PEP 541 Request: pinecone

[Li-or]

Project to be claimed

PROJECT_NAME: https://pypi.org/project/pinecone

Your PyPI username

USER_NAME: https://pypi.org/user/pinecone

Reasons for the request

Pinecone is an abandoned project:

• Owner is not reachable: We tried multiple times to engage with the owner with the email address on file in the user's profile and other emails, over two years (>6weeks)
• No release within the past 12 months and no activity from the owner. In fact, the project Pinecone has been inactive since 2015
• We're happy to share and demonstrate print screens of the emails sent
• The project suggested is pinecone-client which is active and frequently edited (49 releases over two years) and downloaded in the tens of thousands
• Pinecone Systems, Inc, our company, owns the trademark for Pinecone in the software space (9, 42)

Maintenance or replacement?

Replacement

Source code repositories URLs

Current repo (inactive for 8 years)
https://github.com/audreyfeldroy/pinecone

Contact and additional research

I contacted Audrey via email to several email addresses, and also attempted to connect via Linkedin. I can share print screens of the emails sent. Based on the GitHub repo, it is clear that the project is inactive for 8 years with no PR.

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow the PSF Code of Conduct

[elancode]

i am following up on this request. could an admin please take a look?
thank you!!

[yeraydiazdiaz]

Hello @Li-or, I will now start the reachability process for your request which can take up to 6 weeks.

I believe the owner is GitHub user @audreyfeldroy, hopefully she will clarify her position regarding the project and we can proceed with the transfer soon.

[Li-or]

Thanks, Yeray, we have been waiting patiently for that!

…

On Sun, 26 Feb 2023 at 19:34, Yeray Díaz ***@***.***> wrote: Hello @Li-or <https://github.com/Li-or>, I will now start the reachability process for your request which can take up to 6 weeks. I believe the owner is GitHub user @audreyfeldroy <https://github.com/audreyfeldroy>, hopefully she will clarify her position regarding the project and we can proceed with the transfer soon. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#2432 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AOC4V7HNVMLVYQHKJ3FQLMTWZOH37ANCNFSM6AAAAAASMS5PDQ> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Li-or]

Yeray, Any update on the pinecone topic? Thanks in advance! Lior

…

On Sun, 26 Feb 2023 at 19:36, Lior Ehrenfeld ***@***.***> wrote: Thanks, Yeray, we have been waiting patiently for that! On Sun, 26 Feb 2023 at 19:34, Yeray Díaz ***@***.***> wrote: > Hello @Li-or <https://github.com/Li-or>, I will now start the > reachability process for your request which can take up to 6 weeks. > > I believe the owner is GitHub user @audreyfeldroy > <https://github.com/audreyfeldroy>, hopefully she will clarify her > position regarding the project and we can proceed with the transfer soon. > > — > Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub > <#2432 (comment)>, > or unsubscribe > <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AOC4V7HNVMLVYQHKJ3FQLMTWZOH37ANCNFSM6AAAAAASMS5PDQ> > . > You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: > ***@***.***> >

[Li-or]

Hi Yeray, Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks, Lior

…

On Thu, 30 Mar 2023 at 08:20, Lior Ehrenfeld ***@***.***> wrote: Yeray, Any update on the pinecone topic? Thanks in advance! Lior On Sun, 26 Feb 2023 at 19:36, Lior Ehrenfeld ***@***.***> wrote: > Thanks, Yeray, we have been waiting patiently for that! > > On Sun, 26 Feb 2023 at 19:34, Yeray Díaz ***@***.***> > wrote: > >> Hello @Li-or <https://github.com/Li-or>, I will now start the >> reachability process for your request which can take up to 6 weeks. >> >> I believe the owner is GitHub user @audreyfeldroy >> <https://github.com/audreyfeldroy>, hopefully she will clarify her >> position regarding the project and we can proceed with the transfer soon. >> >> — >> Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub >> <#2432 (comment)>, >> or unsubscribe >> <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AOC4V7HNVMLVYQHKJ3FQLMTWZOH37ANCNFSM6AAAAAASMS5PDQ> >> . >> You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: >> ***@***.***> >> >

