Re: [Ubuntu] UbuntuGIS PSC Creation
Dear Alan, at first thank You for Your work (and also for work of others in this project). I am following UbuntuGIS for some time and I started to maintain my own PPA fork [1] some time ago, because I needed full control of packages. I am little bit involved in packaging. Here is my opinion: 1. This project definitely needs a strong leader with experience. 2. UbuntuGIS lacks clear roadmap. Maybe it is loosing skilled hands just because they are not aware about fact they are needed. Preparing roadmap must by one of the most important tasks of project leader and PSC. 3. Other very important task is clearly stated work flow in terms how to cooperate with Debian on regular basis. 4. Still at least by my opinion, the PPA naming stable, testing, unstable is very confusing for all newcomers which automatically expect the same behavior as in Debian. If this schema remains the same, or it will change to something other, it needs clearly documented workflow how packages migrates from testing, staging to production and how often and under which circumstances production packages are upgraded. 5. As in other voluntary projects, there is a lack of manpower. But on the other hand, there are no rules which new contributors or uploaders must meet. Also I do not see any list of free tasks for new people. 6. The last one is the question if there is some possibility to get some support from OSGeo [2] ? Even if these goals are unrealistic, I think having them is must for further grow of this project. 1 - https://launchpad.net/~imincik/+archive/gis 2 - http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Binary_Distribution Thanks, Ivan Mincik On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 6:02 PM, Alan Boudreault aboudrea...@mapgears.comwrote: Hi, As a few of you may already know, I've recently decided to quit my job at Mapgears (http://t.co/aIgMAFlf2h). I'm still working at Mapgears as a part-time job but my availability for ubuntugis is limited. For to goodness of UbuntuGIS, I would like to create a PSC (Project Steering Committee) for the project. There are many competent people on this list and a lot of ubuntu users. The PSC responsabilities would include: - setting the overall development road map - improve collaboration with DebianGIS - trying to bring more developers! - etc. I also think UbuntuGIS needs a new senior package maintainer. Jérome did a great job during the summer and will continue to work on the project with Mapgears.. but he is still at school for the moment. I'd like to hear what you think... Best Regards, Alan -- Alan Boudreault http://www.mapgears.com/ ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki
Re: [Ubuntu] UbuntuGIS PSC Creation
On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 12:41 PM, Ivan Mincik ivan.min...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Alan, at first thank You for Your work (and also for work of others in this project). I am following UbuntuGIS for some time and I started to maintain my own PPA fork [1] some time ago, because I needed full control of packages. I am little bit involved in packaging. Here is my opinion: 1. This project definitely needs a strong leader with experience. 2. UbuntuGIS lacks clear roadmap. Maybe it is loosing skilled hands just because they are not aware about fact they are needed. Preparing roadmap must by one of the most important tasks of project leader and PSC. 3. Other very important task is clearly stated work flow in terms how to cooperate with Debian on regular basis. 4. Still at least by my opinion, the PPA naming stable, testing, unstable is very confusing for all newcomers which automatically expect the same behavior as in Debian. If this schema remains the same, or it will change to something other, it needs clearly documented workflow how packages migrates from testing, staging to production and how often and under which circumstances production packages are upgraded. 5. As in other voluntary projects, there is a lack of manpower. But on the other hand, there are no rules which new contributors or uploaders must meet. Also I do not see any list of free tasks for new people. 6. The last one is the question if there is some possibility to get some support from OSGeo [2] ? Ivan, The most obvious way in which OSGeo could show support is by having UbuntuGIS apply for incubation as an OSGeo project. Having a PSC is one step on the way to being a full fledged OSGeo project. There is also some possibility of financial support from OSGeo for UbuntuGIS but at the very least there would need to be a clear plan before any financial commitment might be made (IMHO). Best regards, -- ---+-- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, warmer...@pobox.com light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush| Geospatial Software Developer ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki
Re: [Ubuntu] UbuntuGIS PSC Creation
