[OSGeoLive] py3 ML 2020, was ODC OSGeo Community Project

[Brian M Hamlin]

Hi Markus and Alex -

   the osgeolive 2020 python3 environment is not yet alpha. Already in 
meetings, there are different ideas of how to build python, between the 
voting members, and I mean the kind of different ideas that do not 
overlap much .. there are just different ways to install python3 and 
they are not the same results or process.

   perhaps you read the trac ticket #2247, the famous-but-not-famous  
'Python and Jupyter' task for osgeolive 2020. the first alpha builds of 
osgeolive may be quite different, and people are busy .. so perhaps a 
little bit of positive communication up front will help to avoid 
distressing or non-overlapping design of python3 libs on osgeolive 2020.

   miniconda linux is not an option for osgeolive;  straight deb-only 
install is preferred by the os-level maintainers;  pip has improved 
multiple times over several years and has signed installs available, and 
certainly python-only libraries are the least friction.  Security is not 
the focus of osgeolive, but it is foolish to ignore

   I welcome your input, and the reason I write is that you two are both 
aware of the steady and continuing body of MachineLearning / 
Statistically-driven prediction  and even AI systems of some kinds, 
expanding from python3.  I can also say quickly that I do not think that 
a GPU-aware DeepLearning setup is a priority on osgeolive, but it could 
be done, maybe a side-project.

   -Brian