Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Sandro Santilli]

On Fri, Oct 02, 2015 at 03:27:44AM +, Jachym Cepicky wrote:
> As you write. GitLab is alternative to new projects, which are condiering
> GitHub. And to old projects still using Trac (IMHO)

Note that from the README of gitlab community edition you can read:

- GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE) includes [extra
  features](https://about.gitlab.com/features/#compare) that are more
  useful for organizations with more than 100 users. To use EE and get
  official support please [become a 
subscriber](https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/).

I'd rather avoid to use a software that's intentionally limited in its
free software version. We still want all OSGeo users (how much users
exist by now?) able to file tickets...

--strk;
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Bart van den Eijnden]

Before going to this trouble, we should check if there is an actual demand 
among projects?

Best regards,
Bart

> On 01 Oct 2015, at 13:17, Jeff McKenna  wrote:
> 
> On 2015-10-01 4:18 AM, Jachym Cepicky wrote:
>> I'm using gitlab already and it really gives you what I like on github
>> 
>> Shall we ask the board and SAC for create instance of gitlab on our servers?
>> 
>> J
>> 
> 
> I think asking SAC about hosting GitLab on our servers is a great idea!  A 
> nice option for projects.
> 
> -jeff
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Jeff McKenna]

On 2015-10-01 4:18 AM, Jachym Cepicky wrote:

I'm using gitlab already and it really gives you what I like on github

Shall we ask the board and SAC for create instance of gitlab on our servers?

J



I think asking SAC about hosting GitLab on our servers is a great idea! 
 A nice option for projects.


-jeff





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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Mateusz Loskot]

On 1 October 2015 at 13:20, Bart van den Eijnden  wrote:
> Before going to this trouble, we should check if there is an actual demand 
> among projects?

Indeed. Besides, projects which have already adopted GitHub
may not be willing to switch again.
I actually doubt it.

My comment is just a bit of wish that some purists would change their tone.

Best regards,
-- 
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Sandro Santilli]

Given we already have trac, may I suggest to try at just improving it
to allow for storing code in a git repository, wherever it is ?

I understand there's a plugin to allow for that, did anyone try it ?

Speaking about projects demand, here's a list of tickets about
trac (many of which being enhancement requests):
https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/query?status=assigned=new=reopened=Systems+Admin=~trac=id=summary=status=type=priority=milestone=component=priority

There are 18 of them, oldest of which is from 8 years ago, and newer
is from 5 months ago. If there's not enough power for managing trac,
will there really be enough to manage a new service ?

--strk;


On Thu, Oct 01, 2015 at 01:20:46PM +0200, Bart van den Eijnden wrote:
> Before going to this trouble, we should check if there is an actual demand 
> among projects?
> 
> Best regards,
> Bart
> 
> > On 01 Oct 2015, at 13:17, Jeff McKenna  
> > wrote:
> > 
> > On 2015-10-01 4:18 AM, Jachym Cepicky wrote:
> >> I'm using gitlab already and it really gives you what I like on github
> >> 
> >> Shall we ask the board and SAC for create instance of gitlab on our 
> >> servers?
> >> 
> >> J
> >> 
> > 
> > I think asking SAC about hosting GitLab on our servers is a great idea!  A 
> > nice option for projects.
> > 
> > -jeff
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Jachym Cepicky]

I'm using gitlab already and it really gives you what I like on github

Shall we ask the board and SAC for create instance of gitlab on our servers?

J

st 30. 9. 2015 v 14:31 odesílatel Mateusz Loskot 
napsal:

> On 30 September 2015 at 07:20, Paolo Cavallini 
> wrote:
> > Il 30/09/2015 02:04, Jody Garnett ha scritto:
> >
> >> I think that the Github move is hazardous. Sure, it is easy, free
> >> for open-source projects, and really really cool. Granted, it helps
> >> a lot in getting fluid contributions to open-source projects. But
> >> ... in two years, they may start shipping sponsors links at the end
> >> of the Readme files, and in a moments notice you have to watch 20
> >> seconds ads before cloning. At this point, you will want to bail
> >> out, only to find out that in fact you can not, because you can not
> >> delete the project anymore, or the issue tracker database can not be
> >> exported ...
> >>
> >>
> >> Not much of a problem here, since git means each developer has a copy of
> >> the whole project. I know we had the same story with SourceForge ...
> >
> > I think the concerns about GH are real. I feel uneasy putting strategic
> > pieces of infrastructure in the hands of a company is risky over the
> > long term. It is true that we have a copy of the whole code base and
> > history, but the scenarios suggested are possible and worrisome.
>
> There is also another aspect of the "All move to GitHub, now!" trend,
> less obvious than technical ones, I guess.
>
> On one side, OSGeo is FOSS advocate and we advocate it loud.
> via numerous keynote speaches given at events around the World.
> On the other, we gradually move to proprietary infrastructure based
> on non-FOSS, namely GitHub.
>
> The two sides clash, don't they?
> People may get confused.
>
> Best regards,
> --
> Mateusz  Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Jachym Cepicky]

As you write. GitLab is alternative to new projects, which are condiering
GitHub. And to old projects still using Trac (IMHO)

J

čt 1. 10. 2015 v 13:37 odesílatel Jeff McKenna <
jmcke...@gatewaygeomatics.com> napsal:

> I think it would be a great option for new/incubating projects.  However
> it is really up to SAC.  -jeff
>
>
>
> On 2015-10-01 8:29 AM, Mateusz Loskot wrote:
> > On 1 October 2015 at 13:20, Bart van den Eijnden 
> wrote:
> >> Before going to this trouble, we should check if there is an actual
> demand among projects?
> >
> > Indeed. Besides, projects which have already adopted GitHub
> > may not be willing to switch again.
> > I actually doubt it.
> >
> > My comment is just a bit of wish that some purists would change their
> tone.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
>
>
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Pat Tressel]

> I think that the Github move is hazardous. Sure, it is easy, free for
> open-source projects, and really really cool. Granted, it helps a lot in
> getting fluid contributions to open-source projects. But ... in two years,
> they may start shipping sponsors links at the end of the Readme files, and
> in a moments notice you have to watch 20 seconds ads before cloning. At
> this point, you will want to bail out, only to find out that in fact you
> can not, because you can not delete the project anymore, or the issue
> tracker database can not be exported ...
>

Apologies for disagreeing, but...  This is a misunderstanding of the
economics of online businesses.  I'm worried that the statements of
approval of this claim may skew future choices, and cause more work and
hassle and expense.

The companies that make money by showing advertising are *content
providers* such as newspapers, TV networks, Q sites,...  They have *no
other source of revenue*.

Hosting sites like GitHub make their money from *paid accounts*.  They do
not need advertising revenue.  Just because the "public" face of GitHub is
their free accounts does not mean that is the bulk of their activity.  It
is very common, and popular, for cloud sites to have a free tier.  Even
production hosting sites do this.

It is good marketing and helps train folks to use their tools, so that when
the time comes to recommend a hosting site or platform for a commercial
project, they will naturally gravitate to the site they're already using
and like.

