[OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Origins Of OpenJUMP

[Richard Greenwood]

Landon,

Thanks for taking the time to provide the detailed background on on
the Jump family tree. Seems to me like the Java 'tribe' is a bit more
fractured than the C 'tribe'.

Rich


On Jan 4, 2008 8:43 AM, Landon Blake <lblake at ksninc.com> wrote:
> Rich,
>
> I'll respond to your questions in a separate thread. :] (I invite any
> other OSGeo members that work with OpenJUMP or UDig to correct mistakes
> or add details to my post.)
>
> JUMP was originally developed by Vivid Solutions with some assistance
> (I'm not sure how much) by Refractions Research. I believe the funding
> for the development for JUMP came from some source in the Canadian
> government. (This source was one of the Canadian Provinces, if I
> remember correctly.)
>
> At some point funding was awarded for "JUMP 2". This time the funds went
> to Refractions Research. Their development team had identified some of
> the design flaws in the original JUMP, and decided to fix these. In the
> end they decided to go with a completely new design, and UDig was the
> result.
>
> In the meantime Steve Tanner and some other JUMP users decided to fork
> the code base for JUMP. This was not done hastily. It's been a while
> since all this happened, and I'm not clear on every detail, but I
> believe one main reason we forked was a desire to internationalize
> JUMP's source code. The bottom line is that Vivid Solutions was (in my
> modest opinion) unresponsive to outside developers desire to make
> reasonable improvements or even contribute patches. At the same time
> they were doing very little with the code base themselves. This is what
> led to the fork. At one point we had a handful of different individual
> developers and organization maintaining their own versions of JUMP, and
> we realized we could all get together and benefit from a common core.
>
> This is still how OpenJUMP operates. We've got guys that maintain their
> own code bases with individual tools and modifications, but they all
> make a good effort to port the best (and least controversial) stuff back
> to the core. There really is no formal governance mechanism in place. We
> all get along well and try to help each other out.
>
> There are some issues with our model of development. We don't have a
> great release cycle, although that has been discussed in the last few
> months, and developer turnover can be fairly high. I'm also easily
> distracted, and I have to exercise self discipline to finish as task
> once I start it. I must regretfully admit this has not helped the
> project. (I'm consciously working on that personality flaw.)
>
> A couple of interesting things to note:
>
> - Our relationship with Vivid Solutions seems to have improved over the
> course of the last year. The two developers at the company that are "in
> charge" of JUMP occasionally help out with a problem on the OpenJUMP
> mailing list, and users of JUMP and OpenJUMP share a common mailing
> list. We've even talked about the possibility of merging JUMP and
> OpenJUMP back to a common core, but I think this is unlikely without
> some major funding at Vivid Solutions.
>
> - Had Steve and I known about Refractions Research involvement with
> "JUMP 2" OpenJUMP and UDig would probably be the same program. I look at
> this with deep regret, although I don't think it is anyone's fault in
> particular. Still, I think about what the JUMP user community could have
> accomplished with Refractions Research and I get little tears in my
> eyes. :]
>
> Still, I get a kick out of Jody Garnett, and I hope OpenJUMP and
> GeoTools/UDig can work together more in the future. We definitely have
> some different approaches to certain aspects of software design, but I
> think at a minimum we can share data I/O or data access code and map
> projection code.
>
> Landon
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Greenwood [mailto:richard.greenwood at gmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 7:32 PM
> To: Landon Blake
> Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
>
> On Jan 3, 2008 4:37 PM, Landon Blake <lblake at ksninc.com> wrote:
>
> > I think OpenJUMP might be an example of the opposite case. In this
> situation the less-than-ideal management of a FOSS GIS program by a
> private company led to a fork. The fork was made, not by another
> company, but by a group of individual users/developers.
>
> I'm interested in more details of the history and relationship between
> Jump, OpenJump, and uDig. I think OpenJump and uDig have roots in
> Jump, which was started by Martin Davis, or am I incorrect? And the
> fork came about when? And why?
>
> Maybe you would prefer to reply directly to the OSGeo-Discuss thread
> "FOSS4GIS business models", but I'm afraid my questions are tangential
> to that thread.
>
> Rich
>
> --
> Richard Greenwood
> richard.greenwood at gmail.com
> www.greenwoodmap.com
>
>
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-- 
Richard Greenwood
richard.greenwood at gmail.com
www.greenwoodmap.com