On 11/06/2013 12:41 PM, Ivan Mincik wrote: Dear Alan, at first thank You for Your work (and also for work of others in this project). I am following UbuntuGIS for some time and I started to maintain my own PPA fork [1] some time ago, because I needed full control of packages. I am little bit involved in packaging. Here is my opinion: 1. This project definitely needs a strong leader with experience. Or PSC, I don't think there needs to be one person in charge if there's a group that meets regularly to set the items below. 2. UbuntuGIS lacks clear roadmap. Maybe it is loosing skilled hands just because they are not aware about fact they are needed. Preparing roadmap must by one of the most important tasks of project leader and PSC. It doesn't seem like this would be hard to write up if a few of us met online for a few minutes. 3. Other very important task is clearly stated work flow in terms how to cooperate with Debian on regular basis. Agreed, seems recent meetings might have started down this path. 4. Still at least by my opinion, the PPA naming stable, testing, unstable is very confusing for all newcomers which automatically expect the same behavior as in Debian. If this schema remains the same, or it will change to something other, it needs clearly documented workflow how packages migrates from testing, staging to production and how often and under which circumstances production packages are upgraded. I agree this is confusing and maybe the roadmap helps clear it up. 5. As in other voluntary projects, there is a lack of manpower. But on the other hand, there are no rules which new contributors or uploaders must meet. Also I do not see any list of free tasks for new people. I'm not aware of anyone being a designated maintainer, so its more a free for all once someone is granted access. Maybe we need to keep a list of who is responsible for what, of course when one project needs half the packages rebuilt that gets tricky to coordinate/wait. 6. The last one is the question if there is some possibility to get some support from OSGeo [2] ? What kind of support besides the mailing list, trac site, summer of code spot? Thanks, Alex Even if these goals are unrealistic, I think having them is must for further grow of this project. 1 - https://launchpad.net/~imincik/+archive/gis 2 - http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Binary_Distribution Thanks, Ivan Mincik On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 6:02 PM, Alan Boudreault aboudrea...@mapgears.comwrote: Hi, As a few of you may already know, I've recently decided to quit my job at Mapgears (http://t.co/aIgMAFlf2h). I'm still working at Mapgears as a part-time job but my availability for ubuntugis is limited. For to goodness of UbuntuGIS, I would like to create a PSC (Project Steering Committee) for the project. There are many competent people on this list and a lot of ubuntu users. The PSC responsabilities would include: - setting the overall development road map - improve collaboration with DebianGIS - trying to bring more developers! - etc. I also think UbuntuGIS needs a new senior package maintainer. Jérome did a great job during the summer and will continue to work on the project with Mapgears.. but he is still at school for the moment. I'd like to hear what you think... Best Regards, Alan -- Alan Boudreault http://www.mapgears.com/ ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki
Re: [Ubuntu] UbuntuGIS PSC Creation
On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 10:54 PM, Alex Mandel tech_...@wildintellect.comwrote: On 11/06/2013 12:41 PM, Ivan Mincik wrote: Dear Alan, at first thank You for Your work (and also for work of others in this project). I am following UbuntuGIS for some time and I started to maintain my own PPA fork [1] some time ago, because I needed full control of packages. I am little bit involved in packaging. Here is my opinion: 1. This project definitely needs a strong leader with experience. Or PSC, I don't think there needs to be one person in charge if there's a group that meets regularly to set the items below. Agreed. 2. UbuntuGIS lacks clear roadmap. Maybe it is loosing skilled hands just because they are not aware about fact they are needed. Preparing roadmap must by one of the most important tasks of project leader and PSC. It doesn't seem like this would be hard to write up if a few of us met online for a few minutes. 3. Other very important task is clearly stated work flow in terms how to cooperate with Debian on regular basis. Agreed, seems recent meetings might have started down this path. 4. Still at least by my opinion, the PPA naming stable, testing, unstable is very confusing for all newcomers which automatically expect the same behavior as in Debian. If this schema remains the same, or it will change to something other, it needs clearly documented workflow how packages migrates from testing, staging to production and how often and under which circumstances production packages are upgraded. I agree this is confusing and maybe the roadmap helps clear it up. 5. As in other voluntary projects, there is a lack of manpower. But on the other hand, there are no rules which new contributors or uploaders must meet. Also I do not see any list of free tasks for new people. I'm not aware of anyone being a designated maintainer, so its more a free for all once someone is granted access. Maybe we need to keep a list of who is responsible for what, of course when one project needs half the packages rebuilt that gets tricky to coordinate/wait. 6. The last one is the question if there is some possibility to get some support from OSGeo [2] ? What kind of support besides the mailing list, trac site, summer of code spot? Some time ago I was pointed by somebody to that wiki page about 'OSGeo Binary Distributions'. I have realized that until now there is no official, up-to-date and well maintained GIS packages distribution for Linux which OSGeo can recommend as the number one. I really appreciate very much the work of Debian|Ubuntu GIS people, but it is still only very good voluntary. To be successful in enterprise deployment one needs predictable and stable maintenance of packages, something similar as 'OpenGeo Suite' is. Isn't that one of the goals of OSGeo ? What if UbuntuGIS would be that official packages distribution for OSGeo ? As Frank said, it is even possible to get some financial support once the project is accepted in to incubator. I think that there should be much more other benefits to exist under trusted organization. Thanks, Alex Even if these goals are unrealistic, I think having them is must for further grow of this project. 