[GRASS-user] GRASS OSGEO Steering Committee

[Sampson, David]

This message has been cross posted to reach as many possible GRASS users
and developers as possible. I Apologize for any inconvenience.

There was some movement on this subject a while back ago. To bring
yourself up to speed check out the following including past letters to
the GRASS community and some initial nominations

http://grass.gdf-hannover.de/wiki/GRASS_Project_Steering_Commitee#2nd_Le
tter_to_GRASS_mailing_lists

As first introduced.........

"in the Chicago meeting the GRASS project was suggested to
as one of the initial OSGeo foundation projects.

So far I only received positive feedback on the idea of
moving GRASS more formally to the foundation (while the
individual authors are keeping their copyright which is
a major difference to the Apache Foundation.)

A couple of things will have to be sorted out in the
coming months to make GRASS's membership possible (below
list is inspired by Frank's mail to the GRASS project):"

A large and important benefit to the greatest number of people in the
GRASS community may very well be....

"One benefit of the foundation is some degree of legal
   support and protection for the project. The flip side of that
   is that the foundation needs to ensure some degree of
   rigor and process in how code comes into the project. One
   part of that is getting committers to sign a legal agreement
   indicating that they agree that changes they commit will
   be under the license of GRASS (GPL) and that they have 
   the right to submit the code (they wrote it, it is not
   patented, have permission from their employer, etc)."



Recently in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada) we have merged a GRASS users group
and a Mapserver user group into a local OSGEO chapter
(ottawa.osgeo.org).

Over some brews afterwards and talking about the possibilities of a
local OSGEO affiliation I was floored to learn that GRASS is not
necessarily OFFICIALLY a member in OSGEO due to the lack of OFFICIAL
acceptance from the GRASS user community.

The first step in this whole process would be to form a GRASS project
Steering Committee (PSC).  The above link has many great ideas and
directions hammered out but it seems that activity has dwindled.

As a GRASS user representing GRASS in a local OSGEO chapter I hope to
contribute to the community, because membership in OSGEO IMHO will
benefit GRASS development as it reaches a broader audience.

So. Who is up for helping out to allow GRASS to move forward into
becoming an official and accepted member in OSGEO?

If you have questions, comments or reservations to GRASS's involvement
in OSGEO let them be known so we can work them out. I personally had
initial reservations that were mostly due to lack of information that
were nicely attended to by the president of OSGEO (Frank Warmerdam) who
attended our meeting and is also a contributor to the GRASS project
(GDAL/OGR).

I propose a separate mailing list for business referring to the PSC.  I
propose psc at grass.osgeo.org if the owner of http://grass.osgeo.org
agrees.

I would also like to hear some chatter as to opinions on the whole
matter.

Thanks for your time


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