[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo barriers to entry

[Helena Mitasova]

On Nov 17, 2009, at 4:51 AM, Andrea Aime wrote:

> 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?

GRASS add-ons with limited SVN access seem to work well in this  
regard - we
got a lot of good contributions and it is a good place for students
to submit their work as well. The most useful add-ons eventually make it
into the main GRASS code,

Helena

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