[OSGeo-Discuss] Distribution Special Interest Groups

[Silke Reimer]

On Thu, Mar 09, 2006 at 10:42:22AM -0500, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Silke Reimer wrote:
> >>My hope is that within EOGeo we could in the short term do two things.
> >
> >Are there concrete plans? What are the obstacles to start with it
> >now? And do you really mean EOGeo or OSGEO?
> 
> Silke,
> 
> Of course, I meant OSGeo.
> 
> /me repeats to himself ... OSGeo, OSGeo, OSGeo ...
> 
> I'm sure that won't be the last time I do that.
> 
> The plans are just the discussion we are having here on this list.

OK. I think I have just been confused because you mentioned EOGeo
:-)

> 
> The obstacles to starting right now?   Well, I think we need some
> sort of critical mass of interest before we ought to start something.
> I think we have that already.

Yes, I think this as well.

> 
> It might also be good to know which nut we wish to crack first.
> Specifically focus on the RPM issue?  Or perhaps start with the
> "meta packagers" list?

I think both in some way. We should have as aim to get a "meta
packagers" list. But since we have already Debian GIS we might start
with the next step. RPM packages seems to be a good starting point
since my perception is that there are a lot of packagers around
which just have to be gathered at some focus point. 
It would be great though to add a section for Windows packages and
MacOS packages later on.

> 
> >> o Have a mailing list and "special interest group" for packaging
> >>   in general.  This would pull together people doing packaging in many
> >>   environments for discussions, and hopefully also pull in upstream
> >>   maintainers from some packages.  This is a bit like the "packagers
> >>   BOF" I held last summer.  
> >
> >Sorry, I think I missed this. What is BOF standing for?
> 
> BOF is "Birds Of a Feather" and generally refers to a side meeting of
> a special interest group at a conference.  I called a BOF for packagers
> at the OSGeo'05 meeting last summer and we had good discussions though
> nothing concrete came out of it.

Thanks for clarification :-)

> 
> OK, my proposal (and I'll shortly update the wiki page) is that we:
> 
>  o Form a meta-packaging mailing list.  This is a mailing list that folks
>    from all the geospatial packaging efforts *and* all upstream packages
>    interested in being properly packaged, are encouraged to join to
>    discuss packaging issues.
> 
>  o Form an RPM oriented special interest group with it's own mailing list
>    to share work on RPMs.  The initial focus of distributed binaries would
>    be Fedora Core but the intent is that eventually we would offer binaries
>    for a variety of RPM based systems.  This SIG would initially use
>    Intevation's GForge infrastructure since the foundation isn't really
>    ready to start any new formal projects.  But it is possible that in a
>    few months we would attempt to migrate as a full fledged OSGeo project
>    if we are successful.
> 
> Note that SIGs don't currently have any formal standing with the foundation,
> so they are lightweight for us to establish.  I will hopefully be able to
> wield my supreme executive power (ha!) to beg a mailing list on 
> mail.osgeo.org
> for each of the above.   

Otherwise I can try to wield *my* supreme power at Intevation to beg
a mailing list in wald.intevation.org ;-)

> We can also continue to colonize the osgeo 
> wikispace
> with information on our effort.
> 
>   http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Distribution_Special_Interest_Groups
> 
> Does this seem like a reasonable point of departure?

Yes, I think so. If we can decide how we want to name the project on
our GForge I can start create the project in short term. What's
about FreeGIS-packages or OSGEO-packages? This seems a bit long to
me but I don't have a better idea.

Furthermore we have to decide who should be project admin. It is
probably a good idea to have someone from Intevation (me) but I
don't want to do it alone. I propose to add Frank Warmerdam and
Schuyler Erle as well.

What do you think?

    Silke

BTW: I just finished a few RPM packages for FC5: postgis 1.1.1, gdal
1.3.1, grass 6.0.2, gdalgrass 1.3.1 and currently I am working on
qgis.

-- 
Silke Reimer   : www.intevation.de/~silke | GISpatcher: www.gispatcher.de
Intevation GmbH: www.intevation.de        | Thuban    : thuban.intevation.org
Georgstr.4     : 49074 Osnabrück          | FreeGIS   : www.freegis.org
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