[Live-demo] Online WhatIf for OSGeo

[Cameron Shorter]

Hi Robert, Jack,

We discussed WhatIf again in our last weekly meeting.

Re size: 145 Meg is still big compared to other OSGeo-Live projects, but 
lets put aside the space requirement for the moment.

The other key OSGeo-Live criteria that is missing is a proven external 
community.

An external active community is a major indicator of a project's value 
and quality, which is why we pay so much attention to it.
Having many users log onto and use your server is great. It means that 
you have a valuable web service. But it doesn't vouch for the quality of 
the software behind the service. We want to see that a number of other 
organisations have installed, used, tweaked, improved the core software 
stack.
As I understand it, WhatIf hasn't reached this level of maturity yet.

You might want to ask Jack to dig up the "AURIN Open Source Strategy 
Report" and "AURIN Open Source Policy" that I wrote for AURIN with Chris 
Pettit and Stewart Wallace. These provide further guidance in steps to 
building a successful open source project. In particular, it discusses 
the importance of considering community building as well as just 
technical aspects of software development.

If there is an appetite to consider this internally in AURIN, I'd be 
happy to discuss further.

Warm regards, Cameron

On 3/06/2016 10:18 pm, Robert William Hutton wrote:
> On 28/05/16 17:53, Cameron Shorter wrote:
>> Hi Robert,
>> We had a talk about WhatIf at our IRC weekly meeting today and while 
>> WhatIf has potential, we had a
>> few concerns.
>> The primary concern raised was the 250 Meg disk space required. You'd 
>> need to work out some way to
>> reduce this, possibly by making use of existing libraries already on 
>> OSGeo-Live.
>
> I asked the primary developer to have a look at this, and he's managed 
> to get the war files down to 145 MB, plus an additional 9 MB for the 
> demo database.  The new release is here:
>
> https://github.com/AURIN/online-whatif/releases/tag/v1.0.0-alpha.3
>
> Obviously there are a bunch of jar files in there that are already 
> shipped on OSGeo Live as part of other projects in tomcat, but I'm not 
> sure it's kosher to try to store these centrally (I think the standard 
> is to always package these up in the war file), though that could 
> possibly save some more space.
>
>> Secondly, the case you present for the maturity of the WhatIf 
>> applicationis not very strong.
>> I'd be hoping to see more than just AURIN listed as a user to 
>> demonstratea greater user base.
>
> As What If is a web-based tool that we host (and that's free to use) 
> and that has been open-sourced relatively recently, it's not 
> surprising that we don't have a long list of others who want to host a 
> copy of it on their own webservers; they can just get a free account 
> from us.
>
>> And the openhub metrics suggest a very short history. (I suspect the 
>> openhub metrics are not
>> capturing to full development history).
>
> Sadly the development history didn't come along with the repository 
> when it was open-sourced.
>
>> You are welcome to create an install script within OSGeo Live, and 
>> then build your own version of
>> OSGeo-Live if you wish.
>
> The install script is already done.
>
> Regards,
>
> Rob
>
>
>> And you might want to start working on addressing issues above, 
>> potentially to target a future
>> OSGeo-Live release.
>>
>> Feel free to ask any questions.
>> Warm regards, Cameron
>>
>> On 27/05/2016 9:51 am, Robert Hutton wrote:
>>> On 27/05/16 07:11, Cameron Shorter wrote:
>>>> Any progress getting your application together for WhatIf to join 
>>>> OSGeo-Live?
>>>> https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc_Apply
>>>> We really should start working through an application within the 
>>>> next few days if we are going to
>>>> have time to get onto the next 10.0 release of OSGeo-Live.
>>>
>>> Hi Cameron,
>>>
>>> Here are my answers to the standard list of questions, an 
>>> easy-to-read version on google docs:
>>>
>>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XEh90Uf2Er1Cl3jE1r5Z2LAMokhcVybHc4z7tSe8O2k/edit?usp=sharing 
>>>
>>>
>>> And in plain text:
>>>
>>> Please describe your application.
>>>  * What is its name?
>>>     * Online WhatIf
>>>  * What is the home page URL?
>>>     * http://aurin.org.au/projects/portal-and-infrastructure/what-if/
>>>     * https://github.com/AURIN/online-whatif
>>>  * Which OSI approved Open Source Licence is used?
>>>     * MIT and GPLv3
>>>     * A list of dependencies and their licenses for each component:
>>>     * 
>>> https://github.com/AURIN/online-whatif/blob/master/DEPENDENCIES.md
>>>     * 
>>> https://github.com/AURIN/online-whatif-ui/blob/master/DEPENDENCIES.md
>>>     * 
>>> https://github.com/AURIN/workbenchauth/blob/master/DEPENDENCIES.md
>>>  * What does the application do and how does it add value to the 
>>> GeoSpatial stack of software?
>>>     * Online WhatIf uses existing GIS data to support some of the 
>>> most important and difficult
>>> aspects of the land planning process: analyzing the suitability of 
>>> land for different uses,
>>> projecting future land use demands, and allocating the projected 
>>> demandsto the most suitable
>>> locations. It can also be used to prepare long-term projections for 
>>> future land uses, population
>>> and housing, and employment for a user-defined area.
>>>  * Does the application make use of OGC standards? Which versions of 
>>> thestandards? Client or
>>> server? You may wish to add comments about how standards are used.
>>>     * WMS and WFS
>>>  * What language is it written in?
>>>     * Backend: Java
>>>     * Front end: JavaScript with ExtJS
>>> WMS, WFS.
>>>  * Which version of the application should be included in the next 
