[Incubator] Considering Portable GIS as an OSGeo community project
Cameron Shorter
cameron.shorter at gmail.com
Wed Aug 23 13:06:39 PDT 2017
Hi Jo,
I'm really excited to see you pushing Portable GIS forward. I think that
having a windows based OSGeo distribution is a great complement to
OSGeo-Live, as OSGeo-Live is tied into (and limited to) being a linux
distribution.
I also see potential for collaboration between OSGeo-Live and Portable
GIS. Eg, the OSGeo-Live Project Overviews could note whether the project
is available on Portable GIS.
We could also potentially align OSGeo-Live and Portable GIS release
schedules (which would help with aligning documentation).
Re packaging, have you considered building with cygwin (which is Open
Source)?
I'm happy to answer questions about license. While I'm not a lawyer, I
have been involved in plenty of licensing selection discussions,
including for OSGeo-Live.
Re Portable GIS licensing, I assume your build tools are not embedded in
the final Portable GIS software distribution? That would mean that the
final software distribution does not inherit to the license of the build
tools. So I suspect you should be ok to select what ever license you
choose for the build tools. That is how we have approached the
OSGeo-Live build scripts, which are LGPL. (Documentation is licensed
under CC-By for Project Overviews and CC-By-SA for Quickstarts).
Warm regards, Cameron
On 24/8/17 1:22 am, Jo Cook wrote:
> 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
> <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
> <mailto: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 <mailto: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
> <mailto: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 <http://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
> <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/
> <https://www.autoitscript.com/site/> and specifically
> https://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/docs/license.htm
> <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
> <tel:+44%207930%20524155>/twitter:@archaeogeek
>
>
> --
> Astun Technology Ltd, The Coach House, 17 West Street,
> Epsom, Surrey, KT18 7RL, UK
> t:+44 1372 744 009 <tel:+44%201372%20744009> w:
> astuntechnology.com
> <http://astuntechnology.com/>twitter:@astuntech
> <https://twitter.com/astuntech>
>
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>
>
>
> --
> *Jo Cook*
> t:+44 7930 524 155 <tel:+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
> <http://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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--
Cameron Shorter
M +61 419 142 254
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