[Incubator] GeoNetwork incubator status; time to graduate

[Frank Warmerdam]

Jeroen Ticheler wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> Yes, it is an aspect that evolves rather slowly in GeoNetwork. Catalogs 
> don't attract as many interested parties compared to pure GIS/RS/mapping 
> projects unfortunately. However, I see much improvement and more and 
> more involvement from others and am hopeful that a transition from 
> "benevolent dictator" to "full PSC" will happen in the not to long run. 
> At the same time, that seems something that happens only slowly (due to 
> what I just mentioned above :-) ). I've several times tried to speed 
> that process up, but it seems everybody still feels OK with the current 
> structure.
> 
> This been said, it could take a fair bit of time before the transition 
> actually takes place. I feel that hampers incubation and will make 
> things like the code review etc.. to be outdated again by the time we 
> get there. GeoNetwork will keep an incubation spot occupied also. Not 
> sure how relevant that is to the incubation committee though.

Jeroen,

What I'd suggest is that you (or someone) write a version of the PSC
document that describes the less detail oriented nature of the GeoNetwork
project. For instance, have the PSC/AdvisoryCommittee's role be
"ultimate authority" but devolving most day to day administration to the
project lead (you), and technical decision making to the TSC (with
lightweight rules).  But the PSC/AdvisoryCommittee needs to at least
be active enough that documents can adopted and decisions made when
appropriate.

For GDAL, for instance, we passed an RFC on a "paid project maintainer"
that left direct administration of the project maintainer to me while
the project maintainer is required to report periodically to the whole
PSC so other PSC members can provide feedback/direction if they deem
it necessary.

In the case of GeoNetwork, the Advisory Committee might turn over
responsibility for facilitating the TSC and making decisions on
stuff like new maintainers (within some established criteria).

Also, with regard to activity level of your advisory group, I think it is
good to operate in such a way that you don't need responses from everyone.
That's the idea behind PSCs where two +1's and no -1 objections are
sufficient to pass a proposal (given some time for consideration).  It
avoids things getting stalled waiting for a quorum, etc.

Of course, it would be good to get unanimous support for initial
governance document from the original governance body. :-)

> Sure. I hope that already during the whole incubation period so far the 
> project has proven to be open to others influencing and contributing to 
> the project. However, I realize that's my biased insiders opinion :-)

I will say, as a project lead it is not always obvious how open or
not open things seem to outsiders interested in contributing.   But for
now, I'm more interested in ensuring that GeoNetwork's documents about
governance match how it really operates, and that there is a community
group of some sort in ultimate control as opposed to one individual.

Re: the question of taking up an incubation slot.  GeoNetwork hasn't
"hogged" a slot nearly as long as the various founding projects still
in incubation.  I don't think of this as a problem as long as the project
is still clearly making progress and aimed at graduation.  I don't forsee
a problem for GeoNetwork, just some more time and hammering.

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