Dependencies and Licenses

[Dave Fisher <da...@comcast.net>]

Hi -

I was exploring the project in GitHub and I noticed a reference to RocksDB. As part of an Apache project it is important to make sure that all of the required dependencies have licenses that are compatible with the Apache License 2.0 and also that those licenses do not in anyway interfere with downstream consumer's rights to make use of the project code however they wish.

There is a legal affairs committee which handles these questions. Resolved licenses are found here [1]. The mailing list is legal-discuss@apache.org. Each question is typically handled via JIRA. RocksDB has just been declared Category X which means it is not suitable. The discussion occurred here [2]. It did included that some projects are using RocksDB and this use may be grandfathered.

Is RocksDB required for Pulsar? If so then we need to have a discussion.

Regards,
Dave

[1] https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html
[2] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-303

Re: Dependencies and Licenses

[Dave Fisher <da...@comcast.net>]

Glad you are watching.

I agree on the performance question.

We should ask to be included in any grandfathering and/or timed replacement. (A timed replacement was done for a particular JSON library that a lot of projects were using.)

Regards,
Dave

> On Jun 30, 2017, at 12:21 PM, Matteo Merli <ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Yes, I have been following the same LEGAL-303 Jira.
> 
> At this point, RocksDB is a required dependency. It would not be hard to
> have it optional and by default not included/required and provide
> instruction (with licenssing warning) on the website on how to add support
> for it.
> 
> The difference would be mostly on the performance side.
> (One concern there might be on people that download the distribution and do
> a performance test with the default configuration and finds "not-stellar"
> results, especially in terms of low latency)
> 
> I'm also interested in see what will be the solution that other projects
> will adopt (like Flink, Samza and Kafka) that depend heavily on RocksDb and
> for which there is no current comparable replacement, unfortunately.
> 
> 
> So, short answer, we can easily turn it off, but I'd hope to see a common
> solution for all the Apache projects on this issue.
> 
> Matteo
> 
> 
> --
> Matteo Merli
> <ma...@gmail.com>
> 
> On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 12:12 PM, Dave Fisher <da...@comcast.net> wrote:
> 
>> Hi -
>> 
>> I was exploring the project in GitHub and I noticed a reference to
>> RocksDB. As part of an Apache project it is important to make sure that all
>> of the required dependencies have licenses that are compatible with the
>> Apache License 2.0 and also that those licenses do not in anyway interfere
>> with downstream consumer's rights to make use of the project code however
>> they wish.
>> 
>> There is a legal affairs committee which handles these questions. Resolved
>> licenses are found here [1]. The mailing list is legal-discuss@apache.org.
>> Each question is typically handled via JIRA. RocksDB has just been declared
>> Category X which means it is not suitable. The discussion occurred here
>> [2]. It did included that some projects are using RocksDB and this use may
>> be grandfathered.
>> 
>> Is RocksDB required for Pulsar? If so then we need to have a discussion.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Dave
>> 
>> [1] https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html
>> [2] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-303
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 

Re: Dependencies and Licenses

[Matteo Merli <ma...@gmail.com>]

Yes, I have been following the same LEGAL-303 Jira.

At this point, RocksDB is a required dependency. It would not be hard to
have it optional and by default not included/required and provide
instruction (with licenssing warning) on the website on how to add support
for it.

The difference would be mostly on the performance side.
(One concern there might be on people that download the distribution and do
a performance test with the default configuration and finds "not-stellar"
results, especially in terms of low latency)

I'm also interested in see what will be the solution that other projects
will adopt (like Flink, Samza and Kafka) that depend heavily on RocksDb and
for which there is no current comparable replacement, unfortunately.


So, short answer, we can easily turn it off, but I'd hope to see a common
solution for all the Apache projects on this issue.

Matteo


--
Matteo Merli
<ma...@gmail.com>

On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 12:12 PM, Dave Fisher <da...@comcast.net> wrote:

> Hi -
>
> I was exploring the project in GitHub and I noticed a reference to
> RocksDB. As part of an Apache project it is important to make sure that all
> of the required dependencies have licenses that are compatible with the
> Apache License 2.0 and also that those licenses do not in anyway interfere
> with downstream consumer's rights to make use of the project code however
> they wish.
>
> There is a legal affairs committee which handles these questions. Resolved
> licenses are found here [1]. The mailing list is legal-discuss@apache.org.
> Each question is typically handled via JIRA. RocksDB has just been declared
> Category X which means it is not suitable. The discussion occurred here
> [2]. It did included that some projects are using RocksDB and this use may
> be grandfathered.
>
> Is RocksDB required for Pulsar? If so then we need to have a discussion.
>
> Regards,
> Dave
>
> [1] https://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html
> [2] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-303
>
>
>
>