[MAINTAINERS] What is next for this repository?

[reta]

What/Why

Since the acceptance into OpenSearch project / organization, this repository is clearly lacking the maintainers' attention and is not keep up with releases or/and living up to standards:

• the plugin has never seen any official releases
• the issues and pull requests are not watched
• no development or even housekeeping activities from the maintainers are happening

What is next for this repository?

In lights of above, I suggest the following options:

• archive this repository or/and move to attic
• ask the maintainers to step up and at least do some bare minimum
• broadly, ask the community if some have interest in helping out with maintenance

Tagging all maintainers since it is their call: @samuel-oci @saratvemulapalli @VachaShah @kotwanikunal @andrross @anasalkouz

[andrross]

Thanks @reta. My thinking is this plugin needs to be added to the official distribution so that it is included in every release. This will be a forcing function for keeping up with the minimum maintenance. Otherwise I'm not sure it makes sense to have a plugin that is part of the opensearch-project but not included in releases.

I will note there was a previous discussion about moving this plugin into the OpenSearch repository, but I think we've got consensus that we should work towards the opposite (move existing storage plugins out of the monolithic core repo) versus moving more plugins in.

I think it is important that OpenSearch support running in the Oracle cloud. However, it would be great to get some more involvement in this repository from folks who are actually operating OpenSearch on OCI infrastructure. @samuel-oci what are your thoughts here?

[saratvemulapalli]

+1 to @andrross I believe it is important to offer opensearch on all platforms which will spin the flywheel.
I do like the idea of releasing this plugin with our distribution, this isn't necessarily any different than repository-s3 or respository-azure.

[reta]

@andrross @saratvemulapalli I have no objections, but the question - who (from existing maintainers) will take care of it? That's the main question - this repo requires commitment and attention.

[andrross]

who (from existing maintainers) will take care of it?

@reta The short answer is that I think the Amazon-affiliated folks in the current maintainer list are not the right people to maintain this repository. @samuel-oci can we get some more attention in this repo from some Oracle developers? I'm happy to help however I can to bootstrap some new people into this role and ultimately replace the Amazon-affiliated maintainers here.

[dblock]

[Catch All Triage - 1, 2, 3]

[reta]

@andrross @saratvemulapalli resuming the discussion here since enough time has passed: I don't see any interest expressed from Oracle affiliated folks or volunteers to step in and help to maintain this repository. I don't see many options left of the table

[sam-herman]

Hi @andrross @reta, thank you for bringing this up. The arguments by @reta are totally understandable and make total sense to me.
A quick disclosure on my side: I am still working at Oracle but officially not part of the OpenSearch team anymore. Which I bring up simply because I won't have the bandwidth to take full ownership of this repository going forward.

Next Steps: Let me see if I can contact some folks within Oracle that will be willing to step up and dedicate time to maintaining it. I will ask them to comment on this issue. If there is lack of interest from Oracle's behalf, it sounds like you would have to continue with the remaining options that you brought up (e.g. ask broader community or archive).