The idea that GitHub, or Heroku, or OpenShift, or Gitorious, or Bitbucket,
or Pythonanywhere, or ShinyApps, or... would at some point go "Hah!  You're
trapped!" and start demanding payment for free accounts, inserting
compulsory advertising, or otherwise attacking their clients is so odd that
I have never before heard it expressed as a serious concern in any
open-source organization.  Given that GitHub is Linus Torvald's project,
there may be poison pills in their charter to prevent this even in a
hostile takeover.  Imagine the reaction if one of these companies did what
is being suggested. Their clients would vanish.  It's not hard to move from
site to site, especially if one is using a DVCS like git.  The folks
running these companies are not stupid, and most of the companies are
associated with open source in some way.

-- Pat
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Pat Tressel]

> The companies that make money by showing advertising are *content
> providers* such as newspapers, TV networks, Q sites,...  They have *no
> other source of revenue*.
>

I should clarify that by "TV networks" I mean broadcast networks, not cable
companies that make money via subscriptions, and that I'm specifically
talking about online newspaper sites that offer free content.  Some
newspaper sites like WSJ and NYT are offering subscriptions, so do have a
source of revenue outside of ads.


> Hosting sites like GitHub make their money from *paid accounts*.  They do
> not need advertising revenue.  Just because the "public" face of GitHub is
> their free accounts does not mean that is the bulk of their activity.  It
> is very common, and popular, for cloud sites to have a free tier.  Even
> production hosting sites do this.
>
> It is good marketing and helps train folks to use their tools, so that
> when the time comes to recommend a hosting site or platform for a
> commercial project, they will naturally gravitate to the site they're
> already using and like.
>
> The idea that GitHub, or Heroku, or OpenShift, or Gitorious, or Bitbucket,
> or Pythonanywhere, or ShinyApps, or... would at some point go "Hah!  You're
> trapped!" and start demanding payment for free accounts, inserting
> compulsory advertising, or otherwise attacking their clients is so odd that
> I have never before heard it expressed as a serious concern in any
> open-source organization.
>


> Given that GitHub is Linus Torvald's project,
>

Sorry -- I should have verified that before parroting it.


> there may be poison pills in their charter to prevent this even in a
> hostile takeover.  Imagine the reaction if one of these companies did what
> is being suggested. Their clients would vanish.  It's not hard to move from
> site to site, especially if one is using a DVCS like git.  The folks
> running these companies are not stupid, and most of the companies are
> associated with open source in some way.
>
> -- Pat
>
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Julien Michel]

Le 30/09/2015 02:04, Jody Garnett a écrit :
Not much of a problem here, since git means each developer has a copy 
of the whole project. I know we had the same story with SourceForge ... 


Well, of course source code is safe with the distributed SCM paradigm. 
And I agree that Github is the social network of developers (that is why 
I said that all projects should have an official github mirror). I am 
more worried about all the secondary services offered: wiki, bugtracker, 
binary packages hosting ...


For what it is worth, I would like to cite two personal examples. In our 
project, we tried to get out of Jira to move to Tuleap [1]. After 
several months trying to export/import the complete set of information 
we have in Jira, we abandonned the idea. Sure we can leave, be we will 
leave behind a great deal of valuable stuff there. More recently, we 
moved our binary packages hosting out of Sourceforge. But ... in fact 
you can not remove a project from Sourceforge [2], so we have to write a 
redirection message. We can simply not cut the link with it. I agree 
that these are minor issues that do not impact the project itself, but 
somewhere on the road, we lost a bit of freedom.


Thanks to all of you for your comments,

Regards,

Julien

[1] https://www.tuleap.org/
[2] http://sourceforge.net/p/easyhtml5/tracinst/Removing%20a%20project/

--
Julien MICHEL
CNES - DCT/SI/AP

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Andy Anderson]

There is already an open alternative to GitHub known as GitLab:

https://about.gitlab.com

Pull your own copy of the software and put it on your own server if you want. 
Or pay specifically for hosting.

Healthy competition, methinks.

— Andy

On Sep 30, 2015, at 1:20 AM, Paolo Cavallini  wrote:

> Il 30/09/2015 02:04, Jody Garnett ha scritto:
> 
>>I think that the Github move is hazardous. Sure, it is easy, free
>>for open-source projects, and really really cool. Granted, it helps
>>a lot in getting fluid contributions to open-source projects. But
>>... in two years, they may start shipping sponsors links at the end
>>of the Readme files, and in a moments notice you have to watch 20
>>seconds ads before cloning. At this point, you will want to bail
>>out, only to find out that in fact you can not, because you can not
>>delete the project anymore, or the issue tracker database can not be
>>exported ...
>> 
>> 
>> Not much of a problem here, since git means each developer has a copy of
>> the whole project. I know we had the same story with SourceForge ... 
> 
> I think the concerns about GH are real. I feel uneasy putting strategic
> pieces of infrastructure in the hands of a company is risky over the
> long term. It is true that we have a copy of the whole code base and
> history, but the scenarios suggested are possible and worrisome.
> All the best.
> -- 
> Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
> QGIS & PostGIS courses: http://www.faunalia.eu/training.html
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Mateusz Loskot]

On 30 September 2015 at 07:20, Paolo Cavallini  wrote:
> Il 30/09/2015 02:04, Jody Garnett ha scritto:
>
>> I think that the Github move is hazardous. Sure, it is easy, free
>> for open-source projects, and really really cool. Granted, it helps
>> a lot in getting fluid contributions to open-source projects. But
>> ... in two years, they may start shipping sponsors links at the end
>> of the Readme files, and in a moments notice you have to watch 20
>> seconds ads before cloning. At this point, you will want to bail
>> out, only to find out that in fact you can not, because you can not
>> delete the project anymore, or the issue tracker database can not be
>> exported ...
>>
>>
>> Not much of a problem here, since git means each developer has a copy of
>> the whole project. I know we had the same story with SourceForge ...
>
> I think the concerns about GH are real. I feel uneasy putting strategic
> pieces of infrastructure in the hands of a company is risky over the
> long term. It is true that we have a copy of the whole code base and
> history, but the scenarios suggested are possible and worrisome.

There is also another aspect of the "All move to GitHub, now!" trend,
less obvious than technical ones, I guess.

On one side, OSGeo is FOSS advocate and we advocate it loud.
via numerous keynote speaches given at events around the World.
On the other, we gradually move to proprietary infrastructure based
on non-FOSS, namely GitHub.

The two sides clash, don't they?
People may get confused.

Best regards,
-- 
Mateusz  Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Paolo Cavallini]

Il 30/09/2015 02:04, Jody Garnett ha scritto:

> I think that the Github move is hazardous. Sure, it is easy, free
> for open-source projects, and really really cool. Granted, it helps
> a lot in getting fluid contributions to open-source projects. But
> ... in two years, they may start shipping sponsors links at the end
> of the Readme files, and in a moments notice you have to watch 20
> seconds ads before cloning. At this point, you will want to bail
> out, only to find out that in fact you can not, because you can not
> delete the project anymore, or the issue tracker database can not be
> exported ...
> 
> 
> Not much of a problem here, since git means each developer has a copy of
> the whole project. I know we had the same story with SourceForge ... 

