[Incubator] Motion for pycsw to enter Incubation process

[Daniel Morissette]

On 13-03-20 7:01 PM, Jody Garnett wrote:
> What are you expecting to see for community requirement Daniel?
>
> We do have some light community requirements for graduation
> (developers/community communicating well), as long as the project
> understands those requirements for graduation (and the mentor is happy
> to assist) I am cool with it.


After reading the last IRC meeting logs I see that some people seem to 
interpret my position as being negative (or maybe even against pycsw?) 
... it is not... I am very positive and constructive. I find that the 
community is one of the best ways to measure the viability of an open 
source project in the long run. And I consider that it is important for 
OSGeo as an organization to ensure that projects are viable before 
deciding to stand behind them. Community is not everything of course, 
but it is an important factor to me.

So far, this committee has considered that "an open, active and healthy 
user and developer community" is a key requirement for graduation. This 
is still at the top of our checklist:

http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/project_graduation_checklist.html

This criteria is extremely important to me, it is at the top of my own 
list and I have personally been checking the community aspect of every 
project that has gone through incubation. I have insisted on this with 
every project including those that I mentored myself. See for instance 
my comment about MapGuide's community which predate our checklist:

http://osgeo-org.1560.n6.nabble.com/MapGuide-ready-to-graduate-td3712195.html

and then my comments about FDO's lack of comunity and open communication 
on the lists when it entered incubation:

http://osgeo-org.1560.n6.nabble.com/FDO-Incubation-Progress-Reports-td3897711.html

I even remember having a face to face meeting with the FDO guys about 
this requirement and the work that they had to do on this front to hope 
to be able to graduate. IIRC we even delayed the FDO graduation because 
of that specific requirement.

If you look at my review of other projects that have graduated, you will 
see similar comments from me on most projects, unless it was already 
obvious that they met the community requirements.

I came to the conclusion over time that Incubator is not the place to 
build a community, hence my requirement on new projects to have a decent 
community (whatever that means, at least more than a handfull of people) 
before entering incubation. Maybe I'm wrong (very possible based on the 
discussion we're having now), so I will not -1 any project entering 
incubation because of this, I will just -0 which is not a veto and still 
allows it to pass if there are enough +1 votes...


So to make a long story short, I have nothing against pycsw or the guys 
behind the project. It's actually quite the contrary, I know them and am 
convinced that they are as open as can be... but I have to apply the 
same rules to every project and that's what I'm trying to do.

BTW, it was already a few months ago that we discussed the pycsw 
community size. Maybe things have evolved significantly already and we 
don't even need to have this discussion? Maybe someone from the pycsw 
project can give us an update?


P.S. Please also keep in mind that I am only one vote on this committee, 
and if the rest of the group wants to relax this community requirement 
and change the graduation rules then so be it. I would question this 
move and its impact on the OSGeo portfolio of projects down the road, 
but would not stubbornly object if there are good arguments for the change.



-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/
Provider of Professional MapServer Support since 2000