>>> OSGeo-Live release?
>>>     * Version 1.0
>>>  * Stability is very important to us on OSGeo-Live. If a new user 
>>> finds a bug in one application,
>>> it will tarnish the reputation of all other OSGeo-Live applications 
>>> as well. (We pay most
>>> attention to the following answers):
>>>     * If risk adverse organisations have deployed your application 
>>> into production, it would imply
>>> that these organisations have verified the stability of your 
>>> software. Has the application been
>>> rolled out to production into risk (ideally risk adverse) 
>>> organisations?Please mention some of
>>> these organisations?
>>>       * AURIN (Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network)
>>>     * Open HUB provides metrics to help assess the health of a 
>>> project. Eg:
>>> http://adhoc.osgeo.osuosl.org/livedvd/docs/en/metrics.html Could you 
>>> please ensure that your
>>> project is registered with Open HUB, and Open HUB has been updated 
>>> to reference the correct code
>>> repository(s) for your project. What is the Open HUB URL for your 
>>> project?
>>>       * https://www.openhub.net/p/online-whatif
>>>     * What is the size of the user community? You can often answer 
>>> this by mentioning downloads,
>>> or describing a healthy, busy email list?
>>>       * ~50
>>>     * What is the size of your developer community?
>>>       * 3, soon to be 4
>>>     * Do you have a bug free, stable release?
>>>       * Yes, version 1.0
>>>     * Please discuss the level of testing that your project has gone 
>>> through.
>>>       * There are many test units written in TestNG for all 
>>> functions ofthe tool.  Also the
>>> tool’s modules have been tested by AURIN's domain expert in terms of 
>>> the formulas and outputs.
>>> There is a sample project which is copied into the account of each 
>>> user after logging in. This
>>> sample project is a completed project which contains all modules 
>>> like Suitability, Demand and
>>> Allocation.
>>>     * How long has the project has had mature code.
>>>       * 2 years
>>>     * OSGeo-Live is targeted at applications that people can use 
>>> rather than libraries. Does the
>>> application have a user interface (possibly a command line 
>>> interface) that a user can interact
>>> with? (We do make an exception for Incubated OSGeo Libraries, and 
>>> will include Project Overviews
>>> for these libraries, even if they don't have a user interface.)
>>>       * Online WhatIf has a web-based user interface.
>>>     * We give preference to OSGeo Incubated Projects, or Projects 
>>> which are presented at FOSS4G
>>> conferences. If your project is involved in OSGeo Incubation, or has 
>>> been selected to be presented
>>> at FOSS4G, then please mention it.
>>>     * With around 50 applications installed on OSGeo-Live, us core 
>>> packagers do not have the time
>>> to liaise with every single project email list for each OSGeo-Live 
>>> release. So we require a
>>> volunteer (or two) to take responsibility for liaising between 
>>> OSGeo-Live and the project's
>>> communities. This volunteer will be responsible for ensuring the 
>>> installscripts and English
>>> documentation are updated by someone for each OSGeo-Live release. 
>>> Also test that the installed
>>> application and Quickstart documentation works as expected on 
>>> release candidate releases of
>>> OSGeo-Live. Who will act as the project's liaison person.
>>>       * Robert Hutton <rhutton at unimelb.edu.au>
>>>     * OSGeo-Live is Ubuntu Linux based. Our installation preference is:
>>>       * Install from UbuntuGIS or DebianGIS
>>>       * Install .deb files from a PPA
>>>       * Write a custom install script
>>>         * Online WhatIf has a custom install script for OSGeo
>>>     * Can you please discuss how your application will be installed.
>>>         * 3 WAR files installed in the local tomcat
>>>           * Front end
>>>           * Back end
>>>           * Authentication manager
>>>         * 1 PostGIS database
>>>         * 1 CouchDB database
>>>         * Layers hosted in the local geoserver
>>>         * Optional dependencies (not installed by default)
>>>           * Postfix and dovecot for emailing new user accounts
>>>     * OSGeo-Live is memory and disk constrained. Can the application 
>>> runin 512 Meg of RAM?
>>>       * No.  Minimum requirement of 1GB RAM.
>>>     * How much disk space will be required to install the 
>>> application and a suitable example
>>> application?
>>>       * 250MB
>>>     * We aim to reduce disk space by having all applications make 
>>> use ofa common dataset. We
>>> encourage applications to make use of the example datasets already 
>>> installed:
>>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Add_Project#Example_Datasets If 
>>> another dataset would be more
>>> appropriate, please discuss here. Is it appropriate, to remove 
>>> existing demo datasets which may
>>> already be included in the standard release.
>>>       * A demo dataset is included pre-loaded into PostGIS
>>>     * Each OSGeo-Live application requires a Project Overview 
>>> available under a CC By and a
>>> Quickstart available under a CC By-SA license. (You may release 
>>> under a second license as well).
>>> Will you produce this?
>>>       * Yes
>>>     * In past releases, we have included Windows and Mac installers 
>>> for some applications. It is
>>> likely we won't have space for these in future releases. However, if 
>>> there is room, would you be
>>> wishing to include Windows and/or Mac installers?
>>>       * No
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Rob
>>>
>>
>
>

-- 
Cameron Shorter,
Software and Data Solutions Manager
LISAsoft
Suite 112, Jones Bay Wharf,
26 - 32 Pirrama Rd, Pyrmont NSW 2009

P +61 2 9009 5000,  W www.lisasoft.com,  F +61 2 9009 5099