I think the concerns about GH are real. I feel uneasy putting strategic
pieces of infrastructure in the hands of a company is risky over the
long term. It is true that we have a copy of the whole code base and
history, but the scenarios suggested are possible and worrisome.
All the best.
-- 
Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
QGIS & PostGIS courses: http://www.faunalia.eu/training.html
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[María Arias de Reyna]

When people ask me how should they start on the GIS world, I always give
them two advices:

 * Check OsGeo.
 * Read the Libro Libre de SIG Libre[1] (only Spanish, translations
accepted)

If OsGeo disappeared, someone should invent it.

Which doesn't mean it is the only way to achieve the same goals. For
example, in Spain we have the geoinquietos (georestless) local groups which
work somehow independently from OsGeo. But most of the people are the same
in both groups, it is just that using our own "brand" allows us to do
things more freely (talking about data instead of software, talking about
privative resources, talking about geocaching, just take some
geobeers,...). But we always go back to OsGeo as the reference.


[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Libro_SIG
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Jens Fitzke]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Am 26.09.2015 um 17:20 schrieb Darrell Fuhriman:
> This is a perfect example.
> 
> All of those are great and wonderful things! The community does great and
> wonderful things. That’ s not my point.
> 
> My point is, those activities would happen even if the OSGeo Foundation
> disappeared. I’m not questioning whether we have a large and vibrant
> community, we do. And we still would.
> 
> My local chapter existed before it was an OSGeo chapter, and we would keep
> on having meetings and doing fun and exciting things even without the OSGeo
> Foundation.

Same is true for the German chapter. But nevertheless there is need for
something more umbrella-like.

> Put another way: The OSGeo Foundation needs the Open Source Geospatial
> community, but does the Open Source Geospatial community need the OSGeo
> Foundation? I don’t see that it does.

Here's a case why the Open Source Geospatial community need the OSGeo
Foundation: Our company is currently being legally prosecuted as the owner of
the deegree.org domain. The claim is that on www.deegree.org there is a
commercial offering, but at the same time the web site lacks an imprint (which
is legally enforced in Germany for all commercial offerings). Besides the
question if some links to companies who provide "professional support" are
already a commercial offering, the main point here is, that lat/lon is made
responsible for something (providing the server) the company is only doing to
support the community. But the prosecutor is saying that lat/lon is
accountable here as per the whois entry.

We are currently evaluating reactions, together with a lawyer who is
experienced in legal aspects of Open Source. But as a more long-term solution
I'd say OSGeo should be the legal owner of deegree.org. From my naive legal
understanding this would help a lot to get things straight and more
transparent to the outside world.

This case might be a bit special, but it is a real one - and it might have
some larger impact as I am seeing other projects which have a similiar setting
and thus might run into the same kind of trouble. Depending on the legal
situation in the various countries, of course.

My 2 cents,

Jens

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Julien Michel]

Hi all,

I am a fairly new charter member, so maybe the two following comments 
here will be irrelevant.


From my perspective, having Orfeo ToolBox as an incubating project 
definitively helped us to move in the right direction. I am not saying 
that it would not have occured without OSGeo, but the organization gives 
the momentum and defines the standards to reach. As such, it is useful 
and somehow efficient. The fact that the process is long is mostly on 
the project side in our case.


I think that the Github move is hazardous. Sure, it is easy, free for 
open-source projects, and really really cool. Granted, it helps a lot in 
getting fluid contributions to open-source projects. But ... in two 
years, they may start shipping sponsors links at the end of the Readme 
files, and in a moments notice you have to watch 20 seconds ads before 
cloning. At this point, you will want to bail out, only to find out that 
in fact you can not, because you can not delete the project anymore, or 
the issue tracker database can not be exported ...


My point is, OSGeo should care about long-term protection of GIS 
open-source, and if this goal aligns for now with services that Github 
provides, it may no longer be the case in the future .Of course we need 
to be on Github: it is a public place to be, like twitter & co. But 
completely giving up code hosting and developers exchanges to a private 
company is the opposite of what I think the organization should do.


I know proper hosting services requires time and money, I do not have 
the solution to that, but for me OSGeo should provide a sustainable 
alternative, up-to-date and tailored for its purpose.


My 2 cents,

Regards,

Julien

Le 25/09/2015 21:57, Darrell Fuhriman a écrit :
The recent discussion on the board list 
that 
came out of the question of the 2014 videos has got me thinking about 
a few things again, and I want to try to get them out there.


Grab a mug of your favorite liquid and hunker down, because I put some 
time and effort into this, and your own well considered reply is 
appreciated.


Keep in mind that all of these comments are coming from my personal 
perspective, which, like everyone’s, is an incomplete picture of the 
whole. Much of what I’m going to say has been rolling around my head 
for a while, so I’m just going to put it out there.


I will start with a provocative thesis:

OSGeo lacks visionary unified leadership and without it will become 
irrelevant.


Of course, making such a claim requires support. So let me break down 
the statement.


“Visionary leadership” is really two things, “vision” and 
“leadership.” I will address each in turn.



OSGeo lacks vision

I looked at the list of “Goals” for OSGeo 
. I wonder: when 
was the last time these goals were evaluated for both success and 
relevancy?


Here is my own opinion of success of some of  these goals. (In the 
interest of brevity, I haven’t tried to tackle everything. That’s left 
as an exercise to the reader.)



  Example 1

To provide resources for foundation projects - eg. infrastructure, 
funding, legal.


Allow me to break each of those examples down.


Infrastructure

It’s true that OSGeo provides some infrastructure, such as Trac 
instance, Mailman, SVN repos. If the budget is to be believed, we pay 
some $3,500/yr to OSUOSL for said infrastructure. I wonder if such a 
service is necessary, however. Issue tracking and source control are 
much better provided by Github, which is free for organization such as 
ours.
I say this because a) that’s money that could be better spent 
elsewhere and b) supporting these services burns precious volunteer 
time (more on that below).


There are clear cost savings available, which are not taken advantage 
of. For example, OSGeo could be hosting FOSS4G infrastructure: 
conference websites and registration, a central location for 
conference videos (regardless of platform/provider). This neglect is 
especially galling given that FOSS4G is OSGeo’s sole source of income.



Funding

OSGeo does not fund projects. It has provided some funds to pay for 
Code Sprints — $15k in 2014 according to the budget 
.



Legal

I see nothing that has been done on this front recently. Please feel 
free to correct me.



Conclusion

OSGeo, where it actually does what it claims, has not adapted in ways 
that could save money.


My grade: D


Example 2

To promote freely available geodata - free software is useless without 
data.


The geodata working group is dead. As near as I can tell by perusing 
the mailing list archives, and the wiki, there has been no meaningful 
activity in the past two years (maybe more).


