[Incubator] Contents of Incubator Digest, Vol 159, Issue 5; MOSS "heritage" project

Mon Oct 19 03:05:17 PDT 2020

Jody, Bruce, all,

IMHO, the first step should be the permanent preservation of the rediscovered MOSS codebase.
However, other tasks, including metadata, should also be considered and might be useful for future work by the Incubation Committee

The codebase has been remained unchanged for a long time (static ?).
There are no active developers or project members.
There is no project mailing list.
There is currently no point of contact on the OSGeo side.
There is no best practice yet how to cite the MOSS project in publications (citation by URL is deprecated by publishers and librarians). 
OSGeo has no process and/or physical location yet to deal with physical specimens (books, documentation, storage devices)
Do we need a role within in OSGeo to act as a "caretaker" for the project ?

I believe some of these tasks can be resolved quickly by learning other parties:

- The R project has already put a lot of thought into how to give due credit. Their approach is based on a classification of roles by the Library of Congress, USA.

- The Library of BLM in Denver has a small collection of MOSS related documents and could be contacted regarding additional documents and their digitisation.

- Once the codebase is on Osgeo GitHub, it can be recorded in the open-access repository Zenodo (www.zenodo.org, open source based, a permanent research infrastructure provided by the EC) for long time reference and citation. This would allow to cite the MOSS project and the codebase by a DOI (permanent identifier, designed to outlast URL-based links).

I can offer to update the upcoming OSGeo Website based on MOSS wiki pages and handle the tasks related to Zenodo, if we want to do that.

Best,
Peter

<peter.loewe at gmx.de>

> Gesendet: Samstag, 17. Oktober 2020 um 21:00 Uhr
> Von: incubator-request at lists.osgeo.org
> An: incubator at lists.osgeo.org
> Betreff: Incubator Digest, Vol 159, Issue 5
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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Re: MOSS "heritage" project (Jody Garnett)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2020 17:13:58 -0700
> From: Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com>
> To: Bruce Bannerman <bruce.bannerman.osgeo at gmail.com>
> Cc: OSGeo-incubator <incubator at lists.osgeo.org>
> Subject: Re: [Incubator] MOSS "heritage" project
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAOhbgAntxqUp=yQGq5iN_okKe107C8jkVqvHaxN=AJVD_LuTVQ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> I hope it won't require much effort, I really just want to put the codebase
> on osgeo github (wider reach than our gitlab), and set up a page on the
> website (perhaps link to it from the sol katz award page).
> 
> Perhaps I missed something, I am not aware of any hardcopy materials, if
> there are any it would be up to secretary at osgeo.org to manage.
> --
> Jody Garnett
> 
> 
> On Thu, 8 Oct 2020 at 17:38, Bruce Bannerman <
> bruce.bannerman.osgeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi Jody,
> >
> > I’ve been following the discussions on the Board list.
> >
> > I can still remember being trained in MOSS in the mid 80’s. It certainly
> > made an impression on me having then come from a mainly Intergraph IGDS
> > background.
> >
> > I believe that:
> >
> >
> >    - It is appropriate for OSGeo to be the ‘Home’ for the legacy MOSS IP
> >    and artefacts.
> >
> >
> >
> >    - It will probably require some effort to put this together.
> >
> >
> >
> >    - From the discussions that I’ve seen so far, I suspect that there is
> >    also hardcopy material as well that will need to be archived:
> >       - I recall a similar discussion a year or two ago about some legacy
> >       GRASS hardcopy materials.
> >       - I don’t know that a group of virtual volunteers is necessarily
> >       the right forum for preserving these hardcopy artefacts.
> >       - Where could they be physically located and preserved?
> >       - However, the hardcopy artefacts may be very important as evidence
> >       of ‘prior art’, for those organisations and countries that need to deal
> >       with ’software patents’.
> >
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Bruce
> >
> >
> > On 7 Oct 2020, at 14:54, Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Apparently the source code for the MOSS project, the work of Sol Katz, has
> > been recovered.
> > Starting an email thread with respect to providing a "home" for this
> > source code at OSGeo (figured the incubation committee was in the best
> > position to act).
> >
> > Holding on to inactive projects, is good in terms of IP precedence, and in
> > this case as a historical artifact.
> >
> > The discussion on the board has proposed a "heritage" status, we already
> > have project retiring process
> > <https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Project_Retiring_Process>, used for
> > community mapbuilder (see #322 <https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/322>).
> > --
> > Jody Garnett
> > _______________________________________________
> > Incubator mailing list
> > Incubator at lists.osgeo.org
> > https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/incubator
> >
> >
> >
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