Distribution Special Interest Groups

[Schuyler Erle]

Frankie Lovergine raised a very good point on IRC and on the
Foundation wiki, namely that of OS distribution related special
interest groups within the foundation. He started a wiki page here
documenting the existing Debian groups, to which I've added a list of
Fedora RPM repositories:

http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Distribution_Special_Interest_Groups

Unlike the Debian-related groups, the Fedora-related repositories lack
existing community infrastructure. I personally would really
appreciate a mailing list, an SVN archive, and maybe some web space
for apt/yum repos, so that OSGeo RPM package maintainers like Silke
Reimer and myself have a place to collaborate publically. Even just a
mailing list would be a good start.

Is there any interest in this within the community? I get lots of
email about my Fedora archive on mappinghacks.com but the time I have
to maintain it is intermittent at best, and I'd at least like to put
my work in a more public place where (I fantasize that) others can
more easily contribute.

Is there, or can we establish a procedure for, starting a mailing list
for a new (perhaps initially unofficial) special interest group within
the foundation?

Also, I know there are other distributions and operating systems that
would benefit from this kind of infrastructure. Please edit the wiki
page and make yourself known if you've been laboring along on
packaging and distributing OSGeo software in pain and obscurity!

SDE