My grade: F


Example 3

To promote the use of open source software in the geospatial industry 
(not just foundation 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Filipe Vieira]

Hi all,

Just wanted to give my opinion on using a external service as source code
repository, I think there is no problem using github because:

- Source Code is protected by the license,
- If github service stops to address the project needs then port it to
other repository. I remember sourceforge starting to be a really bad
service (having a bunch of ads and bad practices)  and people just migrated
to other repositories.
- Having a internal source repository service needs human resources and
hardware, it costs money and time. Having a semi-working service will also
impact project efficiency.
- Migrating a project to other repository is not a problem if the entry
point is always the same: the project website. Most people that look for
releases are going to search them on the project website or on their
operating system software center. For developers they can be warned with a
message on source code project description or readme file.





On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 8:23 AM, María Arias de Reyna <
delawen+os...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 9:17 AM, Julien Michel 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I am a fairly new charter member, so maybe the two following comments
>> here will be irrelevant.
>>
>> From my perspective, having Orfeo ToolBox as an incubating project
>> definitively helped us to move in the right direction. I am not saying that
>> it would not have occured without OSGeo, but the organization gives the
>> momentum and defines the standards to reach. As such, it is useful and
>> somehow efficient. The fact that the process is long is mostly on the
>> project side in our case.
>>
>> I think that the Github move is hazardous. Sure, it is easy, free for
>> open-source projects, and really really cool. Granted, it helps a lot in
>> getting fluid contributions to open-source projects. But ... in two years,
>> they may start shipping sponsors links at the end of the Readme files, and
>> in a moments notice you have to watch 20 seconds ads before cloning. At
>> this point, you will want to bail out, only to find out that in fact you
>> can not, because you can not delete the project anymore, or the issue
>> tracker database can not be exported ...
>>
>> My point is, OSGeo should care about long-term protection of GIS
>> open-source, and if this goal aligns for now with services that Github
>> provides, it may no longer be the case in the future .Of course we need to
>> be on Github: it is a public place to be, like twitter & co. But completely
>> giving up code hosting and developers exchanges to a private company is the
>> opposite of what I think the organization should do.
>>
>> I know proper hosting services requires time and money, I do not have the
>> solution to that, but for me OSGeo should provide a sustainable
>> alternative, up-to-date and tailored for its purpose.
>>
>>
> Completely agree with you, Julien. Avoid openess and advance towards
> freedom :)
>
> The easiest solution is to have our own git repository+dashboard on our
> own server, like with gitlab: https://about.gitlab.com/
>
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>
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Harish]

- A family need a Father, even if children are grown enough to run their
lives.
- If some problems are there in vehicle, it does not mean that vehicle
should be thrown out.

When I teach "Why QGIS", one big answer always is "It is an OSGeo product",
and it has a meaning. There are thousands of software available, some are
free some and some are open source also, but when they will turn to
commercial, no one knows. This fact always warn me for not using any other
product, except open source preferably with OSGeo Banner/Umbrella. So there
is always need of a charioteer to keep the horses in same direction. The
direction may be decided/changed with mutual consensus.

For a developer sky may be the limit, but for users like me OSGeo is the
limit.

Kind Regards
(H K Solanki)

Sorry for poor English
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[María Arias de Reyna]

On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 9:17 AM, Julien Michel 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I am a fairly new charter member, so maybe the two following comments here
> will be irrelevant.
>
> From my perspective, having Orfeo ToolBox as an incubating project
> definitively helped us to move in the right direction. I am not saying that
> it would not have occured without OSGeo, but the organization gives the
> momentum and defines the standards to reach. As such, it is useful and
> somehow efficient. The fact that the process is long is mostly on the
> project side in our case.
>
> I think that the Github move is hazardous. Sure, it is easy, free for
> open-source projects, and really really cool. Granted, it helps a lot in
> getting fluid contributions to open-source projects. But ... in two years,
> they may start shipping sponsors links at the end of the Readme files, and
> in a moments notice you have to watch 20 seconds ads before cloning. At
> this point, you will want to bail out, only to find out that in fact you
> can not, because you can not delete the project anymore, or the issue
> tracker database can not be exported ...
>
> My point is, OSGeo should care about long-term protection of GIS
> open-source, and if this goal aligns for now with services that Github
> provides, it may no longer be the case in the future .Of course we need to
> be on Github: it is a public place to be, like twitter & co. But completely
> giving up code hosting and developers exchanges to a private company is the
> opposite of what I think the organization should do.
>
> I know proper hosting services requires time and money, I do not have the
> solution to that, but for me OSGeo should provide a sustainable
> alternative, up-to-date and tailored for its purpose.
>
>
Completely agree with you, Julien. Avoid openess and advance towards
freedom :)

The easiest solution is to have our own git repository+dashboard on our own
server, like with gitlab: https://about.gitlab.com/
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Margherita Di Leo]

Hi,

On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 5:20 PM, Darrell Fuhriman 
wrote:
>
>
> All of those are great and wonderful things! The community does great and
> wonderful things. That’ s not my point.
>
> My point is, those activities would happen even if the OSGeo Foundation
> disappeared. I’m not questioning whether we have a large and vibrant
> community, we do. And we still would.
>
> My local chapter existed before it was an OSGeo chapter, and we would keep
> on having meetings and doing fun and exciting things even without the OSGeo
> Foundation.
>
> Put another way: The OSGeo Foundation needs the Open Source Geospatial
> community, but does the Open Source Geospatial community need the OSGeo
> Foundation? I don’t see that it does.
>
> A lot of food for thoughts here! I fully agree that the community would
survive without OSGeo, as well as local chapters. From my point of view
this is an important sign that the community is resilient, and the
horizontal structure of OSGeo fits well with it. But this does not imply
that OSGeo is an added value for the community, and I think an important
one. There are a number of activities that benefit from an umbrella
organization. One is the Google Summer of Code, just to cite an example
that I know. It would be possible as well for the single projects to
participate on their own, but this would mean organizational burden
multiplied for the number of the projects. Further, even the participation
of a large org like OSGeo is not given for granted, for example this year
an important org like Mozilla was not accepted [1]. Smaller projects might
have reduced possibility to take part. Other important examples include
initiatives like Geo4All, the education committee, the FOSS4Gs, etc.. I
don't even want to try to mention all of them.
I also think that there is (as always happens) room for improvement. But
remember that all the activities are carried out by volunteers.
I think that for example OSGeo could provide a sort of reimbursement for
the time spent by the volunteers working at the server infrastructure
behind the web site and the mailing lists, and could potentially think to
stipend other key figures. OSGeo could for example offer first legal advice
for the companies who decide to release their code under a free license.
Could even offer an infrastructure to gather and keep the money for the
various projects.. I am not well informed about the implication of the
bylaws and whether all this is possible or not. I think that all these (and
more) activities would give more sense to the umbrella role. But these are
not for free, therefore there should be a decision behind whether OSGeo
wants to invest in this direction.

Just my 2 eurocents
regards,
Margherita


[1]
http://blog.queze.net/post/2015/03/03/Mozilla-not-accepted-for-Google-Summer-of-Code-2015



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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Jody Garnett]

So far I have enjoyed this thread for the number of ideas it brings forth.

