state of the community · about me / bias •ben bromhead, cto of instaclustr •using cassandra...

State of the Community

NGC – 2019Ben Bromhead©Instaclustr Pty Limited, 2019

Agenda• What this talk is, what it is not

• Bias

• Data, Anecdotes and Observations

• Final thoughts

©Instaclustr Pty Limited, 2019

What this talk is

• A chance to look at some (arbitrary) measures about our community

• A chance for me to talk about my personal and corporate experience in the community

• A chance to reflect

• A chance to celebrate


What this talk is NOT

• Blaming, Finger pointing etc

• A definitive state of the community

• This is not the way things have always been and always

will be

• A roadmap / plan to fix things

• Technical


About Me / Bias

• Ben Bromhead, CTO of Instaclustr

• Using Cassandra since 2012

• Active since 2013

• I am not a committer or a PMC member

• I have a leadership and ownership position in a company with direct commercial interest in the Apache Cassandra project

• My company is in competition with others that have an interest/influence in the Apache Cassandra project

• We also have informal and formal partnerships with other companies that have direct interest/influence on the Apache Cassandra project.


1.Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Each measure of anOpen Source project’s health

is a brush stroke,not the whole picture


1.Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


1.Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

https://gist.github.com/jolynch/4719baf279be8defd1dae1cb871e5a0e


1.Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Committer Stats• 48 committers in 2017

• 54 committers in 2019

• 50% inactive for +3 years


1.Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Release Activity

Branch Previous Release

Previous Release Time Delta from previous

Current Release

Current Release Time Delta from previous

3.x 3.10 4 months 3.11.4 2.5 years

3.0 3.0.14 1 month 3.0.14 2 months

2.2 2.2.9 5 months 2.2.10 4 months

2.1 2.1.17 4 months 2.1.18 4 months


1.Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Commits by Top Contributors


1.Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mailing list activity - User


1.Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mailing list activity - Dev


1.Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


1.Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Cassandra API compatible(ish) Implementations

• DSE*

• ScylaDB*

• Yugabyte

• CosmosDB*


1.Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Instaclustr Observations• Continued stagnation of new committers being brought in - This is hard with

the 4.0 code freeze as feature work is considered an important step inbecoming a committer

• Cloud provider services (e.g. DynamoDB, Aurora) increasingly the preferencefor smaller startups, greenfield and teams. Fear of lock-in is very real thoughfor more sophisticated teams + OSS APIs become critical.

• Increasingly a DB of choice for large orgs building out a internal DBaaS Capability.


1.Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Summary• Still facing some challenges with project velocity

o Recent efforts in the road to 4.0 are likely to pay off significantly in making it easier to introduce and test new features

• Dominant with on-prem and companies looking to reduce risk of vendor lock-in

• Facing increasing pressure from cloud provider service offerings

• Next 6-12 months critical with the (potential) release of 4.0 for building back up velocity and interest in the project.


Ben Bromhead

[email protected]

CTO Instaclustr

©Instaclustr Pty Limited, 2019 https://www.instaclustr.com/company/policies/terms-conditions/Except as permitted by the copyright law applicable to you, you may not reproduce, distribute, publish, display, communicate or transmit any of the content of this document, in any form, but any means, without the prior written permission of Instaclustr Pty Limited

https://www.instaclustr.com/company/policies/terms-conditions/

state of the community · about me / bias •ben bromhead, cto of instaclustr •using cassandra...

Documents