[Incubator] uDig incubation proposal - feedback from Wayne Beaton

[Jody Garnett]

Wayne Beaton very kindly submitted a pull request (https://github.com/uDig/udig-docs/pull/4), cleaning up a few references and changing them to say LocationTech. And passing a few sections back for revision ...

Scope
- Revised scope (discussion and current text follows after the break)

- If this proposal is going out Eclipse wide we need to explain what a GIS. If the proposal is limited to the industry working group, my definitions will appear very lax. Any suggestions on how to ride this line?

Committers
- We had tried to factor out common responsibilities to avoid repetition, Wayne did not go for it.
- Took the current list of those who have obtained commit access on master (split it up into who is currently active)
- Informally: there are a lot more forks on github (https://github.com/uDig/udig-platform/network/members) only a few of which submit pull requests back up

Current draft:
- https://github.com/uDig/udig-docs/blob/master/admin/proposal/proposal.html
-- 
Jody Garnett



SCOPE

> WTB: "Mapping" seems too generic and meaningless. Perhaps this is because I don't live in the space.
> What sorts of things does uDig enable users/adopters to do?
> 
> JG: that is our traditional scope definition from the initial project plan. Let me try and 
> translate... 
> 
> DESKTOP GIS
> Well frankly the goal is to build a Desktop GIS so I will write that down. The answer
> however will not help - since what a GIS does is simialr to what a word processor does. Different
> professionals will use the tool for different uses. The actual utility depends on the data
> being used. As an example the same network traversal functionality can be used for water managements,
> SCADA system planning, road maintenance, enivornmental analysis and so on.
> 
> GIS Platform SDK
> We want to bundle up all this stuff for normal Eclipse RCP developers. Drop in GIS
> components with clear documented integration path for developers used to working on a normal
> buisness domain model. 
> 
> LOCAL AND EXTERNAL DATA
> How to put this bluntly. GIS professionals are still not used to the internet, most of the web
> service standards die when presented with GIS data volumes. The fact that we consider both
> local and external data (let alone OGC standard support) is still fairly unusual.



The scope of uDig is to:

Produce a Desktop Geographic Information System (GIS) using Eclipse RCP technology. A Desktop GIS application is a general purpose tool, similar to a wordprocessor, that can be put to a wide range of uses. Often the only limitation is the ingenuity of the operator and the data information they have available to work with.
The Wikipedia entry for Geographic Information System (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system) provides the following:
Relating information from different sources
GIS uncertainties
Data Representation
Data Capture: ranging from digitisation to automated techniques
Raster to vector conversation
Projection, coordinate systems and registration
spatial analysis with GIS
Data output and Cartography
Graphical display and techniques
Spatial ETL
GIS Data Mining



Provide Eclipse RCP developers an SDK of GIS components. Used by business applications for integration spatial information, rendering or display servies, and in-depth spatial analysis. Allow the business domain model to be extended with minimal background knowledge in mapping. Enable business applications to add "just enough" GIS to get the job done.
Enable integration of local and external spatial data sources. The rich history, and unusual size, of spatial data presents a great integration challenge. To be effective uDig must remain data provider, and data format, neutral. Respecting where organisations store their information while leveraging international (ISO TC211) and industry (OGC) standards for interoperability.


COMITTERS

> WTB: Do you expect steering committee members and other contributors to be committers? It's not clear from this text. 
> 
> JG: See email list we could not make sense of this section, changing it back and grabbing our full comitters list from github 



The following individuals are proposed as initial committers to the project:

Jody Garnett, Open Source Geospatial Foundation, LISAsoft, PSC
Jody is a committer on the uDig project where he has made significant contributions over many years. He will contribute to the architecture and direction of this new project.
Andrea Antonello, HydoloGIS, PSC
Andrea has provided significant contributions to the existing code base. He will contribute scientific guidance and raster expertise to this new project.
Jesse Eichar, Camptocamp, PSC
Jesse Eichar has made significant contributions over many years, acting as project lead for some of that time. Jesse keeps track of the rendering and tools plugins. PSC member.
Mauricio Pazos, PSC
Mauricio is a major contributor to the codebase with a deep understanding of the edit tool framework.
Frank Gasdorf, PSC
Frank has played a strong role in the codebase most recently championing documentation, translation and project OSGi packaging.
Craig Taverner, AmanziTel
GSoC mentor for several projects to build support for the neo4j.org graph database spatial capabilities and bridges to GeoTools, uDig and GeoServer
Davide Savazzi, AmanziTel
GSoC mentor for 2012 project to build support for routing tools in uDig using the neo4j.org graph database. Initial contributor to Neo4j Spatial and uDig plugin for Neo4j Spatial
Naz Chan, LISAsoft
Naz has recently completed the Document view, and is currently working on a Legend view.
Mark Leslie, LISAsoft
Mark longstanding contributor and initial author of the style editor. Mark brings the project a background in Sphinx documentation generation and is available for uDig training courses.
John Hudson, LISAsoft
John has been making uDig plugins for several years and is focused on interoperability with OGC web servies.
Sam Guymer, QPWS
Sam is a new addition to the community who has recently upgraded the version of Tycho used and sorted out various build and packaging issues.

The following developers have commit access but are not currently active:
Levi Puntna
Levi is responsible for the recent tool palette work.
Cliff Broadbent, QPWS
Cliff is responsible for the recent transition to the Tycho build system.
Scott Henderson, LISAsoft
Scott is responsible for the recent contribution of ExpressionViewer.
Paul Pfeiffer, QPWS
Paul is responsible for the recent Area of Interest work, and refactoring the core uDig EMF model.


We welcome additional committers and contributions.




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