[Incubator] how fond are we of open development

[Frank Warmerdam]

Jody Garnett wrote:
>>  However I am more interested in seeing a community response to the
>>  inccubation process rather than it being the responsibility of lat/lon.
>>  One of the things I am supposed to figure out is how diverse the
>>  community is that supports the deegree project.
> 
> And here is the question from Markus Lupp:
> 
> Does this diversity have any relevance for the incubation process? As 
> you will have noticed, the deegree 2 code is currently maintained by 
 > developers working  at lat/lon -- and most parts have been written by
 > them as well. However, we're hoping to change this with deegree 3, so
 > more active external developers become involved...
> 
> Can I ask the email list here to help me respond. I seem to recall us 
> checking out GeoNetwork and wanting to make sure that it was supported 
> by a number of organizations and not just an internal FAO project.

Jody,

 From the Principles document, I think a key is the phrases are "encouraging
participation from all contributors" and "Contributors are the scarce
resource and successful projects court and encourage them."

Implicit in the above is the assumption that new contributors can join
a project, contribute, and have a role in the management of the project.
To my mind, the two reasons we do this are:

1) Allowing contributors to have a role in management of a project helps
them feel comfortable that they can influence the direction of the project
and that it won't be beholden to just one organizations or individuals
wishes for the project.

2) Ensuring a diversity of contribution to a project gives some assurance
that it will survive the changes in organizational or individual
priorities that might otherwise threaten the continued operation of
a project with a narrower base.

In the past, we have required projects like MapGuide and FDO that were
dominated by one organization to give folks outside the project meaningful
influence on the project, and to demonstrate some degree of outside
contribution.  In the GDAL project we required a loosening from a
dictatorial governance model to a broader PSC approach so things were
not too tied to one individual.

With the deegree project, I as an incubation committee member will be
looking for significant signs of outside contribution (from outside lat-lon),
and that outsiders can have meaningful input on governance and technical
directions.

Others can speak up on their feelings.  To some degree graduating
incubation is based on a subjective judgement by committee members on
the basis of lots of criteria.

There are definitely grey areas in regard to how open, and diverse
is expected.  The MapGuide project was allowed to graduate even though
I saw little evidence that there were developers from outside Autodesk
who had mastered the core code base adequately to do substantial
improvements.

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    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent