On 1/14/06, Chris Holmes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
I think that it will do us no harm to look in to membership and there may well be benefits to us. Interestingly at one of the recent OGC meetings the Autodesk rep was very much against open source but I guess that didn't reflect corporate opinion.
The other important use of the foundation may be to hold OGC membership for the opensource comunity. I have looked at ways for GeoTools to join the OGC but sine we are not a legal entity we can't enter into a contract. If this foundation can be a member then it would solve some of the problems we've had getting some develiopers access to developing specs, meetings etc.
I have to agree with Chris here as I fall evenly between these two groups. I like to see nice code but I also need it to be useable for work.
Ian
Quoting Bryce L Nordgren <[EMAIL PROTECTED] >:
>
>
> Jody wrote on 01/13/2006 12:54:31 PM:
>
> > Chris Holmes wrote:
>
> Besides, I might suggest something foolish like forming a top-level
> project
> of the Apache Software Foundation. Or perhaps the Free Software
> Foundation
> (GNU). Either would probably have infrastructure and _resources_
> which
> could be leveraged. (Because 25 people does not a Foundation make.)
Note that this foundation will have resources - the impetus is that
Autodesk is open sourcing their map server software, and needs an
independant place to put it. They decided to team up with the
MapServer community, got the main members to sign NDA's, and launched
the MapServer Foundation. Which kind of backfired on them, as the MS
community felt left out. This is their second attempt. They've
pledged to support the foundation for its first year. This is why many
OS geo types are excited, because there is funding. They're paying to
fly a number of people (me included) out to this meeting. Though yes,
I'm still less than convinced that an entirely new foundation should be
formed. And if it is going to be formed, if GeoTools should be a part
of it. There's arguments both ways. But Autodesk very much wants this
to happen, and there's sufficient os geo community members who do as
well, so it will be happening, we just have to figure out if we want to
be a part of it.
I think that it will do us no harm to look in to membership and there may well be benefits to us. Interestingly at one of the recent OGC meetings the Autodesk rep was very much against open source but I guess that didn't reflect corporate opinion.
But at the very least it could be nice to have legal protection for our
code, since now we just sign it over to the PMC, which is not a real
legal entity - if we were to get sued would they come after us as
individuals? But if it's time for us to worry about that, perhaps we
should look in to joining Apache. Having a geo sub-project of Jakarta
could be very nice indeed.
The other important use of the foundation may be to hold OGC membership for the opensource comunity. I have looked at ways for GeoTools to join the OGC but sine we are not a legal entity we can't enter into a contract. If this foundation can be a member then it would solve some of the problems we've had getting some develiopers access to developing specs, meetings etc.
One of the main roles I see of the PMC is to maintain the
DNA of the project, to see it move forward in a collaborative way, and
I think you do a great job at that, even if it's just showing up on the
lists with some random topics every once in awhile. It keeps us aware
of how people actually want to use GeoTools, instead of us hard core
developers just aiming for programming perfection, sometimes at the
expense of being useful to real users.
I have to agree with Chris here as I fall evenly between these two groups. I like to see nice code but I also need it to be useable for work.
Ian
--
Ian Turton
http://www.geotools.org
