[Board] Resurrecting the Eclipse discussion

[Andrew Ross]

Hi Everyone,

These are some relevant thoughts more than a direct reply to Jody's 
post. Hopefully they help the discussion along.

Working together, we see good potential for triggering growth, 
innovation, and increased mind-share for open source location 
technology. Nurturing existing technology is important. We also want to 
invest in new & innovative areas not currently addressed. There are 
things we can do to help enable organizations to invest. This is what 
this is about.

Projects:

Simply put, some projects (hosted @ OSGeo or otherwise) will look at the 
relative increase in process & formality or something else and decide it 
just isn't for them.

Other projects will be attracted to the opportunity to gain additional 
mind-share and energy via. the group @ Eclipse. Eclipse is ubiquitous 
and well trusted in places likely to be desirable to projects and 
community. This includes organizations, and also technology areas like 
enterprise IT, Aerospace, Automotive, Financial, etc.

Some projects may decide to be involved in both foundations if they see 
a way to so with little downside. Some projects may decide for neither. 
Some may feel one way today, and re-evaluate in the future.


Events:

Collaborating on events seems like a good idea.

Things work similarly for events between OSGeo & Eclipse. It's probably 
fair to say there's less risk and maybe a bit more consistency @ Eclipse 
given the dedicated full time staff handling the logistics and fund 
raising. Also, we tend to host the main annual conferences in the same 
location for a few years at a time which also helps with risk.

Here's how a typical EclipseCon/ EclipseCon Europe is run:
The program committee is made up of community members/committers and 
invited industry experts.
The logistics such as A/V, Catering, Security, etc. are handled by a 
full-time event planning team.
The business team handle sponsorship, accounting, etc.

In general, for what it's worth, working together doesn't need to be 
divisive. Thank you to the team directly involved, the people discussing 
the topic here, and especially Michael for going to great lengths trying 
to ensure it isn't.

Directly addressing a few things:

Q: Will Eclipse become a platinum (or any other level) sponsor of OSGeo.
A: I can't really say. The Steering Committee of the group will 
prioritize their budget based on their goals & how such a proposal would 
contribute towards achieving them.

Q: Will Eclipse work *through* OSGeo.
A: We would like to find a way to work *together* on initiatives of 
mutual interest.

In case you're interested, more FAQ information is posted here:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Location/FAQ

Andrew

On 06/19/2012 03:55 AM, Jody Garnett wrote:
>> I think that OSGeo should say:
>>
>> * OSGeo wants to continue to be the recognised foundation that 
>> Geospatial Open Source projects turn to for support. In particular, 
>> we don't want to see the marketplace split by choosing between one 
>> foundation and another. Such a slit is likely to create a lot of bad 
>> will amongst the greater community, and lead to reduced productivity 
>> which will not be good for anyone.
> I don't think we have much danger of that - a choice is not required. 
> Projects already work with multiple groups (examples github for 
> hosting; OSGeo for community development; source forge for file 
> distribution; free software foundation for legal advice and so on ...).
>> * As such we wish to see the Eclipse Foundation worth through the 
>> OSGeo Foundation.
>>
>> If we can get the Eclipse Foundation to agree to the above, then I 
>> think we can continue moving forward with a positive discussion.
> Counter proposal here. We have already have a precedent of working 
> with the OGC on a few activities (an interoperability day, a white 
> paper and so on, and we maintain a osge-standards email list to 
> facilitate discussion).
>
> Perhaps we can treat this location working group in a similar fashion, 
> consider it as an "OSGeo industry outreach" activity and ask that 
> OSGeo maintain a representative in the group.
>
> Aside: With respect to OGC collaboration, what is the process the OGC 
> uses to define their open source reference implementations? Along with 
> cite tests this seems like like an obvious candidate for direct 
> collaboration.
>
> Jody
>
>
>
>
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-- 
*Andrew Ross*
Director, Ecosystems
Eclipse Foundation <http://eclipse.org>
Twitter: @42aross <http://twitter.com/42aross>
Mobile: 1-613-614-5772
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