[Incubator] Oskari Incubation status

Thu Jul 5 10:02:21 PDT 2018

Arnulf, to answer your question at the bottom, yes I read to the bottom, 
and really appreciate your detailed assessment.

Based on Arnulf's assessment, it sounds like Sskari probably has a good 
codebase, with good work from within one organisation, but is yet to 
attract engaged external developers. This is a great milestone, and 
worth acknowledging. But the "unicorn" projects that we look for in 
OSGeo incubation are those with a healthy community from multiple 
organisations.

The "extent of collaboration" criteria provides validation of the 
quality of the project, and is a very good indicator of long term 
sustainability.

To the Oskari folks, you might want to read this presentation I gave a 
while back on business justifications for backing collaboration:
http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2017/11/open-source-pitch-for-your-boss.html

Without digging into the details any further, I suspect Oskari would 
need to work on attracting co-contributors, from multiple organisations, 
and we would likely see evidence of this happening by seeing archive 
logs of collaborative email lists, or slack or IRC or similar.

Warm regards, Cameron

On 6/7/18 2:11 am, Arnulf Christl (Metaspatial) wrote:
>
> Hi Folks,
>
> this is an update on the Incubation process of Oskari.
>
> https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Oskari_Incubation_Status
>
> As mentor I am still somewhat hesitant to recommend Oskari for OSGeo 
> Incubation because I cannot find a good indicator supporting that 
> there is an open community and communication. Personally I know some 
> of the current core team and totally trust them to work in the Open 
> Source way of doing things. But this may not be quite apparent to 
> anybody not into the project.
>
> Oskari is doing a good job posting news and updates to the OSGeo user 
> list (https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/oskari-user/) but the list is 
> not really used by users for any kind of discussion, help or future 
> development. It feels more like a low volume announce list (which is 
> totally OK, so please keep it up).
>
> How and where is the development being discussed? Who can join the 
> Oskari Slack channel - or whatever else is used to have technical and 
> strategic discussions? Are there archives of discussions and 
> decisions? Do you manage to do this in English or is it still 
> everything communicated in Finnish?
>
> In a PSC presentation from December 2016 one bullet-point says that 
> Oskari may become a project on OSGeo live: 
> https://oskariorg.github.io/files/20161220-Oskari_OSGEO_PSC.pdf.
> <https://oskariorg.github.io/files/20161220-Oskari_OSGEO_PSC.pdf>
>
> Actually, Incubation is not a requirement, so please feel free to 
> approach the OSGeo Live team to find out more.
>
> In the Roadmap document (which in my opinion is actually ery good) at: 
> https://github.com/oskariorg/oskari-docs/wiki/Roadmap-process you say 
> that:
>
> /"After communicating with Oskari community the roadmap items enter 
> Active stage [...]". /
>
> Can you give us an example of where and how this has happened?
>
> There are some updates on GitHub issues but it appears to be mostly 
> internal team members (which is totally OK, is this where the 
> collaborative aspect of the future development takes place?
>
> https://github.com/oskariorg/oskari-docs/labels/roadmap
>
> Regarding Code Copyright Review you state that:
>
> /All code has been developed by the registered developers listed on 
> github who have signed the CLA. All external libraries have project 
> compatible licenses. The project has been started as a regular Open 
> Source project following the guidelines as set out by OSGeo. A 
> file-per-file code review was therefore deemed superfluous. /
>
> As mentor I can confirm that this is correct and satisfies OSGeo's 
> requirements (and yes, I did some quick checks on random code files 
> but due to the well organized origin of the project did not go through 
> all code like we had to in the GRASS project... :-).
>
> In the last PSC meeting in December 2017 a decision was taken to 
> schedule the next meeting "as needed".
>
>
>     /Meetings/activity/
>
> //
>
>   * /[...]/
>   * /future meetings schedule: continue with “as needed” (no need for
>     a fixed schedule)/
>
> Summarizing the current status: We discussed some of the above topics 
> before and it is not a requirement for OSGeo Incubation to have active 
> mailing lists and so on. But it is a requirement to have an open 
> process and ideally also a somewhat growing user community. Obviously 
> due its character as a complex portal platform Oskari is not a 
> software that will have millions of downloads but a little broader 
> adoption would be nice to see.
>
> You also say:
>
>   * /Slack/Mailinglist can be used more actively to discuss any
>     issues/voting/
>
> //
>
> If you are not using the Slack channel (which unfortunately is not 
> open), where is the communication taking place?
>
> The PSC meeting notes from December 2017 has a list of current 
> installations / users / contributions. This is good to see. Has there 
> been any additions, changes over the past half year?
>
>
> Even if you can not produce evidence for any or all of the above 
> issues I will be happy to recommend Oskari for Incubation if you 
> believe that this will help the project. Then it will be up to the 
> Incubation committee to decide whether we can recommend graduation to 
> the OSGeo Board of Directors.
>
> We will have to expect some discussion on the Incubation list on the 
> above topics and this is not bad but a sign of a healthy process.
>
>
>       Internal note to the Incubation committee
>
> IF you ever made it down to this line and maybe even checked some of 
> the referenced documents, please be so kind as to acknowledge this on 
> the mailing list so that we can help Oskari move on.
>
> It may also be a good idea to go back to the Incubation process and 
> check whether it should be revised for certain aspects (especially 
> requirement on mailing lists / alternatives like Slack).
>
>
> Anything else you need, let me know.
>
>
> Thank you,
>
> Arnulf
>
>
>
> Am 2018-06-25 um 17:05 schrieb Aarnio Timo (MML):
>>
>> Hi Incubator-list!
>>
>> We’d like to inquire about the incubation status of Oskari. What are 
>> the next steps should be in the incubation process? In our end we’ve 
>> done everything we’ve realized that we have to do. But is there 
>> something still wanted from us? Or is the process in the OSGeo end 
>> now? If so, what are the steps there and is there possibly any 
>> estimate when we can think about graduating?
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> Timo Aarnio
>>
>>
>>
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>
> -- 
> Spatially enabling your business
> http://metaspatial.net
>
>
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
Technology Demystifier
Open Technologies and Geospatial Consultant

M +61 (0) 419 142 254

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