[mapserver-dev] MapServer collect Project Info for presentations, abstracts...

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 3/2/2011 1:31 PM, Astrid Emde wrote:
> Hello mapserver-devs,
>
> I created a trac-wiki page:
>
> http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/wiki/ProjectInfo
>
> The idea about this page is to collect MapServer Project Info for
> presentations, abstracts...
>
> It would be nice to find information like history, number of mailing-list
> members, committers, challenges of the last/new version...  It would be
> easy to keep this page up to date and take it as a base for presentations.
>
> The actual reason, why I created this page was that we have a presentation
> on FOSSGIS in april 2011 about "MapServer 6.0" and it would be good to
> collect the information and reuse it maybe for the next event which may be
> FOSS4G.
>
> We also want to make code examples and screenshots and it would be good to
> reuse this material in the MapServer documentation or for the next
> presentation.
>
> I discussed all this already with Jeff. What do you think about this idea?
> Or is there a similar page with this information already?
>
> I do not want to stress you with this idea as you are working on the next
> release. It is more the idea on proving documentation and material that we
> all can use.

Astrid,

I have a few of thoughts on this.

1. we already have a process where we document the changes that we are 
making. While this may not be easy for everyone to follow, your page 
might assist in this by collecting links into a comment place. For 
example, there are these documents already:

a. Rev 6.0 Release Plan
b. A list of RFC documents describing implementation of new features and 
code changes and the use cases for them
c. The RFC's reference Tickets for code that is planned, submitted, and 
documented so delivery of the features can be tracked.
d. List archives if you want to read more about the discussion of what, 
why and how some specific feature was built.

2. I do not think that the dev's want to update another document which 
would be somewhat redundant when compared to the above.

3. Depending on when planning takes place, and what availability of 
resources are, reality can very greatly from a potential plan so any 
page like you suggest needs this caveat and probably needs to be changed 
as plans firm up. For example, 6.0 is trying to freeze and the release 
plan still has things on it that we already know will not get integrated.

So the bottom line from my point of view, others are welcome to 
disagree, is that having a page like you suggest might have some value 
to people building presentation and if you want to build something and 
put in the effort to vet the content with the developers and to keep it 
up to date, that would be a great way to contribute to the project. I do 
not think it is realistic to expect the developers to keep this page up 
to date as we find it hard to keep the current documents up to date 
until the feature is done and integrated.

Best regards,
   -Steve W