Re: [PROPOSAL] SkyWalking - proposal for Apache Incubation

["John D. Ament" <jo...@apache.org>]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 8:53 AM John D. Ament <jo...@apache.org> wrote:

> Hi Mick,
>
> A few comments below.
>
> On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 1:58 AM mck <mc...@apache.org> wrote:
>
>> Dear Apache Incubator Community,
>>
>> Please accept the following proposal for presentation and discussion:
>>   https://wiki.apache.org/incubator/SkyWalkingProposal
>>
>> SkyWalking is a distributed tracing solution that provides automatic
>> instrumentation, coming from a community of Chinese contributors. This
>> community has been involved with and part of the Distributed Tracing
>> workshops held by Adrian Cole (who maintains and develops Zipkin) and
>> the OpenTracing initiative.
>>
>> Sheng Wu reached out to me recently asking me to Champion the proposal
>> because of my involvement with OpenTracing, Zipkin, and these
>> Distributed Tracing workshops. The whole SkyWalking community has
>> demonstrated a keenness to join Apache, as is seen on their GitHub
>> issues discussing the matter. I'm excited to have been asked and have
>> gladly accepted. Furthermore at last year's ApacheCon in Vancouver I met
>> Luke Han during the ASF media workshop and watched his presentation
>> about the challenges of opening up ASF to chinese communities and
>> developers. Because of this we have reached out to Luke Han as an
>> additional mentor. The result of this was that Sheng met Luke in person
>> last weekend in Shanghai. Sheng also met Nicolas Hedhman in Shanghai.
>> And Willem Ning Jiang has also been added as a mentor, who is also from
>> Huawei and is currently involved in the ServiceComb proposal. Otherwise
>> I'm aware that I'm new to the Incubator and its processes, so any
>> additional mentors familiar with the finer details and precedence will
>> be most welcomed.
>>
>> regards,
>> Mick
>>
>> ----
>>
>> = Abstract =
>> Skywalking is an APM (application performance monitor), especially for
>> microservice, Cloud Native and container-based architecture systems.
>> Also known as a distributed tracing system. It provides an automatic way
>> to instrument applications: no need to change any of the source code of
>> the target application; and an collector with an very high efficiency
>> streaming module.
>>
>> = Proposal =
>> The goal of this proposal is to bring the existing Skywalking
>> https://github.com/OpenSkywalking/skywalking codebase and existing
>> developers and community into the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) in
>> order to build a global, diverse and self-governed open source community
>> in APM field.
>>
>
> Who owns this code? Will an SGA be provided, or ICLAs from contributors?
> If ICLAs, are there any of the current 16 contributors who will not provide
> an ICLA?
>

I believe this question is still outstanding.  Does anyone have any answers
on this?


>
>
>>
>> This project started in Open Source on GitHub about more than 2 years
>> ago. Beginning with a small SDK and collector. So far the OpenSkywalking
>> https://github.com/OpenSkywalking/Organization governs the project
>> through the PMC and Committer Team. The major contributors are from
>> Huawei DevCloud Team, Tydic, Oneapm (APM vendor),  Alibaba Group,
>> dangdang.com and cloudwise (APM vendor).
>>
>>
> While its understandable outside of Apache the contributions come from
> companies, while within Apache the contributions should be expected from
> individuals.  Although I highly like the openness I see from this project.
>
>
>
>> OpenSkywalking is submitting this proposal to donate the Skywalking
>> sources code and  associated artifacts (documentation, web site content,
>> wiki, etc.) to the Apache Software Foundation Incubator under the Apache
>> License, Version 2.0. These artifacts are currently available on GitHub
>> at https://github.com/OpenSkywalking and include:
>>  * Skywalking: The java sniffer(agent) for collecting data, and
>>  collector for analysing and persistence.
>>  * Skywalking-UI: The web UI for skywalking APM
>>
>> Voted on submitting the proposal to the Incubator.
>> https://github.com/OpenSkywalking/Organization/issues/11
>>
>> = Background =
>> Mircro-service, Cloud Native and container-based architecture system are
>> becoming more and more popular, so the traditional monitoring, like
>> application loggings, can provide less information because of the
>> distributed isolates the relations. Based on the Google Dapper paper
>> https://research.google.com/pubs/pub36356.html, many tracing systems
>> born. The OpenSkywalking organisation was created with  Skywalking made
>> based on tracing, but not just tracing, it adds additional value by
>> reducing the sniffer (agent) cost, analysis and visualization.
