[Live-demo] Re: Prune in the OSGeoLive DVD?

[Cameron Shorter]

Hamish, good points.

activityworkshop, it does look like your project is a good candidate for 
osgeo-live.
My impression of the project so far, with minimal review, is that there 
is one developer (yourself?), 10 to 20 translators, and maybe 100 to 
1000 users? How many downloads do you get?
Is this about right?

My assessment is that you have a very healthy project, which is in its 
early stages of growth.
It is driven by one person, yourself, who is probably quite a good 
programmer, but would benefit from some marketing experience. You'd also 
benefit from having some more people looking through your code.

Your project is a prime candidate for OSGeo-Live, once you can provide 
the confidence that the project is stable and healthy. A bit of 
attention to your website will attract you more developers and users.

I'd be happy to mentor you through this early stage if you would like, 
and give advice on how to improve your marketing message, and attract 
developers.

My advice so far is:
* Update your website so that it has all the key links that people look 
for in obvious places: "Downloads", "Contact Us", "About", "Documentation"

* Put your code into svn or similar, and make it easy to find. (I might 
be looking in the wrong place).

* Set up an issue tracker

* Start building up your projects processes (a medium term goal). Eg: 
Document your release process, ...

I expect that you should be able to put all these things in place before 
the next release of OSGeo-Live ~ Feb/March next year. I'd then be more 
confident recommending your project as a project up to OSGeo Live's quality.


On 10/10/10 07:02, Hamish wrote:
> activityworkshop:
>    
>>    I wonder if you would perhaps be interested in including the "Prune"
>> application in some future release?
>>      
> looks good to me, I support it.
> do you fall under OSM's umbrella, or are you an independent project?
>
> Cameron:
>    
>> I'm wary of the OSGeo-Live disk promoting every possible
>> application, as it will just confuse new users.
>> We do have similar applications packaged for other domains,
>> but it is useful if we can recommend the best of breed.
>>      
> I'm not so worried about that- as long as we have a (better) menu hierarchy
> in place. I mean we already have $x apps which act as a map server or
> read/write geotiff, shapefile, gpx format. And that's a good thing!
>
> more importantly, I don't want to and don't think we should be trying to
> make that decision for the user if the competing projects are more or less
> in the same league. Set a standard, present the options, and let the user
> decide what fits their needs.
>
> e.g. should we pick and only ship 1 map server? hell no.
> that is not to say that we shouldn't have our standards though.
>
> activityworkshop:
>    
>> It's written in Java, runs on Win/Mac/Linux, is GPL'd
>> and already included in Debian (from Squeeze onwards) and
>> Ubuntu (from Meerkat onwards).  So I'm guessing that it
>> wouldn't be too difficult to include on the DVD,
>>      
> You already sort of answered this but does it require sun's java, or is
> if happy with openjdk? (is that experience imperfect?) I am a bit concerned
> that eventually we will have to move to openjdk if the legal winds change
> any more than they already have, and it is best to be ready.
>
> Are packages for lucid available from an ubuntu launchpad ppa? (if not
> you can probably submit them to UbuntuGIS's one) or as a simple .deb
> download?
>
> Cameron:
>    
>> (We are reaching capacity on the DVD disk)
>>      
> not a bad question to ask, but fyi I've just cleared out 600mb.
>
> activityworkshop:
>    
>> It also plays nicely with gpsbabel, gnuplot and exiftool, but doesn't
>> require them.
>>      
> gpsbabel and gnuplot are already installed, exiftool is not AFAIK but
> would be simple to add.
>
> activityworkshop:
>    
>> Ok, so those requirements sound perhaps a little too demanding for Prune
>> at the moment.
>>      
> those are not hard requirements, but they certainly help. Most OSM tools
> would not meet them right now, although most OSGeo tools do. The challenge
> Cameron is describing (if I may paraphrase) is to get as many great apps on
> the livedvd as possible without diluting to the quality. And as far as
> first impressions go it only takes one ill placed bug in one app to smear
> the impression of everything else. So it pays to be a bit cautious.
>
>
> anyway perhaps most importantly I am happy for the upstream involvement and
> interest. A lot flows from that.
>
>
> regards,
> Hamish
>
>
>
>
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>    


-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Director
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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