[OSGeo-Discuss] Supporting new projects

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Mon, Oct 01, 2007 at 03:08:12PM -0500, Bob Basques wrote:
> Chris,
> 
> Ahh crap, I knew this was going to happen, the questions I mean.  :c)  I 
> can continue with the detail offline if you like too . . .

My statements, though made about your specific case, were really more of
a general statement about any project seeking to enter into a space with
a large following for another open source project. I feel that the
incubation process should, as part of its process, seek to ensure that a
project is sustainable long term -- and one of the most important
questions in that is "Can the community behind this project sustain it?"

In the case where a project has a small, but loyal, following, that may
be true even when a larger player in the field is taking up the majority
of the mindshare. 

It can also be true where a project has a different approach to a
problem -- FDO and OGR seem (from the outside) to be solving many of the
same data access issues. However, after learning a bit about the FDO
model, I can see that it has a significantly different approach than
OGR. Clearly FDO has a significant user-base through its use in
Autodesk's products, so I understand why having both would be beneficial
to the community. 

It's about viability. It can come in many sources -- a large, mostly
silent community is not always better than a small, vibrant community.
Evaluating community viability is hard -- but I think it's the purpose
of the entire OSGeo incubation process, and being able to ask the hard
questions of a project before it enters incubation seems like a good way
to head off at the pass too many attmepts to reimplement the same
things.

No clue how that applies here -- just rambling, as usual :) But did want
to toss in my $0.04 (That's $0.02 CDN these days.)

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Web Developer