[fdo-internals] FDO Incubation update

[Daniel Morissette]

Hi Everyone,

With a bit of pressure from Greg, I finally took some time to review the 
FDO incubation documents. Here are a few notes to discuss here before I 
send an update to the Incubation Committee and we can finally talk about 
getting FDO out of incubation.

1- The FDO Incubation Status page is at the following URL and seems to 
be up to date:
   http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/FDO_Incubation_Status

2- FDO as established a PSC which has been operating smoothly since the 
fall using the following PSC guidelines:
    http://fdo.osgeo.org/psc.html

3- More developer/contributor info is available here:
    http://fdo.osgeo.org/developer.html

4- FDO has a contributor agreement but it has not been signed by all 
contributors yet (not sure if that is a blocker for graduation or not)

5- The Source code provenance review is at:
    http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/FDO_Provenance_Review

    I did several spot checks and everything seems fine.
    I only have a few questions about test datasets:

    5a- Providers/GDAL/TestData/pci_eg ... should there be a README.TXT
        explaining provenance and license/redistribution terms?

    5b- Other data dirs have a README e.g. Providers/SHP/TestData/Florida
        but it only specifies the source and doesn't mention what the
        license/redistribution terms are.

6- I reviewed the (unofficial) Incubation Graduation Checklist at:
    http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Project_Graduation_Checklist

    What we may be missing from this list:
    - All contributors need to agree to project's license policy
      (sign contributor agreements)
    - Is there an automated build or smoke test system? That should not
      be a blocker in my opinion, but http://buildbot.osgeo.org/ lists
      FDO as offline, what does that mean?
    - Is there a defined release process? Something along the lines
      of MapServer's RFC-34:
       http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/development/rfc/ms-rfc-34/


Overall I think we're in good shape to graduate if we can address or 
find answers for the questions listed above... once we have those 
answers I'll prepare an updated status report for the Incubation 
Committee to get their feedback.

The big blocker last fall was that a few members of the incubation 
committee didn't feel that the PSC had operated openly and smoothly for 
long enough. The main issues were very little interaction on the lists, 
which has improved, and no regular PSC/dev meetings, which may still be 
the case, but I'm not sure if I'd consider that a blocker myself since 
not all projects do that. I'll wait to have an update for the committee 
before raising that question again with them.

Daniel
-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/