[OSGeo-Discuss] Supporting new projects

[Howard Butler]

On Sep 30, 2007, at 4:10 PM, Paul Spencer wrote:

> What do others think about this?  Should OSGeo be in the business  
> of helping new OSGeo projects get off the ground?

I don't think OSGeo should generally be in the business of getting  
new projects off the ground.  I think a project should establish  
*itself* as a viable development entity before entertaining a  
relationship with OSGeo.

OSGeo promoting startup project "Foo" has the effect of giving it  
equal weight to all of the other projects within OSGeo.  In my  
opinion, this has the effect of weakening OSGeo's promotional  
authority and providing an unnatural advantage to the Foo project.   
Growth that is too fast for a project can be just as detrimental as  
growth that is too slow.  A project jumping into OSGeo and having it  
provide "umph" for the project disrupts the organic growth that I  
think is necessary for a project to become viable and successful.  A  
project must find its niche on its own and garner development and  
developer traction because it fills a need, not because OSGeo says  
"you should use this great new thing because ...".

OSGeo's provides infrastructure to its member projects as an  
enticement to join.  There are many options for a project's  
infrastructure, with everything from sourceforge to google code to  
standing up your own.  OSGeo's infrastructure approach stands out  
because a project can collectively leverage other project's  
infrastructure while still having the flexibility to do pretty much  
whatever you want (given time/resources/volunteers).  OSGeo's  
infrastructure is not a push-button operation though, and I don't  
think it would be as successful if it were (dealing with Google code  
or sourceforge is going to be much simpler than trying to deal with  
us, frankly).

I think a project needs to read Fogel (http://producingoss.com/),  
find its niche, grow a community around the development of the  
software, and then look to OSGeo for promotional, infrastructure,  
legal, and other support.

Howard