[Li-or]

Hi Yeray, Is there anyone else we could reach out to on the topic? Thanks, Lior

…

On Mon, 10 Apr 2023 at 08:29, Lior Ehrenfeld ***@***.***> wrote: Hi Yeray, Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks, Lior On Thu, 30 Mar 2023 at 08:20, Lior Ehrenfeld ***@***.***> wrote: > Yeray, > > Any update on the pinecone topic? > > Thanks in advance! > Lior > > On Sun, 26 Feb 2023 at 19:36, Lior Ehrenfeld ***@***.***> wrote: > >> Thanks, Yeray, we have been waiting patiently for that! >> >> On Sun, 26 Feb 2023 at 19:34, Yeray Díaz ***@***.***> >> wrote: >> >>> Hello @Li-or <https://github.com/Li-or>, I will now start the >>> reachability process for your request which can take up to 6 weeks. >>> >>> I believe the owner is GitHub user @audreyfeldroy >>> <https://github.com/audreyfeldroy>, hopefully she will clarify her >>> position regarding the project and we can proceed with the transfer soon. >>> >>> — >>> Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub >>> <#2432 (comment)>, >>> or unsubscribe >>> <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AOC4V7HNVMLVYQHKJ3FQLMTWZOH37ANCNFSM6AAAAAASMS5PDQ> >>> . >>> You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: >>> ***@***.***> >>> >>

[Li-or]

PyPi team, Any suggestions on how we could make progress here? Thanks, Lior

…

On Tue, 25 Apr 2023 at 11:15, Lior Ehrenfeld ***@***.***> wrote: Hi Yeray, Is there anyone else we could reach out to on the topic? Thanks, Lior On Mon, 10 Apr 2023 at 08:29, Lior Ehrenfeld ***@***.***> wrote: > Hi Yeray, > > Looking forward to hearing from you. > > Thanks, > Lior > > On Thu, 30 Mar 2023 at 08:20, Lior Ehrenfeld ***@***.***> wrote: > >> Yeray, >> >> Any update on the pinecone topic? >> >> Thanks in advance! >> Lior >> >> On Sun, 26 Feb 2023 at 19:36, Lior Ehrenfeld ***@***.***> wrote: >> >>> Thanks, Yeray, we have been waiting patiently for that! >>> >>> On Sun, 26 Feb 2023 at 19:34, Yeray Díaz ***@***.***> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Hello @Li-or <https://github.com/Li-or>, I will now start the >>>> reachability process for your request which can take up to 6 weeks. >>>> >>>> I believe the owner is GitHub user @audreyfeldroy >>>> <https://github.com/audreyfeldroy>, hopefully she will clarify her >>>> position regarding the project and we can proceed with the transfer soon. >>>> >>>> — >>>> Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub >>>> <#2432 (comment)>, >>>> or unsubscribe >>>> <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AOC4V7HNVMLVYQHKJ3FQLMTWZOH37ANCNFSM6AAAAAASMS5PDQ> >>>> . >>>> You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: >>>> ***@***.***> >>>> >>>

[jhamon]

Hello @yeraydiazdiaz

I'm following up on this issue because it seems like there hasn't been any movement in a long time.

I work with @Li-or and @elancode who are part of our leadership team at Pinecone. We recently raised a $100M Series B investment round and we are seeing growing adoption of our product which is a managed vector search database.

I am currently the lead developer on the python client for Pinecone. Today we publish our package under the name pinecone-client but would like to use the shortened name pinecone, our company name and trademark.

The criteria listed in PEP 541 for taking over a package name are:

- the project has been determined abandoned by the rules described above;
- the candidate is able to demonstrate their own failed attempts to contact the existing owner;
- the candidate is able to demonstrate that the project suggested to reuse the name already exists and meets notability requirements;
- the candidate is able to demonstrate why a fork under a different name is not an acceptable workaround;
- download statistics on the Package Index for the existing package indicate project is not being used; and
the maintainers of the Package Index don’t have any additional reservations.

I will discuss these criteria one by one to make sure we haven't overlooked anything.

