[Incubator] Considering Portable GIS as an OSGeo community project

Wed Aug 23 08:22:32 PDT 2017

Hi Jody and list,

Having had a bit of a think about licensing, I had previously chosen GPLv3
*for my components alone* and I think I'm happy with that. As far as I can
tell, I can license my modifications alone with GPLv3 regardless of what
the software projects themselves are. I've had a look at how OSGeo Live
works, but that doesn't help much (https://live.osgeo.org/en/copyright.html).
Is there anyone on the list who could help me out with this- basically to
confirm or deny?

Thanks

Jo

On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 8:55 AM, Jo Cook <jocook at astuntechnology.com> wrote:

> Hi Jody,
>
> That all sounds really encouraging and yes I'd be happy to go through the
> process with you and the team. We (Astun) potentially have another project
> that we'd like to submit for consideration too, and I'll be in touch
> separately about that one.
>
> Regarding autoit, no you don't need to purchase anything to use it. Having
> thought about this in some more detail, I think I will try to move away
> from that dependency and try to find an open source alternative but that
> will obviously take some time to work through, so it would be good if we
> could start working through the process of becoming a community project
> while that is ongoing.
>
> I'll make some tweaks to the repository to make sure that the various docs
> are easy to find, and then maybe come back to you when that's ready. I want
> to think a little about whether I'm using the most appropriate license too.
>
> Regards
>
> Jo
>
> On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 6:12 PM, Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Glad to hear from you Jo!
>>
>> Although the "OSGeo community" initiative was started last year, we have
>> not had a chance to try it out yet (perhaps due to lack of publicity). If
>> you are patient with us we would enjoy going through this process with you,
>> and revising our notes as we go.
>>
>> The wiki OSGeo Community Projects
>> <https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Community_Projects> page has the
>> following recipe:
>>
>> If your project would like to join OSGeo the technology initiative asks:
>>
>>    1. That your project is geospatial (or directly supports geospatial
>>    applications);
>>       - Data & doc projects would of course need an appropriate data or
>>       documentation license
>>    2. That your project is open source
>>       - Uses an OSI approved open source license
>>       - That you know where your source code came from, and that care is
>>       taken when accepting external contributions
>>    3. Participatory (accepts pull-requests)
>>
>>
>> Along with a few notes on how we can quickly check the LICENSE,
>> CONTRIBUTING, README files.
>>
>> *autoit*
>>
>> Your question about autoit is tricky, it is freely distributable - so
>> not a barrier to use. We are actually in a similar spot for the GeoTools
>> and GeoServer projects. When they were first created Java was not open
>> source so there were some very heated discussions with the gvSig team on if
>> you could ever make a free software solution using Java.
>>
>> But we are an open source software foundation (not at a free software
>> foundation) allowing GeoTools, GeoServer .. and by extension autoit.
>>
>> This question of Java still troubles us, while Java is now open source,
>> the image processing library that was included in Java is still only free
>> to distribute. This causes problems for the OSGeo Live and uDig projects.
>>
>> I would be concerned though if people need to purchase autoit in order to
>> work on your project? There is a slight difference between being required
>> to purchase a tool, and optionally using a tool. For GeoTools we can "work
>> with" the Oracle Database (if user installs the right jars they have
>> downloaded from Oracle) or ArcSDE (if the user installs the right jars they
>> have purchased from ESRI). However if a contributor is not in possession of
>> these artifacts they can still work on the project as a whole.
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Jody Garnett
>>
>> On 22 August 2017 at 06:25, Jo Cook <jocook at astuntechnology.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Incubator List,
>>>
>>> As you may or may not know, I have been running a small project called
>>> Portable GIS (GIS on a USB stick for Windows) for a number of years. The
>>> basic premise is to provide a no-install, no-config version of many of the
>>> common open source GIS projects on a USB stick.
>>>
>>> Recently I built a website for the project (portablegis.xyz) and I'm
>>> working through the process of documenting and publishing all the
>>> configuration changes that need to be made to make projects portable
>>> (mainly batch files to be honest). This also includes the source code for
>>> building the menu and installer files.
>>>
>>> This is on Gitlab at https://gitlab.com/archaeogeek/portable-gis so
>>> that I can now start accepting contributions. Note that this repository
>>> does not contain the actual source code for the projects such as QGIS, it
>>> just contains the files that need to be adjusted to make it work portably.
>>>
>>> One of my colleagues has suggested that Portable GIS could be an OSGeo
>>> Community Project, so here I am, asking about it :-)
>>>
>>> My main concern is that autoit, which I used for building the menu, is
>>> freeware rather than opensource (see https://www.autoitscript.com/site/
>>> and specifically https://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/docs/license.htm).
>>> My gut feeling is that this bars Portable GIS from being truly open source,
>>> and hence not suitable for being an OSGeo Community Project. Would that be
>>> correct?
>>>
>>> If this was the only bar to entry, I could certainly look at alternative
>>> options for building the menu.
>>>
>>> Regards
>>>
>>> Jo
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> *Jo Cook*
>>> t:+44 7930 524 155 <+44%207930%20524155>/twitter:@archaeogeek
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Astun Technology Ltd, The Coach House, 17 West Street, Epsom, Surrey,
>>> KT18 7RL, UK
>>> t:+44 1372 744 009 <+44%201372%20744009> w: astuntechnology.com twitter:
>>> @astuntech <https://twitter.com/astuntech>
>>>
>>> iShare - enterprise geographic intelligence platform
>>> <https://astuntechnology.com/ishare/>
>>> GeoServer, PostGIS and QGIS training
>>> <https://astuntechnology.com/services/#training>
>>> Helpdesk and customer portal
>>> <http://support.astuntechnology.com/support/login>
>>>
>>> Company registration no. 5410695. Registered in England and Wales.
>>> Registered office: 120 Manor Green Road, Epsom, Surrey, KT19 8LN VAT no.
>>> 864201149.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Incubator mailing list
>>> Incubator at lists.osgeo.org
>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/incubator
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> *Jo Cook*
> t:+44 7930 524 155 <+44%207930%20524155>/twitter:@archaeogeek
>
>

-- 
*Jo Cook*
t:+44 7930 524 155/twitter:@archaeogeek

-- 
--
Astun Technology Ltd, The Coach House, 17 West Street, Epsom, Surrey, KT18 
7RL, UK 
t:+44 1372 744 009 w: astuntechnology.com twitter:@astuntech 
<https://twitter.com/astuntech>

iShare - enterprise geographic intelligence platform 
<https://astuntechnology.com/ishare/>
GeoServer, PostGIS and QGIS training 
<https://astuntechnology.com/services/#training>
Helpdesk and customer portal 
<http://support.astuntechnology.com/support/login>

Company registration no. 5410695. Registered in England and Wales. 
Registered office: 120 Manor Green Road, Epsom, Surrey, KT19 8LN VAT no. 
864201149.
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