Just want to highlight the small difference between a forge (SourceForge,
Google Code, Gitourious, GitHub) and Foundation (OSGeo, Apache, Linux,
Eclipse).

Forges tend to focus software version control, build facilities, and
artifact hosting. They make money by selling these same facilities to
enterprise, while often accepting open source projects "on board" as a form
of free advertising.

Foundations focus on projects (license, legal, governance, promotion ..
some even include a social agenda). When they make money they do so by
providing vendor neutral table for organizations to collaborate together
(even if they kick each other under the table on occasion). Software
hosting services are incidental to these goals - although some foundations
like Apache take on hosting as way to control the legal exposure that comes
with hosting code.

One advantage of OSGeo as a foundation is we have the flexibility to allow
out project to change up which forge they use over time (seeing projects
migrate from cvs, subversion, SourceForge / GoogleCode / GitHub).

For projects OSGeo provides something to "belong to" and a fair brand boost
:)

So yeah, if OSGeo rolled up the carpet we would have to set up another
foundation for the projects the next day.
--
Jody

--
Jody Garnett

On 26 September 2015 at 12:38, Frank Gasdorf 
wrote:

> Thanks Darrell for such a clear and structured statement.
> I'd like to add a few thoughts. First I'd like to aggree to the
> infrastructure thing, in times Open Source projects can get a space (SCM,
> Ticket system, Build infrastructure, etc) for free everywhere it's kind of
> wired OSGeo paying for it. Like Jo noticed, things changing over time and
> maybe here projects can move forward - e.g. like GeoTools and GeoServer
> did. The point was and still is, that's not OSGeo driven to provide a
> common infrastructure for OSGeo projects. Each project cares about it's own
> setup and that burns a lot of volunteering time. However, maybe here can
> start the discussion, if that would be a benefit for projects.
> IMHO FOSS4G is a brand, wheras OSGeo isn't. I never has been involved yet
> organizing a FOSS4G but it sounds like a hugh effort from local teams
> slightly supported by OSGeo. I love FOSS4G's because its a chance to have
> face to face meetings with Contributors and Users from all over the world.
> In the past I remember the WMS shootouts where I got the impression,
> OSGeo/FOSS4G is the best place it can be happen: Several projects in a
> battle to improve these all together. Thats making the world a better
> place..
> On other levels, would it be worth to setup similiar competitions for
> other fields: Tile caches, Desktop clients, Processing Implementations and
> so on. Would that help to push projects and provide comparable values
> between OS and proprietary projects.
>
> Same for codesprints and hackathons... Sponsoring such events helps
> growing community, improving projects and finally helps users who using
> this great software stack
> How can OSGeo help creating Solutions with Components of this stack. OSGeo
> Live is the first step I guess: Setup things and finding out how the fit
> together. We learned a lot from other projects within OSGeo live and that
> improves each project I guess. What's the major output for Users?
>
> What about "Long Term Support", would that be a field OSGeo could help
> projects and users in the same way?
> Maybe we can think about other sponsoring models, where Companies paying
> anual fees. What could the expect from OSGeo, what would be an added value
> for these?
> And finally, from a uDig perspective: Whats the different between
> Geospatial organizations such as OSGeo and LocationTech. From my
> perspective : They have a totally different history, I 'd say community
> driven vs. company driven, which includes different sponsoring models.
> Maybe its worth to think about: Whats the driver, the community or the
> business behind sponsoring companies?
>
> Again, Thank you Darrell for initial post, I guess the discussion helps a
> lot to get a Strategy for the future
>
> Warm regards, Frank
>
> 2015-09-26 15:29 GMT+02:00 Jo Cook :
>
>> Hi All, and especially Darrel,
>>
>> In his email Darrel articulated some ideas that I have been having for a
>> couple of years now, but haven't been able to clearly define.
>>
>> So firstly I'd like to say that I totally agree with Darrel's points (and
>> Michael Gerlek's previously)- OSGeo is definitely in danger of becoming
>> irrelevant. Some of this is down to being a victim of its own success. The
>> projects have, in many cases, matured and become popular to the point where
>> they no longer need OSGeo. I'd really like to see a thorough assessment of
>> our goals and objectives to decide what is still important. The
>> availability of infrastructure, version control, open 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Ravi Kumar]

+1

On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 7:55 AM, Jody Garnett 
wrote:

> So far I have enjoyed this thread for the number of ideas it brings forth.
>
> Just want to highlight the small difference between a forge (SourceForge,
> Google Code, Gitourious, GitHub) and Foundation (OSGeo, Apache, Linux,
> Eclipse).
>
> Forges tend to focus software version control, build facilities, and
> artifact hosting. They make money by selling these same facilities to
> enterprise, while often accepting open source projects "on board" as a form
> of free advertising.
>
> Foundations focus on projects (license, legal, governance, promotion ..
> some even include a social agenda). When they make money they do so by
> providing vendor neutral table for organizations to collaborate together
> (even if they kick each other under the table on occasion). Software
> hosting services are incidental to these goals - although some foundations
> like Apache take on hosting as way to control the legal exposure that comes
> with hosting code.
>
> One advantage of OSGeo as a foundation is we have the flexibility to allow
> out project to change up which forge they use over time (seeing projects
> migrate from cvs, subversion, SourceForge / GoogleCode / GitHub).
>
> For projects OSGeo provides something to "belong to" and a fair brand
> boost :)
>
> So yeah, if OSGeo rolled up the carpet we would have to set up another
> foundation for the projects the next day.
> --
> Jody
>
> --
> Jody Garnett
>
> On 26 September 2015 at 12:38, Frank Gasdorf 
> wrote:
>
>> Thanks Darrell for such a clear and structured statement.
>> I'd like to add a few thoughts. First I'd like to aggree to the
>> infrastructure thing, in times Open Source projects can get a space (SCM,
>> Ticket system, Build infrastructure, etc) for free everywhere it's kind of
>> wired OSGeo paying for it. Like Jo noticed, things changing over time and
>> maybe here projects can move forward - e.g. like GeoTools and GeoServer
>> did. The point was and still is, that's not OSGeo driven to provide a
>> common infrastructure for OSGeo projects. Each project cares about it's own
>> setup and that burns a lot of volunteering time. However, maybe here can
>> start the discussion, if that would be a benefit for projects.
>> IMHO FOSS4G is a brand, wheras OSGeo isn't. I never has been involved yet
>> organizing a FOSS4G but it sounds like a hugh effort from local teams
>> slightly supported by OSGeo. I love FOSS4G's because its a chance to have
>> face to face meetings with Contributors and Users from all over the world.
>> In the past I remember the WMS shootouts where I got the impression,
>> OSGeo/FOSS4G is the best place it can be happen: Several projects in a
>> battle to improve these all together. Thats making the world a better
>> place..
>> On other levels, would it be worth to setup similiar competitions for
>> other fields: Tile caches, Desktop clients, Processing Implementations and
>> so on. Would that help to push projects and provide comparable values
>> between OS and proprietary projects.
>>
>> Same for codesprints and hackathons... Sponsoring such events helps
>> growing community, improving projects and finally helps users who using
>> this great software stack
>> How can OSGeo help creating Solutions with Components of this stack.
>> OSGeo Live is the first step I guess: Setup things and finding out how the
>> fit together. We learned a lot from other projects within OSGeo live and
>> that improves each project I guess. What's the major output for Users?
>>
>> What about "Long Term Support", would that be a field OSGeo could help
>> projects and users in the same way?
>> Maybe we can think about other sponsoring models, where Companies paying
>> anual fees. What could the expect from OSGeo, what would be an added value
>> for these?
>> And finally, from a uDig perspective: Whats the different between
>> Geospatial organizations such as OSGeo and LocationTech. From my
>> perspective : They have a totally different history, I 'd say community
>> driven vs. company driven, which includes different sponsoring models.
>> Maybe its worth to think about: Whats the driver, the community or the
>> business behind sponsoring companies?
>>
>> Again, Thank you Darrell for initial post, I guess the discussion helps a
>> lot to get a Strategy for the future
>>
>> Warm regards, Frank
>>
>> 2015-09-26 15:29 GMT+02:00 Jo Cook :
>>
>>> Hi All, and especially Darrel,
>>>
>>> In his email Darrel articulated some ideas that I have been having for a
>>> couple of years now, but haven't been able to clearly define.
>>>
>>> So firstly I'd like to say that I totally agree with Darrel's points
>>> (and Michael Gerlek's previously)- OSGeo is definitely in danger of
>>> becoming irrelevant. Some of this is down to being a victim of its own
>>> success. The projects have, in many cases, matured and become popular to
>>> the point 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Andrea Aime]

