[Incubator] OSSIM Incubation Status

[Mark Lucas]

On Mar 4, 2009, at 11:02 AM, Frank Warmerdam wrote:

> related to governance, and I don't know if that was addressed.
>
> """
> The other point I'd like to raise is where does the PSC discuss
> decisions that need to be made?  I'm on the ossim-developer list
> and I don't recall ever seeing anything that looked like a PSC
> discussion though I only lightly skim the list.  The governance
> document is ... brief ... which is ok I suppose, but I am still
> looking for a sense that the governance structure is operating
> rather than just notional.
> """
>
> I'm personally very comfortable that the mailing lists are active,
> that there is a significant user community and things are generally
> functioning well.  But I'm still feeling governance - how decisions
> are made - is opaque, and I don't recall any decisions made as a
> community though I must confess I'm not following things closely.

It is probably a fair criticism that the majority of PSC discussions  
occur face to face versus on the mailing list.  OSSIM is probably  
somewhat unique in that the primary contributors all make their living  
developing OSSIM for professional services.  Over the history of the  
baseline the core developers have worked for different organizations  
and companies, but have always operated as a virtual team.  Three of  
the four PSC contributors work in the same room every day.  Dave  
Burken works in another location and we attempt to meet for lunch at  
least once a month.  Typically the discussion is on OSSIM and on  
improvements that we'd like to make.  Most of the work that occurs on  
the baseline is driven by funded requirements and we do our best to  
summarize features that we plan to add and changes we intend to make.   
Garrett and Dave do a pretty good job of announcing on the list what  
they are thinking and what they intend to work on.  In most cases  
there is little comment on their posts.

We actively encourage contributions and periodically get fixes and  
enhancements from around the world.  When the level of contribution  
and activity rises we try to quickly establish a module that the  
contributor can work in.  Problems and fixes are reviewed fairly  
rapidly and merged into the system.

Can we do a better job at communicating on the mailing list -  
certainly.  We make a concerted effort to communicate our plans and  
thoughts and quickly respond to questions, comments, and suggestions  
on the mailing list.  If you review the mailing lists archives you  
will find numerous examples where architectural or interface changes  
were announced by Garrett as areas that he intends to begin work on in  
an effort to seek out comments.

We will continue to make a concerted effort to push more of this  
discussion on to the mailing list.  We certainly are very open to  
questions, comments, and discussion on the list.  I can't remember an  
instance where we didn't respond in a timely manner or rejected any  
reasonable suggestion or comment.  Our intent is to be very  
transparent in everything that we are doing.

Mark