Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Sheng Wu (@wusheng1108) discuss Apache SkyWalking, an open-source APM tool focusing on cloud-native and distributed systems. SkyWalking was originally developed in 2012 as a training tool for developers new to distributed systems architecture, but it became Sheng’s pet project for several years until he brought it to the Apache Incubator program. Listen to today’s episode for the inside scoop of how this “hidden gem” fits into the Apache network of open-source software projects.

In this episode we discuss:

• Why open-source APMs are not very common
• SkyWalking’s focus on attracting more contributors rather than users
• How a conflict of interest at Huawei led to a “bake-off” between Apache and CNCF
• The impact of Elastic changing their license on the open-source community
• The name “Skywalking,” its sources of inspiration, and an easter egg

Links:

• Apache SkyWalking
• Kubernetes
• The Apache Incubator
• CNCF
• Tetrate
• Apache ShardingSphere
• Apache APISIX
• Envoy Proxy
• Apache Airflow
• Apache Beam
• Dynatrace
• New Relic
• Elastic
• Helm
• Zipkin

Other episodes:

• Envoy Proxy with Matt Klein