On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 12:12 AM, Milo van der Linden 
wrote:

> Being a "don't talk, act" member since 2008, entrepreneur and former
> chairman of a couple of local initiatives, I strongly agree.
>
> Seeing all the "empty talkers" from my country run for charter membership
> and still not having geoserver, which is the most mature open geospatial
> product I can think of pas incubation made me completely lose interest in
> OSGeo.
>

Hi Milo,
to be completely honest, I cannot put an ounce of blame on OSGeo for
GeoServer not graduating quickly, the goals were there and were clear and
GeoServer was basically satisfying all but one of them from day one:
unfortunately we failed to execute on the IP review, which is a manual,
long, boring task, mostly because we were too busy with other stuff.
Eventually Jody managed to wrangle volunteers at a code sprint, got every
single file checked/fixed/reported, and voilà, shortly after we passed
graduation.

Other foundations have a dedicated team to do IP reviews, but those are
paid staff, not sure OSGeo can afford that... on the other side, every
project with a large code base will have a hard time putting aside the time
to go though every single file to check for IP violations.

Just my 2 (euro) cents ;-)

Cheers
Andrea

-- 
==
GeoServer Professional Services from the experts! Visit
http://goo.gl/it488V for more information.
==

Ing. Andrea Aime
@geowolf
Technical Lead

GeoSolutions S.A.S.
Via Poggio alle Viti 1187
55054  Massarosa (LU)
Italy
phone: +39 0584 962313
fax: +39 0584 1660272
mob: +39  339 8844549

http://www.geo-solutions.it
http://twitter.com/geosolutions_it

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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Just van den Broecke]

Dear Milo,

That you agree Darrel's statements is your opinion and fine in any open 
discussion.


I react here on your phrase: '"empty talkers" from my country run for 
charter membership'.


We have 9 Charter Members from the Netherlands, including me. I know 
each of them, and IMO they are far from "empty talkers". They all spend 
long voluntary hours in an array of activities that support OSGeo's 
global and OSGeo.nl local mission and FOSS in general. To name a few:

Sebastiaan Couwenberg (2015) spends ample time in Debian packaging
Barend Köbben (2012) helping/speaking at FOSS4G, org academic track
We all know what Jeroen and Bart have accomplished. I could go on. Not 
all charter members need to make software, some make things happen like 
organizing local OSGeo.nl events and acting in the LOC for the upcoming 
FOSS4G in Bonn.


So I hope your "empty talkers" phrase came out of a sudden impulse, that 
we all have from time to time. I had to react to clarify some things. Best,


Just van den Broecke
Secretary OSGeo.nl Foundation


On 26-09-15 00:12, Milo van der Linden wrote:

Being a "don't talk, act" member since 2008, entrepreneur and former
chairman of a couple of local initiatives, I strongly agree.

Seeing all the "empty talkers" from my country run for charter
membership and still not having geoserver, which is the most mature open
geospatial product I can think of pas incubation made me completely lose
interest in OSGeo.

I am disappointed, a little frustrated and plotting a business course
that values open source and open knowledge. OSGeo or any in-crowd will
have no part in my future.

Thank you for your honest and to the point analyses.

Milo

On Sep 25, 2015 21:58, "Darrell Fuhriman" > wrote:

The recent discussion on the board list
that
came out of the question of the 2014 videos has got me thinking
about a few things again, and I want to try to get them out there.

Grab a mug of your favorite liquid and hunker down, because I put
some time and effort into this, and your own well considered reply
is appreciated.

Keep in mind that all of these comments are coming from my personal
perspective, which, like everyone’s, is an incomplete picture of the
whole. Much of what I’m going to say has been rolling around my head
for a while, so I’m just going to put it out there.

I will start with a provocative thesis:

OSGeo lacks visionary unified leadership and without it will become
irrelevant.

Of course, making such a claim requires support. So let me break
down the statement.

“Visionary leadership” is really two things, “vision” and
“leadership.” I will address each in turn.


OSGeo lacks vision

I looked at the list of “Goals” for OSGeo
. I wonder: when
was the last time these goals were evaluated for both success and
relevancy?

Here is my own opinion of success of some of  these goals. (In the
interest of brevity, I haven’t tried to tackle everything. That’s
left as an exercise to the reader.)


  Example 1

To provide resources for foundation projects - eg. infrastructure,
funding, legal.

Allow me to break each of those examples down.


Infrastructure

It’s true that OSGeo provides some infrastructure, such as Trac
instance, Mailman, SVN repos. If the budget is to be believed, we
pay some $3,500/yr to OSUOSL for said infrastructure. I wonder if
such a service is necessary, however. Issue tracking and source
control are much better provided by Github, which is free for
organization such as ours.
I say this because a) that’s money that could be better spent
elsewhere and b) supporting these services burns precious volunteer
time (more on that below).

There are clear cost savings available, which are not taken
advantage of. For example, OSGeo could be hosting FOSS4G
infrastructure: conference websites and registration, a central
location for conference videos (regardless of platform/provider).
This neglect is especially galling given that FOSS4G is OSGeo’s sole
source of income.


Funding

OSGeo does not fund projects. It has provided some funds to pay for
Code Sprints — $15k in 2014 according to the budget
.


Legal

I see nothing that has been done on this front recently. Please feel
free to correct me.


Conclusion

OSGeo, where it actually does what it claims, has not adapted in
ways that could save money.

My grade: D


Example 2

To promote freely available geodata - free software is useless
without data.

The geodata working group is dead. As near as I can tell by perusing
the mailing 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Darrell Fuhriman]

This is a perfect example.

