[GRASS-user] GRASS incubation (was: FOSS4G2006: GRASS presence at OSGeo booth)

[Arnulf Christl]

Markus Neteler wrote:
> Hi GRASS community,
> 
> for those attending the Lausanne conference: there will be an 
> OSGeo booth. It would be cool to have GRASS represented as
> well. Feel free to add yourself here:
> 
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/OSGeo_at_FOSS4G2006#Staff_Plan
> (several people are fine of course).
> 
> It could be an opportunity to show there your nice apps on your
> laptop.
> 
> Best,
> Markus

Hi,
I want to take this chance to introduce myself unobtrusively in the wake 
of Markus' mail. My name is Arnulf Christl and I have volunteered and 
was appointed by the OSGeo board to be mentor for the GRASS incubation 
process (Markus plusoned me as mentor and my hope is that this gives me 
some rear cover).

I am completely ignorant of any GRASS code internals and have never much 
worked with it but am a fascinated supporter and know fairly much about 
its history. Therefore I proposed to split the mentor job and now there 
is 0.5 GRASS mentor to me. The better half of your mentor is Norman Vine 
who volunteered for the other 0.5. As a team my hope is that together we 
can be helpful to the GRASS incubation process.

My (debatable) value to the GRASS community might be my experience in 
leading the project Mapbender (a comparably tiny web environment) 
through the OSGeo incubation and graduation processes. As Mapbender was 
the first to graduate we also took part in shaping them and we learned a 
lot. If you have any questions regarding these processes, governance 
issues and OSGeo internals I am happy to help out. Mind me, I am not 
going to *tell you* to do anything as the mentor job is not entitled to 
do that and I know that you wouldn't listen anyway. But possibly I can 
suggest and collaborate on some issues. Both incubation and graduation 
are in a constant state of flux (to cite nhv) so there is a good chance 
that during the incubation of GRASS we come up with new requirements or 
need to amend existing ones.

Reading through your stack of PSC formation mails gave me an impression 
of how things are run and auto run in the GRASS community. I am very 
aware of the long history of GRASS and that we are going to experience 
some extra trouble when reviewing the code if only because of the sheer 
amount.

I would very much like to meet with some GRASS stakeholders (developers 
and organizers who later might make up part of the PSC) at the FOSS4G 
conference to discuss details and learn more about open issues. I will 
be available at the OSGeo booth most of the time. This is the only kind 
of thankless job that I am good at, so don't even bother asking me any 
internals of GRASS functionality. To that avail - answering GRASS 
internals - it would be great if some of you could volunteer (isn't that 
a great word) at the booth. If you feel like showing off some GRASS 
goodies at the booth feel free to be there.

If anybody plans to attend the EuroOSCON in Brussels, thats the next 
chance to show off GRASS at an OSGeo booth.
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/OSGeo_at_EuroOSCON_2006
Contact me directly if you are interested.

Best regards,
Arnulf.