[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo barriers to entry

[Andrea Aime]

Frank Warmerdam ha scritto:
> Certainly all of the above tend to apply to many people contributing
> to OSGeo projects.  Certainly the bulk of my work on GDAL, and MapServer
> is client funded.  I know that most of the contributors to GDAL and
> MapServer have at least some of their time funded.  Likewise many of
> the other projects though my knowledge gets thinner on some of them.
> 
> I think one challenge is to get people who have funded time to work on
> specific features into broader involvement with the projects and
> OSGeo in general.

I believe the idea that OSGEO projects contributor tend to be paid
to work on the project itself is the result the very selection
criteria to become an OSGEO project:
- mature project
- established user base
- a formal governance model

This tells me the project has lots of contributors, lots of people
that have a stake on it, a big enough user base that the possibility
of funding is no more a pipe dream but a solid reality.
Such a project by its very nature will tend to attract more people
that can find funding to work on the project itself.

Also, being estabilshed, it will have some barriers to entry in terms
of the code base size and complexity itself, and QA processes that
will make it harder to just look at the project for a weekend, cook up
something, give it back and disappear.

I guess one of the challenges for projects in OSGEO is exactly that:
how do we create easy contribution opportunities that can be tackled
with limited effort by people interested in contributing a weekend
and/or just get a little involved in the community?

Cheers
Andrea

-- 
Andrea Aime
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
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