All of those are great and wonderful things! The community does great and 
wonderful things. That’ s not my point.

My point is, those activities would happen even if the OSGeo Foundation 
disappeared. I’m not questioning whether we have a large and vibrant community, 
we do. And we still would.

My local chapter existed before it was an OSGeo chapter, and we would keep on 
having meetings and doing fun and exciting things even without the OSGeo 
Foundation.

Put another way: The OSGeo Foundation needs the Open Source Geospatial 
community, but does the Open Source Geospatial community need the OSGeo 
Foundation? I don’t see that it does.

Darrell




> On Sep 26, 2015, at 05:29, Just van den Broecke  wrote:
> 
> Dear Milo,
> 
> That you agree Darrel's statements is your opinion and fine in any open 
> discussion.
> 
> I react here on your phrase: '"empty talkers" from my country run for charter 
> membership'.
> 
> We have 9 Charter Members from the Netherlands, including me. I know each of 
> them, and IMO they are far from "empty talkers". They all spend long 
> voluntary hours in an array of activities that support OSGeo's global and 
> OSGeo.nl local mission and FOSS in general. To name a few:
> Sebastiaan Couwenberg (2015) spends ample time in Debian packaging
> Barend Köbben (2012) helping/speaking at FOSS4G, org academic track
> We all know what Jeroen and Bart have accomplished. I could go on. Not all 
> charter members need to make software, some make things happen like 
> organizing local OSGeo.nl events and acting in the LOC for the upcoming 
> FOSS4G in Bonn.
> 
> So I hope your "empty talkers" phrase came out of a sudden impulse, that we 
> all have from time to time. I had to react to clarify some things. Best,
> 
> Just van den Broecke
> Secretary OSGeo.nl Foundation
> 
> 
> On 26-09-15 00:12, Milo van der Linden wrote:
>> Being a "don't talk, act" member since 2008, entrepreneur and former
>> chairman of a couple of local initiatives, I strongly agree.
>> 
>> Seeing all the "empty talkers" from my country run for charter
>> membership and still not having geoserver, which is the most mature open
>> geospatial product I can think of pas incubation made me completely lose
>> interest in OSGeo.
>> 
>> I am disappointed, a little frustrated and plotting a business course
>> that values open source and open knowledge. OSGeo or any in-crowd will
>> have no part in my future.
>> 
>> Thank you for your honest and to the point analyses.
>> 
>> Milo
>> 

___
Discuss mailing list
Discuss@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Jachym Cepicky]

Darrell, you might have some points

Let me add, that OSGeo might seem in *some* communities irrelevant, because
we, as OSGeo, did not manage to push our brand in the  front even on *our*
FOSS4G conference (I still remember no OSGeo logo being visible around).
OSGeo will be visible only to the point, where our members will make it
visible on their events.

Certainly, clear renewed vision would help and no doubt, there are people
on the Board (currently - and nominated), which are fully aware of this.
And the board list, as well as every meeting is publicly accessible -
everybody can help.

My observation: volunteer time is limited. Either I dedicate it to OSGeo
infrastructure, or to my project (which I would like to see grow too).
That's life.

Now I take rest and hope to contribute more to both

Just my irrelevant 2cents

J

P.S. Talking is cheap. Show me the code. (Linus Torvalds)

so 26. 9. 2015 v 17:20 odesílatel Darrell Fuhriman 
napsal:

> This is a perfect example.
>
> All of those are great and wonderful things! The community does great and
> wonderful things. That’ s not my point.
>
> My point is, those activities would happen even if the OSGeo Foundation
> disappeared. I’m not questioning whether we have a large and vibrant
> community, we do. And we still would.
>
> My local chapter existed before it was an OSGeo chapter, and we would keep
> on having meetings and doing fun and exciting things even without the OSGeo
> Foundation.
>
> Put another way: The OSGeo Foundation needs the Open Source Geospatial
> community, but does the Open Source Geospatial community need the OSGeo
> Foundation? I don’t see that it does.
>
> Darrell
>
>
>
>
> > On Sep 26, 2015, at 05:29, Just van den Broecke 
> wrote:
> >
> > Dear Milo,
> >
> > That you agree Darrel's statements is your opinion and fine in any open
> discussion.
> >
> > I react here on your phrase: '"empty talkers" from my country run for
> charter membership'.
> >
> > We have 9 Charter Members from the Netherlands, including me. I know
> each of them, and IMO they are far from "empty talkers". They all spend
> long voluntary hours in an array of activities that support OSGeo's global
> and OSGeo.nl local mission and FOSS in general. To name a few:
> > Sebastiaan Couwenberg (2015) spends ample time in Debian packaging
> > Barend Köbben (2012) helping/speaking at FOSS4G, org academic track
> > We all know what Jeroen and Bart have accomplished. I could go on. Not
> all charter members need to make software, some make things happen like
> organizing local OSGeo.nl events and acting in the LOC for the upcoming
> FOSS4G in Bonn.
> >
> > So I hope your "empty talkers" phrase came out of a sudden impulse, that
> we all have from time to time. I had to react to clarify some things. Best,
> >
> > Just van den Broecke
> > Secretary OSGeo.nl Foundation
> >
> >
> > On 26-09-15 00:12, Milo van der Linden wrote:
> >> Being a "don't talk, act" member since 2008, entrepreneur and former
> >> chairman of a couple of local initiatives, I strongly agree.
> >>
> >> Seeing all the "empty talkers" from my country run for charter
> >> membership and still not having geoserver, which is the most mature open
> >> geospatial product I can think of pas incubation made me completely lose
> >> interest in OSGeo.
> >>
> >> I am disappointed, a little frustrated and plotting a business course
> >> that values open source and open knowledge. OSGeo or any in-crowd will
> >> have no part in my future.
> >>
> >> Thank you for your honest and to the point analyses.
> >>
> >> Milo
> >>
>
> ___
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss@lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>
___
Discuss mailing list
Discuss@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Jo Cook]

Hi All, and especially Darrel,

In his email Darrel articulated some ideas that I have been having for a
couple of years now, but haven't been able to clearly define.

So firstly I'd like to say that I totally agree with Darrel's points (and
Michael Gerlek's previously)- OSGeo is definitely in danger of becoming
irrelevant. Some of this is down to being a victim of its own success. The
projects have, in many cases, matured and become popular to the point where
they no longer need OSGeo. I'd really like to see a thorough assessment of
our goals and objectives to decide what is still important. The
availability of infrastructure, version control, open data, etc have
improved massively over the last 5 years so now is a great time for a real
spring-clean and decide what we need to keep and what we don't.

What does the world really need from OSGeo that it can't get from anyone
else? What problems could we solve moving forward? Those are the things we
should focus on.

I'm currently trying to write an article on open geospatial in 2020 and I
can honestly say I'm struggling to see a place for OSGeo in it. I'd really
like to be proved wrong (and I'd love some predictions for my article, but
that's for another discussion).

