[DISCUSS] State of the Kafka connector

[Istvan Toth <st...@apache.org>]

Hi!

As I was working on component (and Hbase) version updates for connectors ,
I realized that the kafka connector is still built with Kafka 2.0.0 from
2018.

I also realized that I don't know how to test my Hadoop3 changes (apart
from the built-in test suite), so I ended up only updating the Spark
connector.

Looking at the commit history, I haven't found a single kafka commit that
wasn't component update or build related.

Activity isn't super high on the Spark connector either, but we ship that
at $dayjob and we know that that one has many active users.

I'm super ignorant of Kafka, so for all I know the connector may be
perfect, may still work with current Kafka 4.x, but this got me thinking:

- Is anyone actively using the Kafka connector ?
- Is the current connector, built with Kafka 2.0.0 relevant in any way
today ?

Istvan