Fwd: [VOTE] Accept Aurora for Apache Incubation

[Dave Lester <da...@ischool.berkeley.edu>]

Twitter has made a snapshot of the Aurora source code public on github
https://github.com/twitter/aurora, and this morning I put Aurora up for a
vote in the Apache Incubator. If you'd like to vote, do so on the
general@incubator.apache.org list.

Dave

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dave Lester <da...@ischool.berkeley.edu>
Date: Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 9:08 AM
Subject: [VOTE] Accept Aurora for Apache Incubation
To: "general@incubator.apache.org" <ge...@incubator.apache.org>


Since discussion about the Aurora proposal has calmed and the team recently
published a snapshot of the their source code on github (
https://github.com/twitter/aurora), I'd like to call a vote for Aurora to
become an incubated project.

The proposal is pasted below, and also available at:
https://wiki.apache.org/incubator/AuroraProposal

Let's keep this vote open for three business days, closing the voting on
Tuesday 10/1.

[ ] +1 Accept Aurora into the Incubator
[ ] +0 Don't care.
[ ] -1 Don't accept Aurora because...

Dave

= Abstract =

Aurora is a service scheduler used to schedule jobs onto Apache Mesos.

= Proposal =

Aurora is a scheduler that provides all of the primitives necessary to
quickly deploy and scale stateless and fault tolerant services in a
datacenter.

Aurora builds on top of Apache Mesos and provides common features that
allow any site to run large scale production applications. While the
project is currently used in production at Twitter, we wish to develop a
community to increase contributions and see it thrive in the future.

= Background =

The initial development of Aurora was done at Twitter, and its codebase was
recently open sourced. This proposal is for Aurora to join the Apache
Incubator.

= Rationale =

While the Apache Mesos core focuses on distributing individual tasks across
nodes in a cluster, typical services consist of dozens or hundreds of
replicas of tasks. As a service scheduler, Aurora provides the abstraction
of a "job" to bundle and manage these tasks. Aurora provides many key
functionalities centered around a job, including: definition, the concept
of an instance and the serverset, deployment and scheduling, health
checking, and introspection. It also allows cross-cutting concerns to be
handled like observability and log collection.

= Current Status =

== Meritocracy ==

By submitting this incubator proposal, we’re expressing our intent to build
a diverse developer community around Aurora that will conduct itself
according to The Apache Way and use meritocratic means of accepting
contributions. Several members of the Aurora team overlap with Apache
Mesos, which successfully graduated from the Incubator and has embraced a
meritocratic model of governance; we plan to follow a similar path forward
with Aurora and believe that a synergy between both projects will make this
even easier.

== Community ==

Aurora is currently being used internally at Twitter. By open sourcing the
project, we hope to extend our contributor base significantly and create a
vibrant community around the project.

== Core Developers ==

Aurora is currently being developed by a team of seven engineers at Twitter.

== Alignment ==

The ASF is a natural choice to host the Aurora project, given the goal of
open sourcing the project and fostering a community to grow and support the
software. Additionally, Aurora integrates with Apache Mesos, and Apache
ZooKeeper for service discovery.

We believe that inclusion within Apache will build stronger ties between
these projects, and create further alignment between their goals and
communities.

= Known Risks =

== Orphaned Products ==

The core developers plan to continue working full time on the project, and
there is very little risk of Aurora being abandoned since it is running
hundreds of services as part of Twitter’s infrastructure. Additionally,
members of the Mesos community beyond Twitter have expressed interest in an
advanced scheduler like Aurora (see “Interested Parties” section); we
believe that need will drive some of the community involvement necessary
for the project to incubate successfully.

== Inexperience with Open Source ==

Initial Aurora committers have varying levels of experience using and
contributing to Open Source projects, however by working with our mentors
and the Apache community we believe we will be able to conduct ourselves in
accordance with Apache Incubator guidelines. The close relationship between
the Aurora team and Apache Mesos means there is an awareness of the
incubation process and a willingness to embrace The Apache Way.

== Homogenous Developers ==

The initial set of committers are from a single organization, however we
expect that once approved for incubation the project will attract
contributors from more organizations. We have already had conversations
with other companies who have expressed an interest in Aurora.

== Reliance on Salaried Developers ==

Initial Aurora committers are salaried developers at Twitter, however
shortly after open sourcing the code we plan to diversify the project’s
core committers and contributors.

== Relationships with Other Apache Products ==

Initially, Aurora has been developed as a scheduler for Apache Mesos.
Additionally, it relies on ZooKeeper for service discovery, allowing
servers to register at a location and clients to subsequently discover the
servers.

== An Excessive Fascination with the Apache Brand ==

While we respect the reputation of the Apache brand and have no doubts that
it will attract contributors and users, our interest is primarily to give
Aurora a solid home as an open source project following an established
development model. We have also given reasons in the Rationale and
Alignment sections.

= Documentation =

This proposal exists online as
http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/AuroraProposal. Basic build instructions
are included in the existing github repository, and the source code has
thorough documentation. User documentation exists internally to Twitter,
and as part of incubation will be adapted to share and improve user
documentation overall.

= Initial Source =

JIRA Aurora (AURORA)

= Source and Intellectual Property Submission Plan =

A snapshot of the Aurora scheduler has been posted on github for review:
https://github.com/twitter/aurora

= External Dependencies =

All Aurora dependencies have Apache compatible licenses.

= Cryptography =
Not applicable.

= Required Resources =

== Mailing Lists ==

 * aurora-private for private PMC discussions
 * aurora-dev
 * aurora-commits

== Subversion Directory ==

We prefer to use Git as our source control system: git://
git.apache.org/aurora

== Issue Tracking ==

JIRA Aurora (AURORA)

= Initial Committers =

 * Jonathan Boulle (jon at twitter dot com)
 * William Farner (bill at twitter dot com)
 * Suman Karumuri (skarumuri at twitter dot com)
 * Maxim Khutornenko (mkhutornenko at twitter dot com)
 * Dave Lester (dlester at twitter dot com)
 * Kevin Sweeney (ksweeney at twitter dot com)
 * Brian Wickman (wickman at twitter dot com)

= Affiliations =

Twitter

= Sponsors =

== Champion ==

 * Benjamin Hindman (benh at apache dot org)

== Nominated Mentors ==

 * Jake Farrell (jfarrell at apache dot org)
 * Benjamin Hindman (benh at apache dot org)
 * Chris Mattmann (mattmann at apache dot org)
 * Henry Saputra (hsaputra at apache dot org)

== Sponsoring Entity ==
Incubator PMC