[Qgis-psc] Use of free software, take #2 and resolutions page:

[Tim Sutton]

Hi Jürgen

> On 12 Apr 2020, at 00:29, Jürgen E. Fischer <jef at norbit.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi Tim,
> 
> On Sat, 11. Apr 2020 at 00:09:45 +0100, Tim Sutton wrote:
>> Rationale: Free software should be the first choice for all the tools we use.
>> We should choose proprietary alternatives only when it is proven that free
>> software fails to provide a reasonable solution. The PSC should vote in case
>> a proprietary solution is suggested.
>> 
>> With
>> 
>> Proposal: As a matter of policy when deploying software tools to manage the
>> QGIS.org project, we should consider licensing, functionality, convenience,
>> effort, cost, time, available volunteers, security, privacy, how much effort
>> is required to maintain the solution. Given two solutions that appear
>> satisfactory with regards to these requirements, one being FOSS and one being
>> proprietary, we should  of make use of the FOSS solution in preference to the
>> proprietary solution.
> 
>> ---
> 
>> Please vote here if you are OK with these proposed changes and I will be
>> happy to submit a pull request.
> 
> -1  I believe the point of the resolution is to emphasize that using free
>    software should be the rule and using proprietary software should be an
>    exception.
> 
>    But I think "it is proven" is too strong as it suggests big effort
>    and could be replaced with "we agree".
> 
>    All other points and more are IMHO covered by "reasonable solution".
> 
>    Also not sure if that mandatory PSC vote is required as that would also
>    require voting in case there obviously is no free alternative to some
>    proprietary tool we want to use.
> 

Thanks for your reply Jürgen!

Well the reason I raised this it that I don’t think we all share the same definition of what a ‘reasonable solution’ is - IMHO it is better to be explicit rather than implicit. I actually don’t think my proposed update to the motion goes far enough in terms of being explicit:

It would be reassuring to know that this is not a pre-cursor to a major disruption to the infrastructure of the project, where we land up running around spending a lot of time, project funds and effort trying to replace tools that already work for us with new things. And if that is the plan (as appears to be the case from Paolo’s list of replacement candidates) who will do the migrations to the new platform and manage the transition smoothly, and at what cost?

Another concern I have is what we consider acceptable FOSS licenses here. From prior discussions on this list there are different outlooks on what acceptable licenses are - will we accept BSD? MIT? GPL with amendments, dual licensed software? Hosted buy third party versus self-hosted? Hosted FOSS by third party with a cost (e.g. Loomio, Wordpress). 

For me the proposal is still half-baked until these things are all well defined. Let me stress finally that I have absolutely no objection to using FOSS for our infrastructure, I have objection to taking our project funds and energies and putting them into this migrating stuff over to FOSS when the current solution already works well for us, instead of using our time and funds for actually useful stuff like supporting bug fixes, getting QGIS in front of more users etc. So let’s make the plan clear, the responsibilities clear, the process non-disruptive, the licensing requirements as to what licenses and hosting arrangements clear, the cost implications clear, and then I am "on-team" too.

Regards

Tim



> 
> Jürgen
> 
> -- 
> Jürgen E. Fischer           norBIT GmbH             Tel. +49-4931-918175-31
> Dipl.-Inf. (FH)             Rheinstraße 13          Fax. +49-4931-918175-50
> Software Engineer           D-26506 Norden            https://www.norbit.de
> QGIS release manager (PSC)  Germany                    IRC: jef on FreeNode
> _______________________________________________
> Qgis-psc mailing list
> Qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-psc

 




---

Tim Sutton
tim at qgis.org




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-psc/attachments/20200412/94ac1ab8/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: qgis-icon-60x60.png
Type: image/png
Size: 4401 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-psc/attachments/20200412/94ac1ab8/attachment.png>