[Incubator] CONTRIBUTING.md and LICENSE.md not a requirement for incubating projects?

[Cameron Shorter]

Thanks Jody,

I think you have some good practical ideas here, which should be fairly 
easy to gain consensus around.

I'd suggest the next step would be draw up ideas into a draft (probably 
using existing wiki as a basis) which we can comment on and then vote on.

This is not time critical, so could wait until after marketing 
initiatives are less time consuming.

Cheers, Cameron


On 13/9/17 2:56 am, Jody Garnett wrote:
> Morning Cameron good to hear from you.
>
> In a couple email threads, and the most recent board meeting, we are 
> getting input on what makes a good community project (and what kind of 
> projects we wish to promote as open source spatial).
>
> I love the idea of aligning the very short community project checklist 
> and the incubation checklist. In particular we hit on a great way to 
> communicate our incubation ideals during the marketing/rebranding by 
> emphasizing open, geospatial and fair.
>
> 1) CONTIRBUTING.md and LICENSE.md are best practices from github 
> allowing projects to be searched effectively, and the appropriate 
> instructions shown to those making pull requests (not as effective as 
> a CLA but something).
>
> 2) Check the headers - I am hoping for something lighter weight then 
> the provenance review (which requires checking history). Several 
> projects have done multi-file searches (we can provide a grep example) 
> to detect files without a header. This subject has been complicated by 
> our recent osgeo legal advice that headers are not required as many of 
> have been taught (but that LICENSE file is).
>
> This provides three easy checks, all of which introduce our priorities 
> as a software foundation:
>
> - fair: Check for a contirbuting.md <http://contirbuting.md> file 
> (required for github, but need should be met somehow for other platforms)
> - open: The quick check is looking for a LICENSE.md (github) or 
> LICENSE.txt file and confirming it is on the OSI approved list. I hope 
> a grep can identify any files with out headers and a void a time sync.
> - geospatial: This is the tricky one to confirm - any suggestions?
>
> Implicit in this is a tension between being flexible (many projects 
> can show they are open to contributions by citing their developers 
> guide rather than including a CONTRIBUTING file) and prescriptive 
> (tell projects exactly what to do). I would personally err on 
> communication; we are doing open source advocacy here so it is more 
> important that projects *are* participatory than that they have 
> exactly the right files.
>
> There are a few more requirements from the discuss list focusing on 
> borderline cases between open source and free software. I would like 
> us to take care to be kind to each other discussing this balance and 
> not lose sight of our strong core of geospatial/open/fair.
> --
> Jody Garnett
>
> On 12 September 2017 at 02:32, Cameron Shorter 
> <cameron.shorter at gmail.com <mailto:cameron.shorter at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi incubation committee,
>
>     One thing the OSGeo-Live community have picked up is that OSGeo
>     Community projects are being asked for CONTRIBUTING.md and
>     LICENSE.md files [1], however there isn't an obvious corresponding
>     requirement for this in the OSGeo Incubation Graduation Checklist [2].
>
>     I'd suggest that the Graduation Checklist probably needs updating.
>
>     I also notice the requirement for Community projects to check
>     headers for Open Source compliance, although there isn't  specific
>     guidance on how such checks should be applied. It sounds very
>     similar to a "Provenance Review". Our experience with OSGeo
>     incubation is that the "Provenance Review" is usually the biggest
>     time sink and stumbling block for projects going through
>     incubation. I'd be interested to hear Jody's thoughts on this.
>
>     Warm regards, Cameron
>
>     [1] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Community_Projects
>     <https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Community_Projects>
>
>     [2]
>     http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/project_graduation_checklist.html
>     <http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/project_graduation_checklist.html>
>
>
>     -- 
>     Cameron Shorter
>     Open Technologies Consultant
>     Geospatial & Software Architect
>     Open Source Developer
>
>     M+61 (0) 419 142 254 <tel:+61%20419%20142%20254>
>     http://shorter.net
>
>
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>
>

-- 
Cameron Shorter
Open Technologies Consultant
Geospatial & Software Architect
Open Source Developer

M +61 (0) 419 142 254
http://shorter.net

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