that apparently they don't want anyone else telling them what to do with the project, including with rules around trademarks?

SOLAR_FIELDS 10y ago

Reading this apparently biased article in favor of DataStax, it seems like no one is coming out of this situation looking good. I personally believe that DataStax may have overplayed their hand here since several of the high-powered Silicon Valley companies use Cassandra. If DS' commercial offerings aren't up to snuff, one of them will undoubtedly step in to help steer development of the source in a direction that benefits them. Cassandra is one of the better big datastore offerings out there, and the doom and gloom narrative played by the article seems a bit disingenuous to say the least.

x0x0 10y ago
There's a difference between use and pay the bills to develop; fundamentally, the companies paying the engineers and testers and hardware bills thereof will control the direction of the project regardless of what the pmc wants. Or the company footing the bill for all the documentation and code samples [1]. It is also a little weird that java driver development seems to be run by DataStax and not the apache community. Hopefully this won't cause datastax to fork from apache cassandra. [1] http://www.datastax.com/2016/10/take-a-bow-planet-cassandra http://www.datastax.com/2016/10/take-a-bow-planet-cassandra
_benedict 10y ago
I honestly don't see how companies, that aren't monetising Cassandra, providing resources to the project is a major risk to Datastax. This only improves Cassandra's mindshare in (and share of) the market, while leaving them to corner the large corporate client base as well as target their engineering efforts on things that can directly yield revenue. Although I think you overestimate the inclination and ability of these corporations to invest - at least to date, only Apple has demonstrated any capacity or willingness to do so, and they are fairly slow about it. Their lawyers and antiquated deployments lead to very few (but quite big) improvements, and so far all of them have needed help from Datastax to be incorporated. This is despite a largeish team of people with direct experience of participating in the project; no other SV company has any such employee at present, and bootstrapping such a team would be non-trivial. Instaclustr claims they intend to do this, but it remains to be seen how successful they will be.
- jjirsa 10y ago
  I've committed a few Instaclustr patches in the past month - they weren't huge, but they exist (and I appreciate that). Also some patches coming out of FB/Instagram (with a new committer as well).
jjirsa 10y ago
> the doom and gloom narrative played by the article seems a bit disingenuous to say the least Would you have read it if it said "a bunch of nerds argued about nerdy things on the internet, and in the end, everything will be OK" ?

jrochkind1 10y ago

Nothing is stopping Datastax from creating a non-ASF open source fork if they want, right? The apache license is quite permissive.

jjirsa 10y ago
Datastax sells Datastax enterprise, which is a closed source fork. Yes, they could have a non-ASF open source fork, but what's the purpose? What do they gain? That just fractures the community - the same community they need in order to sell DSE to users.
- jrochkind1 10y ago
  They would gain control over the management of the open source project, which is apparently what they wanted? If they don't want an open source version they have control over the management of, then that's fine too of course. But yes, forks of open source projects are never something one wants, they are a last resort, but one you always have with open source.
  - jjirsa 10y ago
    Apparently what they wanted? There's no evidence they ever tried to use their overwhelming majority in the PMC to do anything that even remotely resembled control. What they did was fail to enforce rules, primarily around trademarks - they never did anything at the technical/engineering level that was even remotely controlling (and in many cases, they openly worked with engineers from their competitors to make it easier for those competitors to avoid forking). - non-Datastax Member of the PMC
    - jrochkind1 10y ago
      True, I over-stated it, sorry. I didn't mean to suggest they were controlling. All I meant was that apparently they don't want anyone else telling them what to do with the project, including with rules around trademarks?