1 - https://launchpad.net/~imincik/+archive/gis 2 - http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Binary_Distribution Thanks, Ivan Mincik On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 6:02 PM, Alan Boudreault aboudrea...@mapgears.comwrote: Hi, As a few of you may already know, I've recently decided to quit my job at Mapgears (http://t.co/aIgMAFlf2h). I'm still working at Mapgears as a part-time job but my availability for ubuntugis is limited. For to goodness of UbuntuGIS, I would like to create a PSC (Project Steering Committee) for the project. There are many competent people on this list and a lot of ubuntu users. The PSC responsabilities would include: - setting the overall development road map - improve collaboration with DebianGIS - trying to bring more developers! - etc. I also think UbuntuGIS needs a new senior package maintainer. Jérome did a great job during the summer and will continue to work on the project with Mapgears.. but he is still at school for the moment. I'd like to hear what you think... Best Regards, Alan -- Alan Boudreault http://www.mapgears.com/ ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki
Re: [Ubuntu] UbuntuGIS PSC Creation
On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 10:54 PM, Alex Mandel tech_...@wildintellect.com wrote: On 11/06/2013 12:41 PM, Ivan Mincik wrote: Dear Alan, at first thank You for Your work (and also for work of others in this project). +1 1. This project definitely needs a strong leader with experience. Or PSC, I don't think there needs to be one person in charge if there's a group that meets regularly to set the items below. +1 2. UbuntuGIS lacks clear roadmap. Maybe it is loosing skilled hands just because they are not aware about fact they are needed. Preparing roadmap must by one of the most important tasks of project leader and PSC. It doesn't seem like this would be hard to write up if a few of us met online for a few minutes. +1 3. Other very important task is clearly stated work flow in terms how to cooperate with Debian on regular basis. Agreed, seems recent meetings might have started down this path. Though I agree we should cooperate, I think that the actual bottleneck is having debian developers uploading packages to debian unstable. There is quite a long list of Geo-related packages on mentors.debian.net or experimental waiting for sponsors or transition. This is also important for ubuntugis: since the next release (trusty) will be a LTS release, so much more users will be using it for a long period, and also ubuntugis will have to work nicely with them. So I'd suggest that instead of only waiting for some transitions to happen in debian we should also consider sync requests [1] or feature for syncing some packages from experimental to universe. I'm especially thinking about gdal, because we now have a version of gdal in ubuntugis which is incompatible with the one in ubuntu universe. This means effectively means that ubuntugis is currently incompatible with all other gis packages around, including the ones included in ubuntu. This makes it eg impossible to install saga 2.1.0 from my ppa alongside qgis 2.0.1. 4. Still at least by my opinion, the PPA naming stable, testing, unstable is very confusing for all newcomers which automatically expect the same behavior as in Debian. If this schema remains the same, or it will change to something other, it needs clearly documented workflow how packages migrates from testing, staging to production and how often and under which circumstances production packages are upgraded. I agree this is confusing and maybe the roadmap helps clear it up. Proposal: remove testing (which is mostly empty) and add experimental (which would be a more appropriate name for what we use it). I would not add a testing in debian sense as maintaining 2 repositories on the zillion ubuntu distributions is already enough work. 5. As in other voluntary projects, there is a lack of manpower. But on the other hand, there are no rules which new contributors or uploaders must meet. Also I do not see any list of free tasks for new people. I'm not aware of anyone being a designated maintainer, so its more a free for all once someone is granted access. Maybe we need to keep a list of who is responsible for what, of course when one project needs half the packages rebuilt that gets tricky to coordinate/wait. The unclarity is bad. If we would send out a message on this list: let's start building for saucy, let's try rebuilding every package from raring on the testing (current naming) branch this week, so we can put them on -unstable next week at least I would be more stimulated and try to build some packages. Ubuntu releases are predictable, so we can make a schedule an plan ahead. Johan [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SyncRequestProcess ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki
Re: [Ubuntu] UbuntuGIS PSC Creation
