[Incubator] seang on "How Rigorous is OSGeo Software Incubation?"

[Paul Spencer]

As usual, Sean has clearly and concisely stated his case.  From my  
reading, there are three specific things that he is suggesting that  
we address:

1) it is implied that all 8 original projects will graduate

I agree that it is assumed that all the projects will graduate.  I  
think this is actually built into the process of accepting any  
project into incubation.  By design, we only accept projects that we  
think have a reasonable chance of graduating.  Should it be  
otherwise?  Is this actually a critical flaw?

2) bug tracking

agreed and this probably should have stopped graduation.  I like  
Cameron's input on the 6 month timeframe ... so if a project has to  
implement a new process to adhere to the "OSGeo Way", we should allow  
that process a minimum of 6 months to mature.

For this item specifically, I think it would be useful to expand some  
of the official documentation with some of the text in Sean's blog to  
justify a more rigid requirement on bug tracking.

3) social health

In the specific case of GDAL, we should probably apply the above rule  
and wait about 6 months to see if the new PSC actually starts to  
work.  One of my comments in the status report was that I had not  
really had a chance to see the PSC in action, and this 'rule of  
thumb' would certainly address that.

I don't have a specific proposal to put forward to the IncCom yet,  
but it seems that we should tighten up the incubation process to include

- more rigourous requirements for bug tracking (update documentation  
accordingly)
- a minimum maturation time of X months for new processes implemented  
as part of meeting the OSGeo way (i.e. implementing a PSC or bug  
tracking)

I'd like to see some feedback from other IncCom folks too.

Cheers

Paul

On 20-Jul-06, at 4:19 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:

> Sean does make some good points.
> 1. That we have graduated a project without having a track record  
> of using an issue tracker.  I work with Process Improvement using  
> CMMI where it is specified that a process is not "institutionised"  
> until it has been in use for 6 months.
>
> 2. We graduated Mapbender despite it seeming to have the  
> significant majority of it's developers being funded by one  
> organisation (which I believe is a contributing factor to 1.).
>
> I voted for graduating Mapbender and probably did so prematurely. I  
> don't think we should be reversing our decisions but I think Sean's  
> points are valid and should be considered for future projects.
>
> Jo Walsh wrote:
>> dear incubators,
>> Sean Gillies' blog is one of the very few that I regularly read.
>> http://zcologia.com/news/218 is a pretty thought provoking essay
>> covering his concerns about the rigour of the incubation process,
>> urging OSGeo to "raise the bar" before too many of the founding
>> projects are graduated. Sean asks for feedback on his blog:
>> "How about it, incubator committee?" (cage fight, anyone? ;) )
>> best wishes!
>> jo  
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>
> -- 
> Cameron Shorter
> http://cameron.shorter.net
>
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|Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
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|Applications & Software Development                              |
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