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

[Jody Garnett]

Thanks Cameron, and indeed I would like to wait until we hear from Angelos
(who had some good ideas) and until this contract with Get Interactive is
done (so I have some more enthusiasm to help).

--
Jody Garnett

On 13 September 2017 at 14:16, Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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 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>
> 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
>>
>> [2] 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 <+61%20419%20142%20254>http://shorter.net
>>
>>
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>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/incubator
>>
>
>
> --
> Cameron Shorter
> Open Technologies Consultant
> Geospatial & Software Architect
> Open Source Developer
>
> M +61 (0) 419 142 254 <+61%20419%20142%20254>http://shorter.net
>
>
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