[OSGeo-Discuss] Distribution Special Interest Groups

[Frank Warmerdam]

Silke Reimer wrote:
>> My hope is that within EOGeo we could in the short term do two things.
> 
> Are there concrete plans? What are the obstacles to start with it
> now? And do you really mean EOGeo or OSGEO?

Silke,

Of course, I meant OSGeo.

/me repeats to himself ... OSGeo, OSGeo, OSGeo ...

I'm sure that won't be the last time I do that.

The plans are just the discussion we are having here on this list.

The obstacles to starting right now?   Well, I think we need some
sort of critical mass of interest before we ought to start something.
I think we have that already.

It might also be good to know which nut we wish to crack first.
Specifically focus on the RPM issue?  Or perhaps start with the
"meta packagers" list?

>>  o Have a mailing list and "special interest group" for packaging
>>    in general.  This would pull together people doing packaging in many
>>    environments for discussions, and hopefully also pull in upstream
>>    maintainers from some packages.  This is a bit like the "packagers
>>    BOF" I held last summer.  
> 
> Sorry, I think I missed this. What is BOF standing for?

BOF is "Birds Of a Feather" and generally refers to a side meeting of
a special interest group at a conference.  I called a BOF for packagers
at the OSGeo'05 meeting last summer and we had good discussions though
nothing concrete came out of it.

OK, my proposal (and I'll shortly update the wiki page) is that we:

  o Form a meta-packaging mailing list.  This is a mailing list that folks
    from all the geospatial packaging efforts *and* all upstream packages
    interested in being properly packaged, are encouraged to join to
    discuss packaging issues.

  o Form an RPM oriented special interest group with it's own mailing list
    to share work on RPMs.  The initial focus of distributed binaries would
    be Fedora Core but the intent is that eventually we would offer binaries
    for a variety of RPM based systems.  This SIG would initially use
    Intevation's GForge infrastructure since the foundation isn't really
    ready to start any new formal projects.  But it is possible that in a
    few months we would attempt to migrate as a full fledged OSGeo project
    if we are successful.

Note that SIGs don't currently have any formal standing with the foundation,
so they are lightweight for us to establish.  I will hopefully be able to
wield my supreme executive power (ha!) to beg a mailing list on mail.osgeo.org
for each of the above.   We can also continue to colonize the osgeo wikispace
with information on our effort.

   http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Distribution_Special_Interest_Groups

Does this seem like a reasonable point of departure?

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org