[geos-devel] GEOS Maintenance Grant

[Jeff McKenna]

Dear GEOS PSC,

Great to hear about a grant to help the project along.

My feedback is to make sure that the funds are spread around, not just 
to one developer, but also to the (even more critical) parts of software 
projects that never receive funding, yet are so important to end-users: 
documentation, testing, and packaging.

I know it is 2022, and we have so many corporate influences in FOSS4G 
that it's hard to see through the activity/smoke, but, we should always 
try to make sure that the funds are spread around to as many parts of 
the project as possible.  For example, 50k USD could be shared by the 
GEOS PSC as:

   - 25k development
   - 10k documentation
   - 10k packaging
   -  5k testing and releases

That is a fair plan for actual project "maintenance". QGIS.ORG (the 
registered entity behind QGIS) & the QGIS PSC does an excellent job at 
spreading the funding around to all parts of the project, which creates 
a "product" feeling to QGIS (a well-rounded result).

My rule of thumb, is that for every 1 hour of development in a software 
project spent, it should take approximately 8 hours of further testing, 
documentation, and packaging by others, if done properly. (instead of 
one funded developer doing an hour of development, and squeezing in a 
few minutes of docs often by the same developer).

I hope my feedback can be received well by the GEOS PSC, and they could 
keep this feedback in mind the next time funding comes along.

Thanks, sent from the east coast of Canada,

-jeff




-- 
Jeff McKenna
GatewayGeo: Developers of MS4W, MapServer Consulting and Training
co-founder of FOSS4G
http://gatewaygeo.com/



On 2022-02-15 11:37 a.m., Howard Butler wrote:
> GDAL PSC,
> 
> When we wrote the GDAL RFCs on sponsorship, we provided an escape clause to allow us to direct resources to other projects upon which GDAL depends. Our sponsorship numbers are still increasing, which provides us an opportunity to directly support some of those projects, and one of them is obviously GEOS. GEOS provides all of the geometry algebra support for GDAL/OGR and many other open source geospatial softwares including Shapely, PostGIS, GeoPandas, MapServer, and more.
> 
> Dan Baston of the GEOS PSC has been identified as the developer with capacity and interest in the next year to take on GEOS development on APIs and performance, which he has a long history of doing for the project. This support should allow him to work longer, multi-release upgrades that will provide strong performance and convenience benefits for the project.
> 
> I motion to provide the GEOS PSC with a $50,000 USD grant to address performance, API, and other work that does not attract directed funding in GEOS. The GEOS PSC will be responsible for coordinating work tasks, rates, and development timelines. Howard Butler or Even Rouault of the GDAL NumFocus liaison team will coordinate dispersement as directed by the GEOS PSC and NumFocus rules.
> 
> Thank you again to the GDAL Sponsors https://gdal.org/sponsors/index.html who have made this kind of grant possible. A better GEOS makes for a better GDAL.
> 
> Howard
>