[mapserver-dev] Expanding the MapServer Project

[Lime, Steve D (DNR)]

Well stated as usual... I agree with your thoughts on infrastructure structure. IMHO we
don't want the components to be bound to one another from a release standpoint. It's
not practical (it took 18 months to get 6.0 out) and might hinder adoption. We might 
consider some sort of integrated package though that is made up of the production 
versions of each piece- a broader ms4w if you will.

Could/should we develop criteria for considering these types mergers in the future? The
ones mentioned now are so because they are: complement MapServer, written in C/C++, are
server-based, etc...

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: mapserver-dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:mapserver-dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Frank Warmerdam
Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 11:47 AM
To: mapserver-dev at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [mapserver-dev] Expanding the MapServer Project


Folks,

I am supportive of having TinyOWS and mod_geocache join the MapServer
project.   As Daniel has mentioned they are natural compliments to
MapServer.  I haven't reviewed the source code for either, but I have
heard good things from others I trust and I have confidence in Olivier
and Thomas as developers with reasonably compatible approaches.

I don't personally mind that TinyOWS is PostGIS only.  I am only loosely
familiar with it, but I thought Chris Schmidt's FeatureServer
(http://featureserver.org/) also offers a mechanism for http feature
updates against OGR formats.  I don't think it is necessary to aim for
TinyOWS to support OGR backends though hopefully there would be room for
TinyOWS to support other spatial databases with similar capabilities to
PostGIS if folks are motivated to work on it.

I do hope that adoption of TinyOWS and mod_geocache as part of the MapServer
project will not interfere with our cooperation with other projects doing
similar things, such as GeoServer, FeatureServer, and TileCache.

If we incorporate these projects into MapServer I would expect that more
MapServer developers would take some time to become familiar with them
and be able to contribute and help maintain them.  Of course, even as
there are customary primary maintainers for parts of MapServer, I would
expect the current TinyOWS and mod_geocache developers to have primary
responsibility for these products.

 From a mechanics point of view, what are the thoughts on how these would
be handled from an infrastructure point of view?  I would like to see them
live in the MapServer SVN but if they have distinct release cycles from
MapServer perhaps they would be in somewhat distinct trees.

eg.
   svn.osgeo.org/mapserver/trunk/tinyows

with branches and tags like:

   svn.osgeo.org/mapserver/branches/tinyows-0.8
   svn.osgeo.org/mapserver/tags/tinyows-0.8.0

Note that I'm assuming then that we would have one set of MapServer
committers which also applies to TinyOWS and mod_geocache.

I see TinyOWS is already using Trac, so hopefully we could move the
contents of the track with minimum damage to OSGeo's server as
a distinct instance from MapServer.  I see mod_geocache is using
code.google.com now.  Hopefully at least the outstanding issues could
be moved to a new Trac instance unless Thomas feels it could be just
incorporated into the MapServe Trac instance.

Moving forward, I'd like to see a proponent prepare an RFC for each
project that might join addressing some of the details of how the
transition would occur, how code will be reviewed, who will be added
as a committer or PSC member and so on.  We can then discuss those
written up details and vote once things are well established.

I don't think we need to seek support from the OSGeo board.  This action
is within the purview of the MapServer project PSC.

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    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent

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