[Incubator] OSSIM Incubation Status

[Cameron Shorter]

Face to face meetings are more effective than email lists for working 
out project issues.
The only downside is that they don't automatically generate logs of 
discussions like email lists and IRC channels.

What I suggest is:
* Write down your process for meetings, which would probably be 
something like:
** Send meeting request, xx number of days before meeting, allowing 
interested parties to participate.
** Meet face to face
** Describe voting process (1 member = 1 vote)
** Document decisions in wiki/email list/ ...

The documented decisions are the key part that you will reference in 
order to prove an effective PSC.

Is this achievable?

Jody Garnett wrote:
> Hi Mark:
>
> Thanks for the background.
>
> I am comfortable with this - meeting for lunch is a fine way to run a 
> PSC. For the incubation requirements I mostly want to to ensure that 
> it is public that this is where decisions are made; and that others 
> can invite themselves along for lunch if they want.
>
> Or intent is to be up front with how OSSIM is managed; and to ensure 
> the community has some idea how they would integrate a new PSC member 
> (preferably documented). The decisions you arrive at may not be 
> optimal from a distributed project standpoint; we just want to be sure 
> you arrive at them.
>
> The GeoNetwork project made a lot of its decisions at a yearly 
> face-to-face meeting. They have since set up a PSC - but I believe 
> that the face to face meeting still forms part of their culture.
>
> Jody
>
> Mark Lucas wrote:
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
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>
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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