[GRASS-dev] GRASS-TNG

Radek Bartoň xbarto33 at stud.fit.vutbr.cz
Thu Feb 22 16:03:46 EST 2007


On Thursday 22 of February 2007 21:23:18 Michael Barton wrote:

> I know I promised not to add more to this general discussion, but there
> seems to be some potentially serious misunderstanding here.
>
> I'm speaking for myself, but am copying the GRASS Project Steering
> Committee, because most comments from PSC members I've seen seem to agree.
>
> If you sincerely want to contribute to making GRASS better, including
> research into new code structures, this should be done within the existing
> GRASS cvs, subversion server, and/or WIKI. In that way, your contribution
> becomes transparent to the GRASS developer and user community, and ALL
> developers with an interest in your work would have the opportunity see
> your code and collaborate. From all the comments I've seen, such
> collaborative work is welcomed.

I'd like to be my work part of GRASS code as alternative to current core libraries for module implementation. Unfortunatelly a way I want to approach to it's specification and modelling needs some more advanced project management environment than just wiki and mailing list. Such an integrated advanced environment is Trac http://trac.edgewall.org/ which I'm using. You may consider this as another invention from my side even it may seem that I criticise a way you are working on GRASS, it is NOT. I don't tell you that you may use different tools for project management. I just tell, that for this kind of project and for this stage of its development is more confortable and transparent to use separate wiki and other tools. When all ideas included there gets some compat shape it can be tranfered to GRASS wiki. Futhermore when there will be some code it is no problem to mirror my repository to GRASS one or vice versa.

> However, if you want to see if you can create a NEW GIS and do NOT want to
> work in the GRASS project environment, then your project should not use the
> name GRASS. Beyond any murky copyright and other legal issues, this is a
> courtesy to both the GRASS development team and users. There is no reason
> for you to use GRASS in the name of a piece of software that has no
> connection with the GRASS project--beyond telling us that you are doing it
> and inviting GRASS developers to help you. This does not prevent you from
> contributing code to the *real* GRASS project at any time in the
> future...and I would hope that you decide to do so.
>
> I continue to assume that you have the best of intentions to create an
> applied thesis project that could potentially make a valuable contribution
> to open source GIS software. However, on the face of it, it *appears* like
> you are trying to hijack the GRASS name and 20+ year reputation--and some
> GRASS developers if you can--to capture an existing user base and give
> cachet to your startup project that has nothing to do with the GRASS
> project. At the same time you offer nothing back to the *real* GRASS
> project, suggesting that it simply be abandoned in favor of what you you
> are planning because "it is too old fashioned to keep it in development in
> the current programming style". Such an endeavor flies in the face of the
> ethics of the broader open source community. If my assumption about your
> actual intentions are correct, you will not want to appear to be working in
> this way and I would urge you to rethink how you are approaching this.
>

Naming a project is a smallest thing about this discussion. I don't realize that using this TNGed name is such a big deal since there are a lot of -tng, Ya (Yet Another), "is not" and other names in open source. I'm sorry for that. Whould be calling it GAL (GIS Abstraction Layer) with possibility to rename it to (GRASS Abstraction Layer) when joined to GRASS repository acceptable to everone?

-- 
Bc. Radek Bartoň

Faculty of Information Technology
Brno University of Technology

E-mail: xbarto33 at stud.fit.vutbr.cz
Web: http://blackhex.no-ip.org
Jabber: blackhex at jabber.cz
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