[OSGeo-Discuss] Small projects

[Frank Warmerdam]

Ari Jolma wrote:
>... Institutions such as OSGeo will be instrumental in this. And 
> the way these institutions will best serve this goal is to oversee 
> efforts to enhance interoperability and development of software stacks 
> capable in solving complex problems.
> 
> Thus, and this is the point I'm trying to make here, I believe the 
> foundation should also be proactive in starting foundation projects, not 
> just admitting projects into the foundation. The projects it should seek 
> to start are perhaps small but they would close perceived gaps or enable 
> something seen as important. I'm not sure what will be the best way to 
> do this. Perhaps by organizing "think tanks" at the conferences, perhaps 
> in some other way.

Ari,

In the missiona and goals proposal I have prepared for the foundation:

   http://www.fossgis.de/osgeo/index.php/OSGeo_Mission

I have already noted a goal to encourage standards based interoperability
between foundation projects.  I think we also need additional things
done to ensure interoperability even when standards don't exist.

However, I see this process as one of encouraging existing project
developers to establish interoperability rather than the foundation
launching specialized projects to make it happen.  In particular, it
is not anticipated that the foundation itself will have any staff
developers, unless one or more projects decide to spend their project
sponsorship money to do so.  So I'm not sure how having the foundation
start a project on it's own would actually make that project happen.

I do think there are things the foundation, and an environment of
collaboration can accomplish to improve interoperability and fill other
holes, but ultimately the foundation has little capacity to fill the
holes itself.  Organizations or individual contributors need to be
motivated to make it happen.

When you talk about enhancing the development of software stacks
capable of solving complex problems, I wonder if you could explain
a bit what you mean.  Generally speaking open source projects are pretty
good about supporting complex issues ... sometimes to a fault. :-)

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org