[Incubator] Considering Portable GIS as an OSGeo community project
Jeff McKenna
jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com
Tue Oct 17 06:57:28 PDT 2017
Hi Jo,
All of the MS4W servers now handle SSL certs, so your old link of
https://ms4w.com now works :) Thanks for this little nudge, it's a
win-win!
-jeff
On 2017-08-28 2:12 PM, Jeff McKenna wrote:
> Hi Jo,
>
> Some minor feedback: on the page
> http://portable-gis-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/nomodification.html
> the link to MS4W is broken, please point to http://ms4w.com
>
> thanks,
>
> -jeff
>
>
>
> On 2017-08-28 2:02 PM, Jo Cook wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I've added a contributing guidelines page and moved the license and
>> changelog to the root of the portable gis repository at
>> https://gitlab.com/archaeogeek/portable-gis. Does it all look OK?
>>
>> Thanks to everyone who has offered to assist with Portable GIS- it's
>> really appreciated.
>>
>> All the best
>>
>> Jo
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 27, 2017 at 6:34 PM, Landon Blake
>> <sunburned.surveyor at gmail.com <mailto:sunburned.surveyor at gmail.com>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> If I can help Jo with set-up as a community project, let me know.
>> I'm a Windows user...so I can help with the testing of releases. I'd
>> also be interested in learning more about how this works. :]
>>
>> Landon
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 4:26 AM, Jo Cook <jocook at astuntechnology.com
>> <mailto:jocook at astuntechnology.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Jeff,
>>
>> There's no relationship as such between Portable GIS and
>> OSGeo4W- they are really complimentary projects with different
>> objectives. The way I see it, Portable GIS provides a portable
>> (hence the name) set of open source geospatial tools that don't
>> require installation and can be taken from windows computer to
>> windows computer on a USB stick,compared to OSGeo4W, which
>> provides a streamlined way of installing the tools on a machine.
>> They have some packages in common, but not all (I include
>> PostgreSQL/PostGIS and GeoServer alongside QGIS, Mapserver etc,
>> but otherwise a much more limited set of tools than OSGeo4W due
>> to space considerations).
>>
>> When OSGeo4W first came out (believe it or not, Portable GIS
>> predates it) there was some discussion about the possible
>> relationship between the two packages at that point, but like I
>> say, they have different objectives and exist in harmony
>> together.
>>
>> Hope that clears things up- I'll add some disambiguation to the
>> readme and website next time I do an update!
>>
>> Jo
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 9:16 PM, Jeffrey Johnson
>> <ortelius at gmail.com <mailto:ortelius at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Just curious about the relationship to osgeo4w
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 1:06 PM, Cameron Shorter
>> <cameron.shorter at gmail.com
>> <mailto:cameron.shorter at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> > 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 page has the
>> following recipe:
>> >>>
>> >>> If your project would like to join OSGeo the technology
>> initiative asks:
>> >>>
>> >>> That your project is geospatial (or directly supports
>> geospatial
>> >>> applications);
>> >>>
>> >>> Data & doc projects would of course need an appropriate
>> data or
>> >>> documentation license
>> >>>
>> >>> 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
>> >>>
>> >>> 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:%2B44%207930%20524%20155>/twitter:@archaeogeek
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> --
>> >>>> Astun Technology Ltd, The Coach House, 17 West Street,
>> Epsom, Surrey,
>> >>>> KT18 7RL, UK
>> >>>> t:+44 1372 744 009 <tel:%2B44%201372%20744%20009> w:
>> astuntechnology.com <http://astuntechnology.com>
>> twitter:@astuntech
>> >>>>
>> >>>> iShare - enterprise geographic intelligence platform
>> >>>> GeoServer, PostGIS and QGIS training
>> >>>> Helpdesk and customer portal
>> >>>>
>> >>>> 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
>> <mailto:Incubator at lists.osgeo.org>
>> >>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/incubator
>> <https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/incubator>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Jo Cook
>> >> t:+44 7930 524 155
>> <tel:%2B44%207930%20524%20155>/twitter:@archaeogeek
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Jo Cook
>> > t:+44 7930 524 155
>> <tel:%2B44%207930%20524%20155>/twitter:@archaeogeek
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Astun Technology Ltd, The Coach House, 17 West Street,
>> Epsom, Surrey, KT18
>> > 7RL, UK
>> > t:+44 1372 744 009 <tel:%2B44%201372%20744%20009> w:
>> astuntechnology.com <http://astuntechnology.com>
>> twitter:@astuntech
>> >
>> > iShare - enterprise geographic intelligence platform
>> > GeoServer, PostGIS and QGIS training
>> > Helpdesk and customer portal
>> >
>> > 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
>> <mailto:Incubator at lists.osgeo.org>
>> > https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/incubator
>> <https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/incubator>
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Cameron Shorter
>> > M +61 419 142 254 <tel:%2B61%20419%20142%20254>
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Incubator mailing list
>> > Incubator at lists.osgeo.org
>> <mailto:Incubator at lists.osgeo.org>
>> > https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/incubator
>> <https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/incubator>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- ***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>
>>
>> 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 <mailto:Incubator at lists.osgeo.org>
>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/incubator
>> <https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/incubator>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- Landon
>> "Homemade cookies. Hmmmmmmmmmm!"
>>
>> Web: www.landonblake.com <http://www.landonblake.com>
>>
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>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> ***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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