[Oskari-user] Interview about background and development of Oskari

Mon Jun 25 07:58:26 PDT 2018

Hi Erik!

No worries, we're still here :)

Answers to the questions below:

* Can you briefly explain what is Oskari about and for whom it is?

Oskari is an open source web map application platform. It can be used to set up services that benefit from / require a map component. Oskari is designed to be used as a part of a spatial data infrastructure so that the data is not stored in the Oskari instance but rather fetched from different APIs on-the-fly.

 * What was the initial idea behind creating Oskari and not using another existent software?

The idea for Oskari came about when a new geoportal was being planned for Finland. The commercial solutions did not offer enough functionalities to fulfil the needs of National Land Survey of Finland so they decided to build a new software utilizing existing open source solutions as much as possible. There was also a desire to try new development methods (agile) and Scrum was chosen.

 * In your demo-version, you offer a lot of thematic maps and visualized data.
Are these all based on Open Data or where do you get all the data from?

The statistical data available currently (June 25th 2018) in demo.oskari.org is open data from Statistics Finland (http://www.stat.fi/tup/index_en.html - see: Regional data and open data). The data is utilized via an API. Like mentioned before in typical cases no data is hosted in the Oskari instance itself.

 * Who are the people or the organisation behind Oskari and who is mainly financing it?

The organizations behind Oskari include but are not limited to:
National Land Survey Of Finland
Finnish Transport Agency
The City of Tampere
The Finnish Heritage Agency
Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority HSY
Sitowise Ltd

Most of the financing has so far come from public authorities.

 * With our campaign "Public Money? Public Code!" we demand that publicly funded software should be available to the public under a Free and Open Source Software license. Is Oskari an exception in that it is published as Free Software or is this rather the usual case in Finland?

I'd say it's quite usual in Finland to publish something as free software, but I don't have any data to back up that claim.

 * Have there been any concerns about publishing it as Free Software?

Not that I know of.

 * What do you think is the major benefit of Oskari being Free Software?

The potential for re-use and further development, increased transparency and code quality to name a few.

 * You got the Second prize in the the cross-border category of the share&reuse award 2017 [2]. Why was Oskari chosen?

All the participants in the contest were screened against the eligibility criteria.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/joinup/eligibility-criteria

Additionally there were four categories depending on how large the potential for re-use is for each solution.

 * Do you know who is currently (re-)using Oskari or who are the active members of the community? Is it composed of individuals or organisations?

It is composed of organizations. The ones mentioned above are the currently most active ones plus at least:
National Land Survey of Iceland
National Land Survey of Moldova
Statistics Finland

 * Is it possible for people outside, who are interested in the project, to contribute and, if so, how?

The contribution guidelines can be found from: http://oskari.org/documentation/development/how-to-contribute

 * Is there something you would do differently today with regard to Oskari's process to become Free Software?

I have to say I was not involved with Oskari until it was already open sourced and made into free software so I wouldn't know.

* Which recommendations would you give to comparable projects who would like to follow your example?

Go open today, there's no excuse not to (well maybe apart from hardcoded credentials). Give the needed support to early adopters and users when documentation is not sufficient. Try and maintain a healthy ratio of developing new features and maintaining old code. If you aim to develop collaboratively (or accept outside contributions al all) use a well-defined process for that.

If you need clarifications or more information on any question please do ask, we'll be happy to answer!

Kind regards,
Timo

-----Original Message-----
From: Erik Albers [mailto:eal at fsfe.org] 
Sent: 20. kesäkuuta 2018 18:38
To: Aarnio Timo (MML) <timo.aarnio at maanmittauslaitos.fi>; Arnulf Christl (aka Seven) <seven at arnulf.us>; Oskari-user at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Oskari-user] Interview about background and development of Oskari

Hi all,

I am really sorry for the delay with the interview. I hope that you are still available and my request receives you well. As you asked before, I included the list into the interview-questions.

To remind you:
With our Public Money? Public Code! campaign, the FSFE demands that publicly financed software developed for the public sector shall be made publicly available under a Free and Open Source Software licence. In order to help understand our call and its benefits, we run a series of interviews that highlight good examples and use-cases as best practices. Our interview partners will be policy makers and decision takers, authorities and developers, that in one way or another are already implementing public code.

for our campaign, see: http://publiccode.eu/

for a first interview, see here: https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180601-01

I found Oskari because it was 2nd prize winner in the Cross border category at the Share&Reuse Conference. After checking a while your homepage, I came to the conclusion that Oskari could be very interesting to highlight as a positive example of publicly financed software.

And now we go with the interview.  I propose the following method: below, you will find a list of questions that we would like to ask you. You do not have to give a detailed answer to each question. Well on the one hand, in general, the more concise, the better : ) But also, as this is a written interview and it gives us less opportunities to have a dialog, we will have a final edit afterwards and maybe merge some questions into one. Maybe we will also re-ask you about one or two details. You will finally, of course, be asked to approve it again. Ah, and please keep to the point as much as possible : )

I hope you are fine with this method and please find our questions hereafter:

 * Can you briefly explain what is Oskari about and for whom it is?