[Mapserver-dev] MapServer CVS access and long term support

[Arnulf Christl]

Frank Warmerdam wrote:

> Daniel Morissette wrote:
>
>> What do you think? Is this asking too much from developers before 
>> they are allowed to contribute? I think we should have a page 
>> somewhere that explains what the rules are for contributing to the 
>> software and this would be one of them.
>
>
> Daniel,
>
> My take is that we shouldn't expect to big a commitment from contributors
> or we just drive people away.  Someone wanting to make changes should be
> expected to help work out the short term problems.  But if they can't
> be there to support their addition in the long term then that's just 
> life.
>
> If the addition is valuable enough, others will pick up maintenance.  
> If it
> isn't "loved" enough by another developer or someone who can fund 
> development
> then it will rot, and we may have to strip it out eventually.  I do 
> agree we
> can't leave non-functional or mostly broken features in the software 
> for a
> long time as it will give MapServer a bad name, though marking some 
> features
> as experimental or known-to-have-problems in the documentation would 
> be helpful.
>
> Best regards,

Hi,
evolution will take care of development - at least thats the idea. But I 
believe that some of the non-fun stuff will eventually also have to be 
done and that is where I see the responsibility of the companies 
committed to MapServer come into focus (all up front currently that is 
DM Solutions who are already doing a real good job).
I know that especially Frank prefers the single contractor model :-) but 
maybe companies can pay back or back up some of the efforts that already 
went into development.

As a first step in that direction we are trying to glue together some 
resources over here (see last email from Peter / MapMedia) to either 
back up development from voluntary contributors with "our" developers or 
simply provide the necessary funding. It is a maturing process that most 
larger OS software developments have to go through and imho MapServer 
definitely is a larger OS development.

Best regards, Arnulf.