[Incubator] Motion: Recommend gvSIG for Incubation

Tue Jul 10 10:54:12 EDT 2007

Incubation Committee Members,

I motion that the gvSIG project be recommended to the OSGeo board for
entrance into incubation with Gabriel Carrión as project representative
and Jeroen Ticheler as mentor.

----

I would like to close voting on this motion Tuesday July 17th.  This
should give time for some discussion before folks need to commit to a
position.

Please keep in mind that today we agree to limit ourselves to ten projects
in incubation at a time.  We currently have nine projects in incubation.
The criteria for project evaluation for entrance into incubation can be
found at:

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

The gvSIG team submitted this application:

   Dear OSGeo Incubator Committee members,

       On behalf of the gvSIG Project Team, we are glad to request entry
for our project in the OSGeo Incubator, as a previous step to become one
day an official OSGeo Project.

       It's been some time since we wanted to start this process and
strengthen our links to OSGeo. The gvSIG Project is right now embarking
on a process to restructure its governance and development mechanisms,
providing a framework for a more collaborative and open community, and
we hope that OSGeo can offer us references and support in some of the
issues we will be facing. We believe that in return the OSGeo community
will also benefit from a closer participation of gvSIG developers and users.

       We look forward to working with the designated Mentor in moving
forward through the incubation process. Please contact us for any
questions or further information requests.

       Best regards,

          The gvSIG Project Owners

*   1. Please provide the name and email address of the principal
Project Owner.*

Gabriel Carrión: carrion_gab at gva.es

*   2. Please provide the names and emails of co-project owners (if any).*

Luis W. Sevilla: sevilla_lui at gva.es

Salvador Bayarri: salvador.bayarri at iver.es

Mike Gould: gould at lsi.uji.es

*   3. Please provide the names, emails and entity affiliation of all
official committers*

Luis W. Sevilla:   sevilla_lui at gva.es   CIT (Ministry Infrastructure &amp;
Transport)

Salvador Bayarri:   salvador.bayarri at iver.es   IVER company

Joaquín del Cerro:   joaquin.delcerro at iver.es   IVER company

Fran Peñarrubia:   fran.penarrubia at iver.es   IVER company

Miguel Montesinos:   mmontesinos at prodevelop.es   ProDevelop company

*   4. Please describe your Project.*

gvSIG is a project mainly sponsored by the Regional Ministry of
Infrastructure and Transport of Valencia, Spain. It is aimed at
developing a comprehensive desktop GIS solution that easily integrates
services provided by Spatial Data Infrastructures as well as regular
sources of geospatial data. More information can be found at the project
web site (www.gvsig.org = www.gvsig.gva.es).

gvSIG is now widely used in many administrations, public and private
organizations in Spain, Latin America and elsewhere. The project has
been so far developed mostly in cooperation with local companies and
universities, and it aims now at extending its base of developers and users.

*   5. Why is hosting at OSGeo good for your project?*

     * The gvSIG project would like to extend its community of
international developers and users, providing a more open platform for
collaboration. The adoption by OSGeo is expected to help us in doing
that transition.

     * The gvSIG project would like to strengthen its ties to other FOSS
GIS projects.

     * The gvSIG project aims at maintaining a high degree of quality and
compliance with open standards and practices supported by international
organizations, as well as participating in the improvement of those
standards and practices.

*   6. Type of application does this project represent(client, server,
standalone, library, etc.):*

A multiplatform, Java-based standalone desktop application.

*   7. Please describe any relationships to other open source projects.*

gvSIG has working relationships with many FOSS projects. In the
geospatial area:

     * MapServer, GeoServer, DeeGree, GeoNetwork. Since gvSIG integrates
services provided by these tools, direct contact has been established
with developers and representatives of these projects, which in many
cases have resulted in fixes and improvements on both sides.

     * GeoTools, PostGIS. Results of these projects are used within gvSIG
and direct contact has been established with project developers and
representatives to define common interests.

*   8. Please describe any relationships with commercial companies or
products.*

Recently, gvSIG has been adding support for commercial geospatial web
services and databases, adding drivers for ArcIMS (ESRI) Map and Feature
services, and support for Oracle Spatial databases and ArcSDE (ESRI)
will be coming soon. However, no direct contact or agreement exists with
those companies.

*   9. Which open source license(s) will the source code be released under?*

gvSIG is released under GNU Public License (GPL).

*  10. Is there already a beta or official release?*

Yes, gvSIG was first released on October 2004 and it is currently in
version 1.0.2.

*  11. What is the origin of your project (commercial, experimental,
thesis or other higher education, government, or some other source)?*

It is government sponsored, originally within an open source migration
programme. It currently has strong commercial and educational participation.

*  12. Does the project support open standards? Which ones and to what
extent? (OGC, w3c, ect.) Has the software been certified to any standard
(CITE for example)? If not, is it the intention of the project owners to
seek certification at some point?*

gvSIG wholeheartedly supports open standards, specifically:

     *  XML and related standards from W3C, in document persistence and
in all accesses to remote services.

     *  OGC standards, as web service client:
           o  WMS (1.1.0 - 1.3.0)
           o  WFS (1.0.0) + GML import/export (2.1.2) at 1.0
           o  WCS (1.0.0)
           o  Catalogue search (OGC CSW 2.0, IDEC)
           o  Gazetteer search (WFS 1.0.0, WFS-G 0.9, ADL)

     * GML 2.X, as data import and export

*  13. Is the code free of patents, trademarks, and do you control the
copyright?*

gvSIG is free of patents and trademarks, and the copyright is controlled
by the project owners.

*  14. How many people actively contribute (code, documentation, other?)
to the project at this time?*

Core coding: 40
Documentation/testing: 10
Admin, support, training: 12
Other (collaborators, consultants) 5

*  15. How many people have commit access to the source code repository?*

Currently, most developers, about 30. Access is restricted during
stabilization phases.

*  16. Approximately how many users are currently using this project?*

We directly know about 1,000 active users in public administrations and
about 200 users in universities. We estimate based on download numbers
and list activity about 18,000 active users overall.

*  17. What type of users does your project attract (government,
commercial, hobby, academicknow research, etc. )?*

Mostly from government organizations and academic institutions (for
education and research). Several companies are already providing
customized versions and extensions used in different professional contexts.

*  18. If you do not intend to host any portion of this project using
the OSGeo infrastructure, why should you be considered a member project
of the OSGeo Foundation?*

We would evaluate the options to use the OSGeo infrastructure, however,
our goals in joining OSGeo (see question 5) do not depend on the actual
hosting infrastructure.

*  19. Does the project include an automated build and test?*

It does include automatic build procedures and some automated tests. We
are currently actively extending the suite of automated tests.

*  20. What language(s) are used in this project? (C/Java/perl/etc)*

Java, with some JNI bridges to support C-based libraries like GDAL.

*  21. What is the dominant written language (i.e. English, French,
Spanish, German, etc) of the core developers?*

Spanish, but a good number of them are proficient in English and some in
French.

*  22. What is the (estimated) size of a full release of this project?
How many users do you expect to download the project when it is released?*

Estimated size: Full binaries, about 40 Mb; Documentation, about 8 Mb;
Sources, including JNI, about 70 Mb.
The number of downloads since release of version 1.0 is about 20,000.

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