[OSGeo-Discuss] New Project.

[Tyler Mitchell]

On 28-Feb-07, at 11:06 AM, Bob Basques wrote:

>
> I'm wondering about finding a new home for a Mapping Client Project.
> What requirements are there for proposing a new project under the  
> OSGEO
> Umbrella?
>
> I can set up a Physical home for it, but was wondering more about  
> having
> OSGEO handling the Project Ownership in some form.  Or is it better to
> set up the project standalone and just point to it.  This is an option
> as well.  I'm just trying to gage interest from the OSGEO perspective
> about these sorts of things.

Hi Bob,
I meant to comment earlier...
The answers somewhat depend on what you hope to have at the end of it  
all.  Do you aim/hope for your project to become and official OSGeo  
project?  If so (and I think you do) then you are looking at the  
incubation process (http://www.osgeo.org/incubator).  In that case  
your project needs to be obviously active and you need some good  
answers for the questionnaire:
http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/application.html.  They are  
not currently allowing new projects into incubation - i.e. projects  
that are just starting.  What they are after are projects that have a  
diversity of users and developers - keys for future success.  I  
assume you have more work to do to get the word out on your project  
in general so that it can find some legs outside of the City's  
domain.  Getting your wiki up should help.

The idea of not wanting to have too much overlap between projects  
comes up regularly in discussions I have with people, however this  
philosophy was not used in selecting the first batch of projects, nor  
has it been a key way of choosing new projects that have recently  
been let in to incubation.  The focus has been on what strengths  
projects bring to the table ad past success - not so much about  
covering a specific portion of some grand vision for an OSGeo stack  
of software.  As others have mentioned, there have been some great  
opportunities to collaborate on projects and consolidate some code  
because of functional overlaps between projects.

In short, just because your project does something about web mapping  
doesn't necessarily reduce its chances for incubation.  But being a  
new a project certainly does.  The incubator committee can correct me  
but I haven't seen an official statement from them on the 'overlap'  
issue, so I assume it is dealt with on a case-by-case basis.  For me,  
I still promote the diversity of web clients/frameworks as a strength  
for OSGeo.  Lots of choice but also a bright future when projects  
start to collaborate.

Best wishes,
Tyler