[Live-demo] Re: Disk Priorities - Project Organisation

[Cameron Shorter]

Hamish wrote:
>
>
> Cameron:
>   
>>> Infrastructure:
>>> =========
>>> * Formalise our project organisation somewhat, formalising
>>> some of our processes (similar to OSGeo project
>>> requirements).
>>>       
>
> as stated earlier, I am luke-cold on the idea of us going down
> the path of applying for incubation status.
>   
I don't care strongly about moving into incubation status. We don't need 
to do this now. But do think that there are parts of the incubation 
process which are low effort, and valuable.
> IMHO for a small project such as ourselves it kills the vibrancy
> of potential collaborators.
I agree that it is important to keep vibrancy, and don't want to impose 
anything which kills this.  I'd like to think that we can add minimal 
process, without causing the issues you mention below.
>  Also I think the license issue is
> a non-issue.
Five to ten years ago, I would have agreed with you. I've been around at 
the start of a number of Open Source projects. In particular, I made 
licencing recommendations which were followed for Geotools and 
Mapbuilder projects which were convenient and non-perscriptive at the 
time, which became quite painful to rectify 5 years later when the 
projects matured.
It is much easier if you can sort out license issues at the start.

>  All contributed scripts are required to have a
> license statement, and let's face it- we're not really creating
> a new and unique work here, we're making a conglomerate of other
> people's original works, hopefully into something who's whole is
> greater than the sum of its parts.
>
> The power and the decisions need to come bottom-up from the
> representatives of the contributing projects and the conference
> organizers. Even the suspicion of top-down or inner-clique
> decisions kills dead new+outside contributions. Keep it open,
> keep it public, keep decisions based on technical consensus of
> the group, not on strategy (aka politics). Anyone who wants to
> contribute a voice and has a good idea should get a say IMO.
>   
I hear you. I agree that if a committee is set up, that it needs to have 
a fully transparent decision making process (which is actually an OSGeo 
incubation criteria).

I would hope that it is not too dissimilar to what we have now.
> Which is a very long winded way of saying that when this project
> no longer becomes fun to work on I'll drift away on to other
> things with no hard feelings. I am interested in spending my
> time making cool new tech, not having back room votes to decide
> on which font to use or which wallpaper to use on the bike shed.
>
> If we're doing this communication thing right, there should
> never be an issue which requires a formal vote. At that point
> the community is already fractured and the project is in real
> trouble.
>
>
> Also fwiw, I will not put my self in a position to take on legal
> liability for something which pulls in binary blobs from the
> four (respectable) corners of the internet and where someone
> else has clicked-through license agreements for you, etc.
>
>
> my 2c,
> Hamish
>
>
>
>       
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>   


-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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