>>
>> In 2015, Skywalking project started, when service-oriented architecture
>> became popular. At first, skywalking provided a very simple SDK, and
>> collected data into a HBASE cluster. After we opened on the GitHub, the
>> community gives the feedbacks about how difficult to maintain a HBase
>> cluster, even harder than the applications under monitored. So, in 2.x
>> 2016, skywalking provided a self-designed storage, and update the SDK to
>> a javaagent with supporting auto-instrumentation. Then since 2017, more
>> and more contributors joined, we set up the PMC team and committer team.
>> Skywalking evolved to an APM, and more and more features provided since
>> then.
>>
>> = Rationale =
>> Skywalking includes these primary parts:
>>  1. Provide an anto-instrument sniffer, which is based on Javaagent and
>>  collects events and traces happened inside JVM, with little CPU/Memory
>>  cost.
>>  2. An extendable `tracing data protocol suit` with gRPC and HTTP
>>  implementations, is compatible for other language agent or SDK.
>>  3. Provide Collector, which accepts the `tracing data protocol suit`,
>>  and does the analysis and aggregation inside for detecting the
>>  relationships among applications and services, generating the metrics,
>>  and altering.
>>  4. Provided our own UI, which visualizes the topological graph of
>>  related applications and services, trace stack, metrics and alerting.
>>
>> Also, Skywalking team is passionate about community cooperations.
>> Skywalking is a supported tracer and member of OpenTracing
>> http://opentracing.io . Also we take part in the  TraceContext Specs
>> https://github.com/TraceContext/tracecontext-spec , which is about
>> `tracing context propagation format`. The founder of the project, Sheng
>> Wu, is the member of these organizations,
>>
>> There is a strong need for an open, easy-to-use APM towards helping
>> today's DevOps people to monitor their running systems, while also being
>> easy and transparent to maintain and modify.
>> The Skywalking has been an hot open source project in GitHub. We feel
>> that by moving to Apache it will help us work in a more global and open
>> way, presenting the project as a commercial friendly but vendor neutral
>> technology. Under Apache's strong governance and existing processes,
>> hope is also to make the Skywalking releases more reliable, as is
>> crucial for monitoring systems running in any Application Zone.
>>
>> = Initial Goals =
>> Our initial goals are to bring Skywalking into the ASF. The most
>> important things are following ASF's governance module, and integrating
>> with Apache development process. Also moving the existing codebase to an
>> Apache git repository.
>>
>> = Current Status =
>> == Meritocracy ==
>> Skywalking was originally created by Sheng Wu,  吴晟
>> https://github.com/wu-sheng himself in May 2015, and opened in GitHub in
>> Nov. 8th, 2015. The project now has committers and users from many
>> companies. The newer committers of the project are guided by the existed
>> PMC and Committer Team members, by reviewing and discussing with them.
>> When they are ready, PMC will start a vote to promote him/her to become
>> a member of PMC and Committer Team.
>> Also after the founder, Sheng Wu, joined Huawei in 2017, Huawei DevCloud
>> decided to contribute and support the project. So he personally leads
>> the interested developers, and helps them to join the community quickly
>> and efficiently. Now we have set `Huawei Devcloud Contributor Team` for
>> them.
>> Contributions are always welcomed, highly valued. A lot of energy is
>> allocated to ensure help to all wishing to contribute.
>>
>> == Community ==
>> OpenSkwaylking is supported by 5 companies: Huawei, shurenyun.com,
>> dangdang.com, tydic, nutz.cn , which are both contributing to the
>> project and also used it in product, also provide many important
>> feedbacks from their actual scenarios.
>> The contributors, who can provide employer informantions, are from
>> Huawei DevCloud Team, Tydic, Oneapm (APM vendor), Alibaba Group,
>> dangdang.com, cloudwise (APM vendor), jd.com, cig.cn, hecom.cn, and
>> www.suixingpay.com.
>>
>> == Core Developers ==
>> The core developers are a diverse group of experienced open source
>> developers and team leaders.
