Apache Spark PMC
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| Apache Spark PMC | |
|---|---|
| Name | Apache Spark PMC |
| Type | Project Management Committee |
| Founded | 2014 |
| Location | Global |
| Website | apache.org |
Apache Spark PMC Apache Spark PMC provides oversight and stewardship for the Apache Software Foundation project Apache Spark within the broader ecosystem of open-source projects hosted by the Apache Software Foundation. The committee coordinates development, release management, and community governance while interacting with cloud vendors, research institutions, and standards bodies to advance distributed data processing technologies. Members typically include engineers and contributors affiliated with companies, universities, and research labs active in big data, machine learning, and database systems.
Overview
The PMC functions as the formal governance body recognized by the Apache Software Foundation for the Spark project, interfacing with entities such as Databricks, Cloudera, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure. It draws on expertise from contributors connected to University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, UC San Diego, and industrial research groups like IBM Research, Intel Labs, and NVIDIA Research. The committee operates within the foundation’s policies alongside other project governance structures such as the Apache Incubator, Apache License, and related PMCs for projects like Apache Hadoop, Apache Flink, Apache Kafka, Apache Hive, and Apache Mesos.
History and Formation
Spark’s evolution involved contributors from academic projects and corporate development efforts tied to institutions including AMPLab, Berkeley AMPLab, and companies like Databricks and Twitter. After incubation under the Apache Incubator, governance transitioned to a PMC recognized by the Apache Software Foundation following meritocratic contribution patterns championed by figures affiliated with Matei Zaharia, Reynold Xin, and others with connections to UC Berkeley. The PMC formation reflected practices codified in the Apache Way and paralleled governance developments in projects such as Apache Hadoop and Apache HBase, with oversight analogous to processes followed by the Apache HTTP Server and Apache Subversion communities.
Roles and Responsibilities
The PMC is responsible for release approval, trademark management, contributor licensing, and adherence to the Apache License and foundation bylaws, coordinating with bodies including the Apache Legal Affairs Committee and Apache Brand Management Committee. It designates release managers, committers, and other roles, interacting with ecosystem stakeholders like Cloudera, Hortonworks, MapR, Confluent, and research partners at Carnegie Mellon University and ETH Zurich. The committee also ensures compliance with governance precedents seen in projects such as Apache Tomcat, Apache Cassandra, and Apache ZooKeeper.
Membership and Election Process
PMC membership follows meritocratic election similar to other Apache Software Foundation projects: active contributors from organizations including Databricks, Facebook, Alibaba, Uber, Pinterest, and academic centers like Princeton University can be nominated by existing members. Elections adhere to foundation rules used by PMCs across projects such as Apache Struts, Apache Solr, and Apache Lucene with vote tracking and public mailing list archives paralleling practices at Apache Arrow and Apache Parquet. Membership changes are recorded in project mailing archives and are visible to affiliates including The Apache Board and community observers from Linux Foundation partners.
Meetings and Decision-Making
The committee conducts decisions via public mailing lists and scheduled virtual meetings, reflecting deliberative norms established by the Apache Way, with procedural similarities to governance in OpenJDK, Eclipse Foundation, and Kubernetes communities. Votes on technical changes, release candidates, and policy interpretations are taken on mailing lists or during PMC meetings, and outcomes are archived for transparency similar to records kept by Apache Software Foundation projects such as Apache Maven and Apache Ant. Conflict resolution and appeals may involve coordination with the Apache Software Foundation Board and, where necessary, consultation with legal counsel experienced with open-source governance.
Projects and Initiatives
The PMC oversees core Spark components and subprojects that interact with other ecosystems, including connectors and formats associated with Parquet, ORC, Delta Lake, MLflow, TensorFlow, PyTorch, and integrations with Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Apache Beam, and Presto. Initiatives under PMC purview have included performance optimization, GPU acceleration with partners like NVIDIA, interoperability with Hadoop Distributed File System and Amazon S3, and language bindings for Python, Scala, Java, and R. Collaborations have linked Spark to academic efforts at California Institute of Technology, University of Washington, and industrial labs at Microsoft Research and Google Research.
Governance and Community Interaction
The PMC maintains open communication via mailing lists, issue trackers, and public repositories hosted on infrastructure endorsed by the Apache Software Foundation, engaging contributors from vendor ecosystems like Snowflake, Databricks, Google Cloud, and AWS as well as academic collaborators from Harvard University and Yale University. Outreach and community-building mirror activities by other PMCs such as Apache Cassandra PMC and Apache Kafka PMC, including participation at conferences like Strata Data Conference, Spark + AI Summit, KDD, VLDB, and ICML, and alignment with standards and working groups at organizations like IEEE and ODPI.