[Incubator] Mandate of the incubation committee

[Jody Garnett]

> Jody,
>
> IMO, the two ideals are not mutually exclusive.
>
> It is possible to encourage a quality set of recognised and well integrated OSGeo applications and still allow for diversity of approaches.

Agreed. I would love to see a couple of approaches:
- white papers documenting a successful stack; along with use cases
showing its use
- the live DVD is great; it would be nice to see a smaller DVD built
up around a single stack telling a specific story (say land
management; or education)

The trick here is we ask our projects to be "open development" we need
to ensure our committees and foundation is also open to participation.
If we brand and push a specific stack we may do so at the exclusion of
other software (or target markets).

> There will always be better ways of approaching a problem, and projects will naturally form to explore those concepts. In time these new projects may > replace what is currently state of the art. This needs to be allowed for, or OSGeo will stagnate.
>
> I'm thinking longer term, say five years down the track.

I believe we are at this point now; and will be at this point always.

> Is it time to sit back and think about what we want longer term in an OSGeo Stack, or do we just leave it to natural evolution and hope that we get a coordinated stack in the end?

I think the goal (an OSGeo stack) may not be applicable; our goal is
to promote and communicate. Let me try and be specific. I could see
the education committee putting together a stack along with a set of
course materials. Any project wishing to take part would need to
contact that committee to take part.

By the same token the marketing committee brings together a set paper
materials to hand out; projects that want to take part can contact the
marketing department.

It also sounds like the Live DVD project would like to step up
integration next round; so I expect a fair bit of this.

So if you present an integrated OSGeo stack as an opportunity for
projects to take part in -  I am in favour. If we present it as a
requirement I think we would be in trouble.

To return to my original comment (the mandate of the incubation
committee)  was and remains; we are not going to police participating
projects here in the incubation committee; annual reports are provided
and the board can ask for the required information each year.

Jody