>>  * PMC members –
>>
>> https://github.com/OpenSkywalking/Organization/blob/master/README.md#project-management-committee-pmc
>>  * Committer Team members –
>>
>> https://github.com/OpenSkywalking/Organization/blob/master/README.md#committer-team
>
>
> Please replace this with a list of all current contributors, with names in
> english.
>
>
>>
>>
>> == Known Risks ==
>> The project is well known in global tracing and APM field, and live more
>> than 2 years. We are not sure there exists a risk, but definitely have a
>> challenge for us. So far, the contributors, committers and confirmed
>> product use cases are all from China.
>> === Language and Culture ===
>> Concerns have been raised about language challenges and, as is typical
>> for developers not strong in english, aware that the community can be
>> shy in a debate or disagreement when english is used. Having looked
>> through the project's history this concern can be seen to be minor. The
>> commitlog is in english, and so are the tickets and the pull requests.
>> The website and documentation is equally both english and chinese. The
>> community has been strict upon itself to ensure it became and stays so.
>> The use of chinese should not be seen as a problem, it is a multilingual
>> world, but it is important that english speakers feel included and able
>> to contribute freely to the project without having to ask for
>> translations. To deal with poor or broken english it's important that a
>> gentler and inclusive community is fostered.
>>
>
> Where have concerns over language challenges been raised?
>
>
>>
>> == Orphaned products ==
>> The contributors and community cooperation brings the project from a
>> small concept into a real APM system. So far, many companies, e.g.
>> Huawei DevCloud, dangdang.com, tydic, jd.com, have their own
>> independency contribute team for Skywalking. So this is not risk of any
>> signs of orphaned or abandoned code.
>>
>> == Inexperience with Open Source ==
>> The founder of the project, Sheng Wu, is an open source lover. He has
>> contributed for these open source projects: OpenTracing-Specification,
>> OpenTracing-Java, Motan, Hprose, OpenTracing specification-zh,
>> apache/incubator-rocketmq.
>>
>> Hongtao Gao, our committer team member, is the major maintainer of
>> sharding-jdbc https://github.com/shardingjdbc/sharding-jdbc and
>> elastic-job https://github.com/elasticjob/elastic-job since 2014.
>>
>> The project are following these two experienced open source people's
>> guidance. And glad to learn from the Apache Way.
>>
>> == Homogenous Developers ==
>> The confirmed contributors list:
>>
>> https://github.com/OpenSkywalking/Organization/blob/master/README.md#contributors
>> .
>> As mentioned above in the Community section.
>>
>> == Reliance on Salaried Developers ==
>> First of all, most members of the PMC and Committer Team, are paid by
>> their employers (Huawei, Tydic, dangdang.com and OneAPM) to contribute
>> to this project. But we have to say, many of them have more than one
>> employer in the past 3 years contribution, but the contributions are
>> never stopped. We don't just depend on salaried contributors only.
>> Skywalking itself and the distributed tracing field are very attractive
>> and important for every company the contributors work in, and they have
>> no reason to stop them. Contributions and new committers are expected.
>>
>> == Relationships with Other Apache Products ==
>> HBase was used as a backend before being rewritten, and that ZooKeeper,
>> httpcomponents, log4j and junit are used. Also we are considering all
>> java projects, especially big data technology, e.g. Hadoop, Hbase,
>> Cassandra.
>>
>> == A Excessive Fascination with the Apache Brand ==
>> The ASF has a strong brand, and that brand is in itself attractive.
>> Skywalking will benefit from world wide collaboration and use cases. The
>> Apache brand will be duly respected and honored in regards to  marketing
>> and publicity. Further more, with the help of Incubator PMC, we will
>> make every effort to follow the rules and policies of the ASF.
>>
>> == Documentation ==
>>  * https://github.com/OpenSkywalking/skywalking/tree/master/docs
>>  * https://github.com/OpenSkywalking/skywalking/wiki
>>
>> == Initial Source ==
>> The project consists of two distinct codebases: the server and the UI.
>> These have existed as separate git repositories.
>>  * https://github.com/OpenSkywalking/skywalking
>>  * https://github.com/OpenSkywalking/skywalking-ui
>>
>> == Source and Intellectual Property Submission Plan ==
>> The project is under Apache Licensed 2.0 already. As soon as Skywalking
>> is approved to join Apache, we can transfer of source code to the Apache
>> Foundation. There is no legal issue.
