[Qgis-psc] Sourcepole offer to port QGIS vector analysis tool to QGIS master

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Vincent,

While I agree with you generally - please keep in mind that the 
situation is a bit different here. Sourcepole developed this 
functionality already (because their customers needed more reliable 
analysis functions) and we (QGIS.ORG) did not know about this 
development. It wasn't coordinated. Also, no customer from Sourcepole 
paid for it. It was their investment.

I was trying to find a useful compromise here, knowing that it is 
against what we should do normally. But maybe the best in this situation.

I personally find it a waste of resources (both time-wise and financial 
wise) if another company would redevelop everything that Sourcepole 
already did from scratch.

I totally agree that this shouldn't be the norm - and that all companies 
that develop stuff around QGIS should announce it and coordinate. But, 
for whatever reasons, this wasn't the case here and we will have to live 
with compromises.

I am also not suggesting, that QGIS.ORG should pay for  all of this, but 
may co-finance it.

Let's try to establish better rules/processes for the future so that 
this situation doesn't happen again, but I'd like to act pragmatic and 
find the most cost-effective way - while still ensuring high quality -  
of getting to our goals. Money is not abundant - neither at QGIS.ORG, 
nor at the QGIS user base.

But as I understand Tim - he wants to start a bidding process anyway - 
for replacing the analysis tools.

Andreas

On 26.11.2015 13:08, Vincent Picavet (ml) wrote:
> Hello,
>
> A reaction to the initial proposal and Martin's comment.
>
> On the proposal, I am worried about the global process, which does not
> seem a fair way of doing things. I understand this is mainly a context
> and situational issue.
> IMHO this should never be the way we should do things. I fear that going
> further with this proposition would carry a bad image on the development
> and funding processes of QGIS. We are not really in a momentum where we
> can do exceptions to rules we are still trying to define.
>
> We (and most opensource project) have development processes going this
> way "announce what you want do, do it, enforce quality on it, review,
> and integrate it".
>
> We should not encourage a different process by funding it, even if it
> may be the easiest technical way.
>
> On 24/11/2015 17:14, Martin Dobias wrote:
>> In order to keep spending of QGIS.ORG efficient and transparent, it
>> would make sense to undertake bigger projects through a simple bidding
>> process. The board would prepare a specification with requirements and
>> any interested party would be allowed to participate. Bidders would
>> submit their proposals and the board would then award the contract to
>> the best bid. A proposal would include 1. total cost, 2. delivery
>> date, 3. draft QEP, so that it is clear what the developers want to
>> do.
> I am totally against QGIS.org managing tender bids.
>
> It would come with a lot of conflicts of interest. This is something
> which is very difficult to do well, and for an organization to gain
> trust on such a process, it would need a lot of efforts.
> Furthermore, QGIS.org operates on an international level, and
> differences of business cultures, contract management and terms and
> administrative tasks would add to the difficulty.
>
> There is a strong difference between QGIS.ORG funding things that nobody
> wants to do, and managing tender bids between competitors for feature
> development.
> While I truly support the former, the latter should be out of scope for
> the organization, and this should be clearly stated somewhere.
>
> Vincent
>
>
>
>> Regards
>> Martin
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Neumann, Andreas <a.neumann at carto.net> wrote:
>>> Hi QGIS.ORG board,
>>>
>>> As you may know, Sourcepole developed the Vector analysis tools from Scratch
>>> for QGIS enterprise. They are apparently willing to port it into QGIS master
>>> - but there are several things missing. They would do the missing parts for
>>> 25k CHF (Swiss franks) - it probably also contains a smaller share of the
>>> initial dev costs they had.
>>>
>>> The missing bits are:
>>>
>>> - porting into QGIS master
>>>
>>> - moving the code from plugin to QGIS core analysis library
>>>
>>> - create Python bindings
>>>
>>> - create unit tests
>>>
>>> -----------------------
>>>
>>> What they already did:
>>>
>>> Complete Rewrite in C++ of:
>>>
>>> - Convex Hull
>>>
>>> - Buffer
>>>
>>> - Intersect
>>>
>>> - Union
>>>
>>> - Symmetric difference
>>>
>>> - Clip
>>>
>>> - Difference
>>>
>>> - Dissolve
>>>
>>> - Eliminate sliver poylgons
>>>
>>> It allows to save the result as any OGR format, supports multi-threading and
>>> comes with a detailed error log in case of problems with invalid geometries.
>>>
>>> ---------------------------
>>>
>>> Some additional background: they already invested >200 hours for the
>>> re-development of the above methods. This equals about 35 kCHF.
>>>
>>> ----------------------------
>>>
>>> Timing: they could probably do it for the QGIS 2.16 release (feature freeze
>>> May 20, 2016). They are busy with contracts - they cannot do it earlier with
>>> the resources they have.
>>>
>>> To me, personally, this sounds like a good offer.
>>>
>>> We would have to find a solution for our short-term problems with fTools -
>>> but to me this is a very good proposal to have a good fTools replacement in
>>> the future.
>>>
>>> Andreas
>>>
>>>
>>>
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