The battle for Apache Cassandra highlights major problem with open source projects
Developers prefer Apache-licensed software, but the companies involved in Apache Software Foundation (ASF) projects should tread carefully. While it's great to be associated with the the Apache brand, the ASF can seem like "Conan the Barbarian" to project leads who don't abide by its rules. That's one lesson to take from the fracas between the ASF and DataStax, the principal developer of the popular Cassandra database.Last week, DataStax announced that it was jettisoning its role in maintaining the Planet Cassandra community resource site, even as the project lead, Jonathan Ellis, made it known that DataStax would be doubling down on its commercial product, rather than Cassandra. Though the DataStax team put a brave face on the changes, the real question is why DataStax had to change at all.
The answer, apparently, is "Because the community said so," with "community" in this case being the Apache Software Foundation's board of directors.
In ASF board meetings and public mailing lists, a battle erupted over the soul of Cassandra, one that ASF board member Jim Jagielski admitted to me made the ASF board "look like...Conan The Barbarian." The fracas offers a potent reminder of the obligations and burdens of open source community.
Out of line
The Cassandra question is ultimately about control. As the ASF board noted in the minutes from its meeting with DataStax representatives, "The Board expressed continuing concern that the PMC was not acting independently and that one company had undue influence over the project." Given that DataStax has been Cassandra's primary development engine since the day it spun out of Facebook, this "undue influence" is hardly new.
And, according to some closest to Cassandra, like former Cassandra MVP Kelly Sommers, that "undue influence" has borne exceptional fruits:
Even so, Jagielski told me in an interview, echoing what he'd said on the Cassandra mailing list, that "undue influence" conflicts with project leadership obligations established by the ASF. As he suggested, the ASF tried many times to get a DataStax-heavy Project Management Committee (PMC) to pay attention to alleged trademark and other violations, to no avail.
Whatever DataStax's positive influence on the development of the project—in other words—it failed to exercise equivalent influence on governing the project in ASF fashion.
Out of touch?
For some, this isn't an adequate reason for biting the DataStax hand that has fed Cassandra.
Sommers clearly feels this way, insisting that the ASF "is really out of line in their actions with Cassandra," ultimately concluding that the ASF might be hostile to the very people most responsible for a project's success.
In her view, the ASF's search for diversity in the Cassandra project should have started with expanding its existing leadership, rather than cutting it out: "The ASF forced DataStax to reduce their role in Cassandra rather than forming a long-term strategy to grow diversity around theirs," Sommers said.
Though Sommers doesn't directly comment on the trademark issues, she didn't pull any punches in her disdain for project process over code results: "Politics is off the rails when focus is lost on success of the thing it runs and all that matters is process.
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