>> All source artifacts (code and documentation) will be assigned copyright
>> to the ASF. Currently all artifacts are copyright to 'OpenSkywalking
>> Organization', so effort in this process pertains mostly to obtaining
>> the individual and corporation contributor agreements (ICLAs and CCLAs)
>> from all committers and PMC.
>>
>> == External Dependencies ==
>>  * Byte-buddy (Apache 2.0)
>>  * gRPC (Apache 2.0)
>>  * netty (Apache 2.0)
>>  * guava (Apache 2.0)
>>  * elasticsearch (Apache 2.0)
>>  * H2 Driver (MPL 2.0 or EPL 1.0)
>>  * Zookeeper Client (Apache 2.0)
>>  * disruptor (Apache 2.0)
>>  * junit (MPL)
>>  * mockito (MIT)
>>  * powermock (Apache 2.0)
>>  * Spring (Apache 2.0)
>>  * gson  (Apache 2.0)
>>  * httpcomponents (Apache 2.0)
>>  * log4j  (Apache 2.0)
>>  * vis (Apache 2.0)
>>  * webjars-boostrap  (Apache 2.0)
>>  * animate.css (MIT)
>>  * jquery (js.foundation)
>>  * jquery-ui (js.foundation)
>>  * jsView (MIT)
>>  * metisMenu (MIT)
>>  * d3 (BSD-3)
>>  * echarts (BSD-3)
>>  * DataTables (MIT)
>>  * requirejs (MIT)
>>  * vue (MIT)
>>
>> = Required Resources =
>> == Mailing Lists ==
>>  * private@skywalking.incubator.apache.org (moderated subscriptions)
>>  * commits@skywalking.incubator.apache.org
>>  * dev@skywalking.incubator.apache.org
>>  * user@skywalking.incubator.apache.org
>>
>> == Git Repositories ==
>>  * https://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator-skywalking.git
>>  * https://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator-skywalking-ui.git
>>
>>
> The ASF does offer "gitbox" or writable github repositories.  If this is
> something useful to you, I would recommend it, especially if you're already
> using github.
>
>
>> == Issue Tracking ==
>> GitHub Issues or JIRA Project Skywalking.
>> To be discussed further, there's a desire to continue to use GitHub
>> issues and it's now visible that other projects are using this.
>>
>> == Initial Incubator PMC ==
>>  * 吴晟, Sheng Wu  @wu-sheng
>>  * 彭勇升, Yongsheng Peng  @peng-yongsheng
>>  * 张鑫, Xin Zhang  @ascrutae
>>
>> == Initial Committer ==
>>  * 吴晟, Sheng Wu  @wu-sheng
>>  * 彭勇升, Yongsheng Peng  @peng-yongsheng
>>  * 张鑫, Xin Zhang  @ascrutae
>>  * 高洪涛, Hongtao Gao  @hanahmily
>>  * 柏杨, Yang Bai  @bai-yang
>>  * 王凯, Kai Wang  @oracle219
>>  * 李运涛, Yuntao Li  @lytscu
>>  * 汪盛, Sheng Wang  @titsquid
>>  * 司冬雪, Dongxue Si  @IluckySi
>>  * 张科伟, Kewei Zhang  @zhangkewei
>>
>
>
> These two sections concern me.  Note that podlings have PPMCs.  I cannot
> accept three new IPMC members on a podling proposal without much
> explanation about how they are familiar with the Apache Way.
>
> Typically, podlings come into the Incubator with the PPMC == the initial
> committers.  Is that what you are trying to convey here?
>
> I'm not sure why there are names with @ in front.  Are these proposed ASF
> usernames?
>
>
>>
>> = Champion =
>>  * Michael Semb Wever, mck@apache.org
>>
>> Voted for skywalking Incubator champion.
>> https://github.com/OpenSkywalking/Organization/issues/12
>>
>> = Mentors =
>>  * Michael Semb Wever, mck@apache.org
>>  * Luke Han, lukehan@apache.org
>>  * Willem Ning Jiang, ningjiang@apache.org
>>
>> Skywalking received a lot helps from Michael Semb Wever about this
>> proposal and Apache way. Set face-to-face meeting with three Apache
>> members: Luke Han, Nicolas Hedhman, Willem Ning Jiang. They helps us a
>> lot.
>>
>> == Sponsoring Entity ==
>> We are requesting the Incubator to sponsor this project.
>>
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>>