[MetaCRS] Motion: Accept Proj4J as a subproject

[Frank Warmerdam]

Hugues Wisniewski wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Isn't this another new version of Proj4?
> Is there enough resources to maintain all of them?
> Thanks

Hugues,

There is the PROJ.4 project which is my evolution of the source
base originally written by Gerald Evenden while he was at the USGS.
I've been primary maintainer of this code base since 1998 or so.
It is in widespread use.

There is libproj.4 which is Geralds fork of PROJ.4, still in C, started I
think in fact from his code base pre-1998 but not actually developed till
circa 2005.  It is stripped down to focus on projections only, (no datums,
dictionaries, etc).   He is maintaining this by himself.  I would suggest
it has fairly limited use by comparison to the version I'm maintaining.
Libproj.4 is not affiliated with MetaCRS or OSGeo.

There is proj4js, a JavaScript "port" of PROJ.4 though I think this is
only loosely speaking a port.  It was written by Rich Sheppard and Mike
Adair primarily for use in web clients apps (MapBuilder, etc).  It
continues to evolve, I think primarily due to work by Mike.

The Proj4J mentioned by Martin was originally developed by someone else
as a rough port of PROJ.4 to Java but I believe it has been unmaintained
for a while.  I'm not sure how widely it is used, but there is some demand
for a lightweight Java library in the Java community.  Martin would like
to see Proj4J get some love and care to fill that role and is willing to
do some of this himself.  As we see some others have also expressed an
interest in helping.  Like Proj4js, I think Proj4J is only loosely speaking
a port of the original code though to be honest I've never looked at it
or proj4js closely at all.

As PROJ.4 maintainer, I consider Proj4js and Proj4J as distinct activities
only loosely aligned with PROJ.4 (the C library).

Whether these projects have enough developer resources to be well maintained
is a good question.  Certainly we have relatively few developers spread over
quite a few fairly distinct packages.  But with Martin, Landon and Justin
"stepping up" for Proj4J it in theory has as many or more developers than
the other subprojects.

Best regards,
-- 
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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