[Live-demo] Next Version - New Name ?!

[Judit Mays]

hello all,

as important as it is to start working on the march release early to
avoid last minute work (which will occur, no matter what), I find it
also important to take time in solving the issue regarding the future
name, independent of the development/scripting time line.

Since OSGeo is the umbrella for all of us, this should IMHO somehow be
incorporated in the name. Especially since the background of this piece
of work is so diverse, and the use cases are getting more every time you
turn around. There are currently: LiveDVD + Arramagong + GISVM + Live
Demo + Click2Try + LiveUSB + ... Probably I have missed one or the other
already.

Each of these names has its reason, but since we can't name the thing
"Click2TryArramagongGISVMLiveDVDUSBDemo" and expect people to remember
or even use it, and since reducing the name to one part and thus
neglecting all the other parts of the whole thing, I would opt for a new
name on the basis of OSGeo.

Another pro for "osgeo" in the name would be to strengthen how OSGeo is
perceived from the outside.
Since the LiveDVD-Project is a combined effort from many many OSGeo
projects (much effort from some and less from others), I personally find
it most reasonable to have OSGeo give its name. The name is the one
thing for identity. Therefore the name should represent OSGeo the best
way possible.

apt-get install osgeo-gis (just as an example!)
would much better inform the potential user about the sources than would
apt-get install arramagong

Praise to the main involved parties (Lisasoft as company, as well as
several individuals like RicardoPinho) should of course be clearly
published in an appropriate manner. Intro-page, about-page,
documentation-start-page, history-page, ...
After all, Cameron gave a calculation of man-hours (or rather weeks and
months) involved in the production of the 2009-conference-DVD, in an
email somewhere (forgot where exactly). This needs to be recognised and
appreciated (and it is, I should add).

One personal note at the end: I have experienced that due to
language/culture differences, people sometimes find my saying offensive.
I have tried to avoid this, but in case this happened anyway and someone
feels offended by reading this mail, I truly apologize and assure you,
no offence meant! I would appreciate an off-list comment though to
better my writing next time.

Kind regards,
Judit


Hamish schrieb:
> Cameron wrote:
>> * I think we need to consolidate our web pages and brand
>> them consistently. We have web pages under "livedvd, gisvm,
>> arramagong, ..."
>> I think that our project name and mission should not be
>> tied to the distribution medium, because we can be much more
>> than that. What we have is a "build process for OSGeo
>> software  (and documentation)". Currently the build
>> process is tied to Ubuntu, but in the future we will likely
>> have spin offs to other platforms. Eg, we might put out a
>> documentation or tutorial release which is available on
>> windows.
> 
> While I agree that de-messing is good I respectfully disagree that all
> of what we do should fall under one name, and that the name should be
> arramagong. 
> 
> as far as the VM and DVD (+ future usb) being children on the same
> arramagong (grand)parent, that seems logical enough to me. but they
> are not quite siblings either... the DVD is an output, the GISVM is the
> method. and the main Live* mailing list, wiki page, tracker etc are for
> use by all osgeo-live projects, not just arramagong (nothing saying that
> the first link on the page, in bold letters and blinking can't be arr.
> though...)
> 
> My point it that the greater live-demo* project is a number of things & we
> shouldn't force it onto a single track. It just so happens that arramagong
> is the leader right now. (largely due to the fact that it is the only one
> with any formal support, which is a good thing and I certainly don't mind
> encouraging that!)  At this point I find it hard to justify having that
> branding move beyond the conference distro though.
> 
> 
> [*] "live-demo" borrowing from the mailing list name, which is not quite
> right either as we can do more than just demos.. perhaps live-osgeo is a
> better catch-all name?
> 
> 
> fwiw the DebianGIS mailing list's email is grass-pkg at ...debian.org due
> to similar historical reasons & unexpected growth, as the livedvd/ dir
> in our SVN. No one seems to mind as far as I know and it doesn't seem to
> hurt adoption by non-grass users. If you're already there you know what
> it's about, it's just internals.
> 
> 
> I hope that we can work on the USB-stick version, and that what we learn
> from adding yet-another medium might provide enough perspective to the
> overall hierarchy to sort this all out.
> 
> 
>> * I'm hopeful that at least one of the projects we have
>> packaged in the liveDVD can be moved into
>> DebianGIS/UbuntuGIS projects. So that the LiveDVD project
>> can be used as a stepping stone toward getting a project
>> into 
> 
> fwiw, lessons learnt have already helped with official packaging, even if
> they are not high profile. The road to becoming an official package is
> long and "getting it to work" is just one small (but rather important)
> step.
> 
> 
> Ossim is actively going for it, I hope having them with us can help them
> to succeed.  (I looked over the new install script, good job!)
> 
> 
>> Ubuntu. Ideally, we will document and automate this
>> process as we go. While the arramagong project has been good
>> for attracting uses, we would attract significantly more
>> users if trying osgeo software was as easy as "apt-get
>> install arramagong".
> 
> Just to let you know, if that is intended to set up desktop backgrounds
> & icons it would be very unlikely to ever become an official debian
> package. It is impressively strict. I've no idea about Ubuntu policies,
> just that they are looser.
> 
> the arramagong collection of help pages & graphics could be put into
> a doc dir, with a so named script to load the main page in the webbrowser
> or something I guess..... ??
> 
> we could put out something like a "live-osgeo" package which just pulled
> in packages we like, but DebianGIS and debianEdu-geo already have those
> packages, so we'd just be making a third duplicate...
> 
> 
> 
> 2c ramble,
> Hamish
> 

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