I think this is a really key point and the participation should be
willing, not forced, to ensure that everyone is really committed to
this.
It is also important to understand that the MTSC or whatever subset/
superset of them would not be defining the Foundation but actually
participating with other stakeholders (i.e. Autodesk, DM
Solutions, ...) to define the Foundation.
I'm not sure this is really clear ... The participation of a group
from the MapServer community in the definition of the Foundation is
to ensure the proposed foundation is one that MapServer would want to
join.
To me, Paul's proposal is about defining who, within the MapServer
community, can and should shoulder the responsibility of
participating in the definition of the proposed foundation. From
that point of view, it seems to me that the people who will be most
affected by the governance and structure of the foundation are the
core contributors to the software - the MTSC. The community will
also be affected, but if the contributors can't live with it, it
isn't going to happen. If the contributors can live with it, does it
necessarily follow that the community will also be able to live with
it? And if they can't?
I am starting to believe that from a user's point of view (that's me,
I'm not a developer of MapServer) it will actually make very little
difference to me in the long term since all I want to do is download
the software and build tools on top of it. As long as the
contributors are happy that they can continue to develop and maintain
MapServer, I'm ambivalent about where the project lives. I suspect
that the other ~1900 people on the mapserver-users mailing list that
we haven't heard from are probably in the same boat. They don't
really care about these issues as long as MapServer continues to be a
kick-ass web-mapping platform and however the developers and
maintainers choose to run the project, good for them!
The members of the MTSC have earned their position based on the merit
of their contributions to the project. They have also earned the
right to make decisions (as a group) on the future of the project on
behalf of the community of users. If they know what's good for them,
they'll consult the community. But in the end, they need to be the
ones to take the decision and we have to accept that they are acting
in the best interest of the project ...
I probably haven't expressed this well ... Flame away :)
Paul
On 17-Dec-05, at 6:36 AM, Bart van den Eijnden wrote:
Hi Paul,
I for one could be comfortable with the situation you sketch.
But another important question which should be posed is: "do (all
of) the developers want to put so much time and effort into
something non-technical" ? Some of them might be interested to do
that, but others might not be.
Best regards,
Bart
Paul Ramsey wrote:
Mapserverers:
You may have noticed that things have been relatively quiet since
the initial Mapserver Foundation open letter, and associated
flurry of response. One of the reasons is that the folks behind
the open letter are a little shell shocked and trying to figure
out how to move forward in a way that is both inclusive and not
hopelessly inefficient.
The big question they are wrestling with is: Who can make
decisions on matters regarding the future of Mapserver?
It is not an easy problem, because among the questions that have
to be answered are:
- Should Mapserver join a 'Foundation' at all?
- If so, under what terms of membership?
- If so, under what name?
I would put to you, the 'community at large' the proposition that
Mapserver already has a good decision making body that has the
interests of Mapserver at heart: the Mapserver Technical Steering
Committee. The MTSC can make the final decisions on all of the
above questions quite capably providing they:
- Take the temperature of the overall community before making big
decisions.
- Hold their discussions in an open forum so all viewpoints get a
hearing.
The MTSC might want to add some advisory members, so they feel
that their voting numbers reflect a broader community, and I
think that is reasonable too, again, as long as they first put
the names out for a public hearing and make sure there are no
substantive objections to their choices.
So, I put the question to you, do you feel comfortable with the
MTSC making some 'big decisions' for Mapserver over the next few
months, providing that they make their decisions within an open
framework of discussion?
For the record, the current members of the MTSC are: Steve Lime
(Chair), Daniel Morissette, Frank Warmerdam, Sean Gilles, Assefa
Yewondwossen, Howard Butler and Perry Nacionales.
Paul
--
+------------------------+
| Bart van den Eijnden |
| OSGIS, Open Source GIS |
| http://www.osgis.nl |
+------------------------+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|Paul Spencer [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|Applications & Software Development |
|DM Solutions Group Inc http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
