[Incubator] New Application: GeoToolkit

[Paul Ramsey]

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 7:49 AM, Frank Warmerdam <warmerdam at pobox.com> wrote:

>> I believe, on the basis of intuition alone, that the systems of
>> distributed
>> version control (DVCS) have fundamentally altered the world of software
>> development and provide an enourmous democratizing potential for project
>> governance.

> I must confess that I'm not clear on the social implications of DVCS.
> It does still seem important that an OSGeo project produce vetted
> releases that are considered to be the product of the project as
> a whole.  I'm not clear how that fits with a DVCS free-for-all.  But
> I may be reading too much into this.

I think this is valid concern, since control over the official source
is the lynchpin to control of the project. From whose DVCS instance
will geotoolkit-1.0.jar be built before it is placed on the web site
for download? The person who controls commits to that instance is the
benevolent dictator. The incubation application is explicit that "One
person will be responsible for all commits into the repository."

Not that benevolent dictators (*cough* Frank *cough*) can't produce
good (or even superior) product. But we seem to have decided that
we're not OK with that governance model (for reasons that are lost in
history?).

P.