[Incubator] MapFish Incubation application - reactivation

[Claude Philipona]

I mostly agree with the fact that OSGeo projects need to have some
kind of uniformity on how they present themselves from a marketing
point of view, so that non OSGeo specialist can easily enter into the
OSGeo world. This is mandatory, I totally support the different
brainstormings going on right now about those topics, and there are
some really good ideas coming out.

BUT, I don't think going to some extreme of choosing one piece of
software for each group of features is the right way to go. Should
OSGeo choose between MapServer and GeoServer based on the last
shoutout? Oh no! we won't have Jeff and Andrea walking down the aisles
anymore; nobody will show up at the next closing plenary... Should
OSGeo keep just one Desktop GIS, they are doing all pretty much the
same kind of job, or at least it would be quite easy to do so. Which
one to pick? QGis?, Udig? gvSIG?...and so on for about all the current
OSGeo projects from which half or more should be kicked out as less
performing duplicates. Doesn't make much sense.

OSGeo should be able to host projects covering partly the same needs
or features, but maybe with a different angle of approach or a
different technology, as long as they are community projects that are
open to collaboration with other OSGeo project or more extensively
with Open source projects. The rules for incubation are already quite
well defined. Open Source and OSGeo need some emulating diversity for
its evolution. Some projects will appear, some will fade out or even
die, the core low-level lib will probably have longer life cycle....
Software macrocosm is at some point like organic life, things are
happening where you didn't image them to appear.

Oh, I just crossed the Equator, let's put the mail on the queue.

Claude

2009/10/28 Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com>:
>> One of the rules of marketing is "the less you write, the more your words
>> will be read".
>> I feel the same about OSGeo projects. We should be focusing on a few quality
>> projects rather than a catalog of all projects around. The OSGeo brand
>> should be helping implementers select the best of the projects around.
>
> Interesting; the mandate for OSGeo is to support open source
> geospatial; not really to a produce a sensible stack of projects
> (there are many vendors doing exactly that and we want to encourage
> their success).
>
> If the OSGeo brand wants to do some sensible work in this direction we
> can start offering feature comparisons and so forth to enable users to
> evaluate.
>
> With this in mind I am coming down completely in the opposite
> direction; I want to encourage competition and collaboration as two
> tools to increase quality across the board.
>
> Jody
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