[Incubator] JVNMobileGIS Incubation Application

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

In the interest of helping us work through whether JVNMobileGIS is a good
candidate project, I thought it might be prudent to review our project
selection criteria in light of this project.

   http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/evaluation.html

 > Criteria (must haves):
 >
 > 1.  The code is under an OSI approved license (data & doc
 > projects need to specify their choice for a type of license).

Yes, the project is under GPLv2.

 > 2. The project is willing to keep code clear of encumbrances

I presume this is the case.  Khanh, is the project prepared to put
into place contributor guidelines something along the line of
the following, and enforce them?

   http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Commiter_Responsibilities_Guidelines

 > 3. The project is "geospatial", or directly in support of
 > geospatial applications.

yes, the project is clearly geospatial.

 > Desirable Attributes:
 >
 >   1.  Open source software is already reasonably mature (working
 > quality code).

It is clearly operational.  I'm not too clear on it's maturity level,
though it isn't critical it be *very* mature.

 >   2. Project already has a substantial user community.

The application reports a user community of 20.  Are these
application develops building customized applications on
top of JVNMobileGIS?  Actually end users using it on their
mobile phones?   If it is application developesr then it is
substantial.  If it is folks with phones, then I'd have to
say it is a small user base still.

 >   3. Project already has a substantial and diverse developer community.

I understand there are 3 contributing developers from the application.
This is a pretty small community though by no means a "one man project".

 >   4. Project members are aware of, and implements support for,
 > relevant standards (ie. OGC, etc).

The application reports supporting open standards of OGC and JCP
but it does not elaborate.  I'd like to understand if it supports
access to remote WMS servers, or what other sorts of protocols
it supports now or plans to support.

I don't think that JCP related standards are what we are looking
for in this item.

 >   5. Project has linkages with existing foundation projects.

According to the application there are none, but this has been
the first point of discussion here on the list.  I don't think
GeoTools targets Java ME but in my ideal world we would have some
GeoTools components that are JavaME-safe and were used by
JVNMobileGIS.  Is this a practical direction to aim?

 >   6. Project fills a gap related to software that the foundation supports.

Java based mobile applications is definately a gap, and one I would
like to see filled.  I find this a very compelling reason supporting
the JVNMobileGIS application.

 >   7. Project is prepared to develop in an open and collaborative fashion.

Khanh, perhaps you can comment briefly.  I think we are looking for
a willingness to allow outside contributors, and to establish a
collaborative way of making technology and other decisions.

 >   8. Project has contributions and interest from more than just one
 > company/organization.

I am unclear from the application what organizations are
involved, though it does report "we attract government
and academic research".  I do think there is every reason
to believe an open source java mobile mapping and gis
project could attract broad interest.

 >   9. Project is willing to migrate some or all of its
 > infrastructure (code repository, web site, wiki, mailing list,
 > etc) to foundation support infrastructure, and to adopt a
 > website style consistent with the foundation.

Khanh, perhaps you could comment on whether this of interest?
I thought I saw some stuff about this in the application, but
on review I don't see anything directly applying.  In any event
I consider this a minor issue.

Overall, my initial sense is that this would be a great project
to have associated with OSGeo.  However, I have no technical
experience with the project and I am hoping some folks can
actually try it out, review the code and give us a sense of
it's maturity and whether this project is organized such that
it will be a good "java mobile gis" platform going forward.

As other are, I'm also interested in see what linkages make
sense with our other Java and/or mobile efforts.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org