✅ ❓ Criteria 1: the project has been determined abandoned by the rules described above;

Elsewhere in PEP 541, a project is said to be abandoned if the following conditions are met:

owner not reachable (see Reachability above);
no releases within the past twelve months; and
no activity from the owner on the project’s home page (or no home page listed).

• The pinecone package only had a single release 8 years ago (so none in the last twelve months).
• No updates of any kind in the source repository since 2015.

Reachability is defined as failing to contact them by any of these methods:

the e-mail address on file in the user’s profile on the Package Index;
the e-mail address listed in the Author field for a given project uploaded to the Index; and
any e-mail addresses found in the given project’s documentation on the Index or on the listed Home Page.

• @yeraydiazdiaz said they would begin verifying the author is unreachable back in February. No updates have been shared even though we are long past the 6 week estimated timeline.

✅ Criteria 2: the candidate is able to demonstrate their own failed attempts to contact the existing owner;

• Lior said he has already made extensive efforts to get in touch with the author by email and over LinkedIn without success. He can provide documentation of those efforts if requested.
• In addition, Audrey did not respond when tagged in this issue thread back in February.

✅ Criteria 3: the candidate is able to demonstrate that the project suggested to reuse the name already exists and meets notability requirements;

• Our project pinecone-client has over 700 commits from 18 authors and is being actively developed.
• We have shipped multiple releases in the last year, and are beta testing a major version release coming soon.
• pinecone-client currently gets about 19k downloads per day
• pinecone-client has been labeled a Critical Project in PyPI.

✅ Criteria 4: the candidate is able to demonstrate why a fork under a different name is not an acceptable workaround;

• Pinecone holds the trademark on the pinecone name in the software space.
• There have been some support cases from our users who installed the pinecone package instead of pinecone-client by mistake

✅ Criteria 5: download statistics on the Package Index for the existing package indicate project is not being used;

• There is no data available for pinecone recorded in https://pypistats.org/
• The published release was labeled with development status 2 - Pre-Alpha
• The package metadata shows the most modern python version it targets is Python 3.4 which has been EOL since 2019
• Our customer success team has gotten support requests for people who installed pinecone instead of pinecone-client by mistake, so to the extent there is any recent download activity it can be partly explained in this way.

PyPI admins may have access to other data on usage. But I think it's unlikely this package is being seriously used by anyone today.

❓ Criteria 6: the maintainers of the Package Index don’t have any additional reservations

I'm not a PyPI maintainer, so I can't speak to whether there are any additional concerns from your side. But no major issues were raised in the initial response to this issue.

Summary

Pending official confirmation of unreachability, from my perspective we are meeting the criteria PEP 541 lays out for taking over an existing project name. I think a separate case could be made that the existing project should be considered invalid due to infringing our trademark, but I'm not a lawyer so I won't try to flesh out that argument.

Could you please clarify if anything else is needed and how we can move this process forward?

Thank you.

cc: @gdj0nes

[jhamon]

Adding @ewdurbin @cmaureir because I've see that you were recently active on other tickets in this project. Can you help us out here? There has been no response on this ticket for many months and I think we have done everything we can on our end to make the case for why we should be allowed to claim the package name pinecone. Thanks for any help you can give.

[jhamon]

Hey, just checking in again. I looked up the record of our trademark on the name Pinecone, in case that makes a difference to anyone.

@takluyver @ewdurbin @cmaureir @yeraydiazdiaz

[jhamon]

Hey, just checking in again on this. 14 months since we opened this issue and 11 months since the last response from pypi. Can we get some help on this? @takluyver @ewdurbin @cmaureir @yeraydiazdiaz

[takluyver]

There appears to have been a brief burst of commits on the project which the name currently belongs to in summer 2023. I think that means it no longer strictly counts as abandoned, if the twelve months also applies to 'activity on the homepage'.

One of those commits updates an email address, though - is the new email there one you've already tried?

I don't have admin access to do anything here. I know there have been discussions recently about how PyPI support is desperately under-resourced, and the requirement for 2FA probably only increased the load as more people get locked out of their account.