[Incubator] GeoNetwork incubator status; time to graduate

[Frank Warmerdam]

Jeroen Ticheler wrote:
> The only thing I'm waiting for is our advisory board members to give 
> their OK on the PSC guidelines. Not all responded to my request. They 
> take too long from my perspective ;-)
 >
> Some more background on that:
> Last year we decided to have an advisory board more than a project 
> steering committee and have me coordinate the day to day project. The 
> idea was that the project runs fine and we do not want to complicate 
> that process with many rules & regulations. So we identified a number of 
> people to take seat on the advisory board and make sure we all meet 
> during the GeoNetwork workshop. During that workshop we have both 
> technical workshops and working groups that discuss the requirements and 
> related work plan for the project. This is a community process. All 
> members of the GN community are invited and asked (also on the mailing 
> list) to give their priorities. We reach consensus on the work plan and 
> look for who does what.
> 
> Since all code review has been done, the committers have agreed to the 
> Committer Guidelines and I want to finish incubation before our next 
> GeoNetwork workshop (as agreed by the GeoNetwork workshop last year) I 
> hereby want to ask the incubation committee to consider graduating the 
> project.
> 
> During the Workshop I will propose to also install a project committee 
> that deals with the actual technical implementation. That means we will 
> work towards a two level structure in which we have an advisory board 
> and a technical committee. The last one will have developers and users 
> in its membership while the first one has a more general advisory role.

Jeroen,

Ideally your next step would be getting your project mentor (Jody) to
review the status of the project and if satisfied to recommend it for
graduation.

I skimmed the incubation status and provenance reports, and things seem
ok.  I would like to have done a few provenance spot checks myself,
but put that aside since your trac isn't (understandably) linked to
svn.

My real concern is the PSC/TSC/AdvisoryBoard/BenevolentLeader aspect.

The PSC document:

   http://trac.osgeo.org/geonetwork/wiki/PSC

describes a fairly standard PSC with a fairly fine grained level of
involvement (ie. When is Vote Required?).  But your description above
describes your role as closer to "benevolent dictator" with an advisory
board meeting annually and presumably able to remove you.  Also the role
of Technical Steering Committee is (as far as I know) undocumented.

I *feel* that an open governance structure is a fairly key part of
incubation and so I'd like to see governance for GeoNetwork become
more settled and "in operation" for a while before I'd be completely
comfortable with incubation graduation.

I have no problem with a relatively hands off advisory committee and
a distinct TSC.  I just think the documents need to describe this setup
fairly clearly and it ought to be allowed to operate for a while (perhaps
a couple months?) so as to become "institutionalized".

Just my opinion of course...

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