On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 3:02 PM, Ivan Mincik ivan.min...@gmail.com wrote: Some time ago I was pointed by somebody to that wiki page about 'OSGeo Binary Distributions'. I have realized that until now there is no official, up-to-date and well maintained GIS packages distribution for Linux which OSGeo can recommend as the number one. I really appreciate very much the work of Debian|Ubuntu GIS people, but it is still only very good voluntary. To be successful in enterprise deployment one needs predictable and stable maintenance of packages, something similar as 'OpenGeo Suite' is. Isn't that one of the goals of OSGeo ? What if UbuntuGIS would be that official packages distribution for OSGeo ? As Frank said, it is even possible to get some financial support once the project is accepted in to incubator. I think that there should be much more other benefits to exist under trusted organization. Ivan, I'm not convinced I accept your premise, but even if one does accept the premise then folks have options including professional support contracts. I do think that bringing more energy to DebianGIS and UbuntuGIS with an eye towards stability and predictability would be valuable. But I don't accept that a volunteer effort is inadequate to the needs of enterprise deployment. Best regards, -- ---+-- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, warmer...@pobox.com light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush| Geospatial Software Developer ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki
Re: [Ubuntu] UbuntuGIS PSC Creation [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
Ivan, Perhaps organisations such as ours could provide some developer, test, documenter etc time to help such projects? This is an issue that I'm currently trying to work through with our people. It is just not the way that we have worked in the past. Bruce From: Ivan Mincik ivan.min...@gmail.commailto:ivan.min...@gmail.com Date: Thursday, 7 November 2013 10:38 AM To: UbuntuGIS Users ubuntu@lists.osgeo.orgmailto:ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org Subject: Re: [Ubuntu] UbuntuGIS PSC Creation On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 12:16 AM, Frank Warmerdam warmer...@pobox.commailto:warmer...@pobox.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 3:02 PM, Ivan Mincik ivan.min...@gmail.commailto:ivan.min...@gmail.com wrote: Some time ago I was pointed by somebody to that wiki page about 'OSGeo Binary Distributions'. I have realized that until now there is no official, up-to-date and well maintained GIS packages distribution for Linux which OSGeo can recommend as the number one. I really appreciate very much the work of Debian|Ubuntu GIS people, but it is still only very good voluntary. To be successful in enterprise deployment one needs predictable and stable maintenance of packages, something similar as 'OpenGeo Suite' is. Isn't that one of the goals of OSGeo ? What if UbuntuGIS would be that official packages distribution for OSGeo ? As Frank said, it is even possible to get some financial support once the project is accepted in to incubator. I think that there should be much more other benefits to exist under trusted organization. Ivan, I'm not convinced I accept your premise, but even if one does accept the premise then folks have options including professional support contracts. I do think that bringing more energy to DebianGIS and UbuntuGIS with an eye towards stability and predictability would be valuable. But I don't accept that a volunteer effort is inadequate to the needs of enterprise deployment. Thanks for response, I was really scared of consequences when I was writing that sentence about volunteer work. I really admire the work of all folks here, but I have also the experience from my company where we use Open Source software for 99 percent of our systems. I wanted just say that in every volunteer work there are cases where passion of volunteer and the need of enterprise customer doesn't meet. And in that case some small help (financial or non-financial) from bigger partner can move things and can be very helpful also for volunteer. Ivan ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki
Re: [Ubuntu] UbuntuGIS PSC Creation [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 11/07/2013 01:09 AM, Bruce Bannerman wrote: Agreed. I'm sure that UbuntuGIS will have no problems finding an Incubation Mentor. Bruce Absolutely. This will be a really interesting project because it brings new aspects into incubation. Cheers, Arnulf From: Frank Warmerdam warmer...@pobox.com mailto:warmer...@pobox.com Date: Thursday, 7 November 2013 8:55 AM To: Ivan Mincik ivan.min...@gmail.com mailto:ivan.min...@gmail.com Cc: UbuntuGIS Users ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org mailto:ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org Subject: Re: [Ubuntu] UbuntuGIS PSC Creation Ivan, The most obvious way in which OSGeo could show support is by having UbuntuGIS apply for incubation as an OSGeo project. Having a PSC is one step on the way to being a full fledged OSGeo project. There is also some possibility of financial support from OSGeo for UbuntuGIS but at the very least there would need to be a clear plan before any financial commitment might be made (IMHO). Best regards, -- ---+-- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, warmer...@pobox.com mailto:warmer...@pobox.com light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush| Geospatial Software Developer ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki - -- Seven of Nine http://arnulf.us/Seven Exploring Body, Space and Mind -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlJ7L1UACgkQXmFKW+BJ1b0gqACaAgbuK0lMGOmUOHYht3Y7aS7/ tkIAn01RhxyD9V0CCr+Oa8pm/7WZdWqN =7sS1 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ UbuntuGIS mailing list Ubuntu@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu http://trac.osgeo.org/ubuntugis/wiki
