[Incubator] Incubator Application: deegree

[Dr. Markus Lupp]

Hi Cameron,

basically there is cooperation potential with all Java-based OSGeo 
projects. As I see it these are at the moment:
1. GeoTools
2. gvSIG
3. Geonetwork OpenSource
4. Community MapBuilder

I will discuss those four projects in the following. Please forgive me 
if statements about the four projects are not correct at all times, I do 
not know them in much detail so far.

1. GeoTools
------------
deegree and GeoTools share many similarities, they are at the core, Java 
libraries for geospatial applications with a focus on OGC standards. 
There are many opportunities for collaboration and there were several 
attempts to do so but I also have to say that so far all of these 
attempts were not successfull. At the first look the projects are so 
similar that someone wonders why collaboration here is so hard. IMHO 
there are three main reasons:
a) Some requirements are different. A good example is the need of 
deegree for a complex feature model, a requirement that GeoTools 
developed much later and with much less priority.
b) The development process seems to be different: deegree is developed 
for projects with tight deadlines and is in this way a very "commercial" 
FOSS project. Quite often, decisions have to be made fast and this leads 
sometime to less discussion via the list as there is on GeoTools lists.
c) The "not invented here" effect and other usual problems in 
cooperation. ;-)
Nonetheless I do not want to give up on this. Perhaps the fact that 
deegree wants to join OSGeo opens new opportunities for cooperation 
between the projects again. Perhaps some kind of "liasaon officer" 
between the to projects would help here.

2. gvSIG
Although deegree is a library, there also is by now a desktop GIS (with 
similarities to gvSIG) under development. On a technical level there is 
collaboration potential, the main problem here is that gvSIG is 
published under GPL, while deegree under LGPL. This is the main reason, 
why in the first place deegree started development of a desktop 
component (the companies developing deegree have customers who do not 
want to use a GPL-based desktop GIS program). Otherwise we would have 
used OpenJUMP or gvSIG. On a technical level, here again the problem is 
the complex feature model. There already were meetings between people 
from gvSIG and deegree and support for complex features seemed to be not 
on the top list of priority for gvSIG.
In regard to the license problem, the cooperation here could be 
"one-way", of GOS uses source code from deegree we would not run into 
license problems.

3. Geonetwork Open Source (GOS)
deeegre encompasses a metadata/catalogue component similar to GOS. On a 
technical level there is good potential for cooperation, the problem 
here is that GOS uses GPL while deegree LGPL.
Here again, "one-way cooperation" (GOS uses deegree) could work.

4. Community MapBuilder (CMB)
 From the impression that I by now have, CMB shares a number of 
similarities with deegree iGeoPortal, they are both web-based clients 
for OGC web services. As CMB is published under LGPL there would also be 
no licensing problems. It might turn out, that the respective software 
architectures are too different for close cooperation, but this will 
only be know if there is a more thorough analysis from bothe sides.


So, regarding the OSGeo Java tribe, I would say the most cooperation 
potential exists with GeoTools and CMB as they share the same license 
with deegree.


Best regards,

Markus


Cameron Shorter schrieb:
> Sorry for the slow response, usual excuses.
>
> Markus,
> It is great to hear that a well established project like deegree is 
> engaging OSGeo. I think deegree has a lot to offer the community and 
> in particular I think it will benefit all if we see further 
> collaboration between deegree and other OSGeo projects - something 
> which I think has been one of the under-reported benefits of OSGeo.
>
> One of my standard questions for new projects is to discuss similar 
> (OSGeo) projects and what opportunities there are for collaboration, 
> or if not what are the barriers.
>
> The more collaboration, the more attractive the project is as a 
> graduation candidate.
>
> -- 
>
> As I seem to bring up this question fairly regularly, maybe it should 
> be included in the OSGeo Application page.
>
> Frank Warmerdam wrote:
>> Folks,
>>
>> I'm pleased to announce that the deegree project has applied for
>> OSGeo incubation.  The application form can be downloaded (in pdf) from:
>>
>> http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/attachment/ticket/185/deegree_osgeo_questionnaire.pdf?format=raw 
>>
>>
>> deegree is a Java framework including implementations of many OGC and 
>> ISO
>> standard geo interfaces.  The application was submitted by Dr. Markus 
>> Lupp
>> and I will ask him to join the incubation list if he hasn't already.
>>
>> Currently we have ten projects in incubation, so assuming we don't 
>> want to
>> raise our self imposed limit I don't anticipate bringing another project
>> into incubation immediately.  However, I am hopeful that at as many 
>> as two
>> of our current projects will be completing incubation soon at which 
>> point we
>> will be in a position to select new projects.
>>
>> The current application pending are:
>>
>> http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/query?status=new&status=assigned&status=reopened&component=Incubator&keywords=%7Eapplication&order=priority 
>>
>>
>> GeoMOOSE
>> JVNMobileGIS
>> ORCHESTRA
>> degree
>>
>> Best regards,
>
>


-- 
Dr. Markus Lupp
l a t / l o n  GmbH
Kupang-NTT
Indonesia
phone +62 (0)81 339 431666
http://www.lat-lon.de
http://www.deegree.org
--