[QGIS-Developer] External providers in QGIS

[Paolo Cavallini]

Hi all,
following the discussion on qgis-dev ML:
https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/2018-January/051701.html
it has been proposed to remove all external providers (namely OTB,
already removed, GRASS, and SAGA) from Processing in QGIS2 (GDAL will
remain as QGIS cannot be built without). This raised a number of
concerns, so PSC decided not to rush removing them from the upcoming 3.0
release, and to open a wider discussions about this, involving all the
interested parties, to find an optimal solution.
If volunteers outside QGIS core team, ideally from the respective
backends, could take the maintenance of these providers, not much would
change for the end user. If not, this will mean effectively missing
hundreds of algs from QGIS.
I personally propose to reinstate the OTB plugin with Rashad (from OTB)
as maintainer.
QGIS.ORG will seek to support any decision made with funding where possible.
Looking forward for your feedback.
All the best.
-- 
Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
QGIS & PostGIS courses: http://www.faunalia.eu/training.html
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