Proposal for an Infrastructure Working Group

[Jo Walsh]

dear Board,

I'd like to voice the creation of a Working Group within OSGeo to come
up with recommendations and plans for the software/support
infrastructure that the Foundation is providing to the community.

During the IncCom IRC meeting yesterday, there was a burst of
discussion about OSGeo's provision of software infrastructure, and how
it is working out in terms of the needs of the OSGeo community.
( http://logs.qgis.org/osgeo/%23osgeo.2006-03-27.log from about 11:02 )
While this originated in a discussion about code management and
version control systems, it quickly spilled out into a broader
discussion about the tools that OSGeo could be providing.

The idea of starting a Committee activity focused on software 
infrastructure was raised by Schuyler Erle; Frank suggested
that it would be better carried out as a Working Group. This makes a
lot of sense to me, because interest in this issue crosses the
responsibilities of at least two of the Committees:

- IncCom's discussion could gain clarity if separated out from the
  question of the support contract OSGeo holds with CollabNet. 

- WebCom broadly has software infrastructure within its remit, but 
  doesn't cover code and data repository issues. 

A Working Group could provide a way for people to focus and document
their suggestions for improvements to the current infrastructure and
what services the OSGeo community would like to see being offered
in the future. 

I started a sketch of a project page for this working group:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Infrastructure_Working_Group

Frank's description in the recent thread on governance structure says
that Working Groups can call on WebCom for the creation of mailing
lists, etc if they don't fit clearly in the existing infrastructure.

I hope that this makes sense, and that this proposal can be socialised 
at the next WebCom meeting.

warm regards,


jo