Thanks

Jo
On 26 Sep 2015 1:40 pm, "Just van den Broecke"  wrote:

> Dear Milo,
>
> That you agree Darrel's statements is your opinion and fine in any open
> discussion.
>
> I react here on your phrase: '"empty talkers" from my country run for
> charter membership'.
>
> We have 9 Charter Members from the Netherlands, including me. I know each
> of them, and IMO they are far from "empty talkers". They all spend long
> voluntary hours in an array of activities that support OSGeo's global and
> OSGeo.nl local mission and FOSS in general. To name a few:
> Sebastiaan Couwenberg (2015) spends ample time in Debian packaging
> Barend Köbben (2012) helping/speaking at FOSS4G, org academic track
> We all know what Jeroen and Bart have accomplished. I could go on. Not all
> charter members need to make software, some make things happen like
> organizing local OSGeo.nl events and acting in the LOC for the upcoming
> FOSS4G in Bonn.
>
> So I hope your "empty talkers" phrase came out of a sudden impulse, that
> we all have from time to time. I had to react to clarify some things. Best,
>
> Just van den Broecke
> Secretary OSGeo.nl Foundation
>
>
> On 26-09-15 00:12, Milo van der Linden wrote:
>
>> Being a "don't talk, act" member since 2008, entrepreneur and former
>> chairman of a couple of local initiatives, I strongly agree.
>>
>> Seeing all the "empty talkers" from my country run for charter
>> membership and still not having geoserver, which is the most mature open
>> geospatial product I can think of pas incubation made me completely lose
>> interest in OSGeo.
>>
>> I am disappointed, a little frustrated and plotting a business course
>> that values open source and open knowledge. OSGeo or any in-crowd will
>> have no part in my future.
>>
>> Thank you for your honest and to the point analyses.
>>
>> Milo
>>
>> On Sep 25, 2015 21:58, "Darrell Fuhriman" > > wrote:
>>
>> The recent discussion on the board list
>> > >that
>> came out of the question of the 2014 videos has got me thinking
>> about a few things again, and I want to try to get them out there.
>>
>> Grab a mug of your favorite liquid and hunker down, because I put
>> some time and effort into this, and your own well considered reply
>> is appreciated.
>>
>> Keep in mind that all of these comments are coming from my personal
>> perspective, which, like everyone’s, is an incomplete picture of the
>> whole. Much of what I’m going to say has been rolling around my head
>> for a while, so I’m just going to put it out there.
>>
>> I will start with a provocative thesis:
>>
>> OSGeo lacks visionary unified leadership and without it will become
>> irrelevant.
>>
>> Of course, making such a claim requires support. So let me break
>> down the statement.
>>
>> “Visionary leadership” is really two things, “vision” and
>> “leadership.” I will address each in turn.
>>
>>
>> OSGeo lacks vision
>>
>> I looked at the list of “Goals” for OSGeo
>> . I wonder: when
>> was the last time these goals were evaluated for both success and
>> relevancy?
>>
>> Here is my own opinion of success of some of  these goals. (In the
>> interest of brevity, I haven’t tried to tackle everything. That’s
>> left as an exercise to the reader.)
>>
>>
>>   Example 1
>>
>> To provide resources for foundation projects - eg. infrastructure,
>> funding, legal.
>>
>> Allow me to break each of those examples down.
>>
>>
>> Infrastructure
>>
>> It’s true that 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Sanghee Shin]

Dear All, 

I think OSGeo is a body or carrier to carry the spirit of the open source to 
the world. OSGeo is copper wire to transmit electricity to remote place. 
Electricity had been there long before the invention of copper wire. We 
invented copper wire to carry electricity to remote place and now realised 
copper wire caused the many electricity loss because of rust or noise. 

Back to Darrell’s question. Both need both. Just like body needs spirit, 
electricity needs wire. 

Back to Darrell’s question again. What will happen if OSGeo disappear? There 
will not be official invitation to UN-GGIM conference by UN. There was a 
meeting between UN Geospatial Section and OSGeo Board during the FOSS4G Seoul 
for the future cooperation. And there might be no MOU between LH Corp(which has 
16,000 employees in Korea) and OSGeo. Consequently the spread of open source 
GIS in Korea might have been slowed down drastically. It’s just like losing all 
your copper wire to connect your electricity to your device. What about the 
Geo4All initiatives? I don’t think this wonderful achievement was possible 
without OSGeo. 

About OSGeo’ death, I’ll not be surprised or care much about whether OSGeo die 
this evening. There’s nothing immortal. If OSGeo fully seed and spread the 
spirit of open source, who cares if the body die or not. Spirit eventually bear 
fruits. The real thing we should be worried about is the spiritual dead.

The problem of recent OSGeo is that it has grown too fast recently just like 
teenagers. It looks like adult however still young and is not capable of doing 
many things. It is just embarrassed with many sudden request and callings. So, 
what should we do now to look after this teenager? First we need to be proud of 
what it has accomplished so far and give it a cheer. And then sit down together 
to talk about the future positively, if I’m a father. 

Having seen the OSGeo since 2006, I believe we can be proud of OSGeo and it’s 
achievements. I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel once again and still 
can fix it at the moment. 

All the best, 

신상희
---
Shin, Sanghee
Gaia3D, Inc. - The GeoSpatial Company
http://www.gaia3d.com 

> 2015. 9. 26., 오후 4:20, Darrell Fuhriman  작성:
> 
> This is a perfect example.
> 
> All of those are great and wonderful things! The community does great and 
> wonderful things. That’ s not my point.
> 
> My point is, those activities would happen even if the OSGeo Foundation 
> disappeared. I’m not questioning whether we have a large and vibrant 
> community, we do. And we still would.
> 
> My local chapter existed before it was an OSGeo chapter, and we would keep on 
> having meetings and doing fun and exciting things even without the OSGeo 
> Foundation.
> 
> Put another way: The OSGeo Foundation needs the Open Source Geospatial 
> community, but does the Open Source Geospatial community need the OSGeo 
> Foundation? I don’t see that it does.
> 
> Darrell
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Sep 26, 2015, at 05:29, Just van den Broecke  wrote:
>> 
>> Dear Milo,
>> 
>> That you agree Darrel's statements is your opinion and fine in any open 
>> discussion.
>> 
>> I react here on your phrase: '"empty talkers" from my country run for 
>> charter membership'.
>> 
>> We have 9 Charter Members from the Netherlands, including me. I know each of 
>> them, and IMO they are far from "empty talkers". They all spend long 
>> voluntary hours in an array of activities that support OSGeo's global and 
>> OSGeo.nl local mission and FOSS in general. To name a few:
>> Sebastiaan Couwenberg (2015) spends ample time in Debian packaging
>> Barend Köbben (2012) helping/speaking at FOSS4G, org academic track
>> We all know what Jeroen and Bart have accomplished. I could go on. Not all 
>> charter members need to make software, some make things happen like 
>> organizing local OSGeo.nl events and acting in the LOC for the upcoming 
>> FOSS4G in Bonn.
>> 
>> So I hope your "empty talkers" phrase came out of a sudden impulse, that we 
>> all have from time to time. I had to react to clarify some things. Best,
>> 
>> Just van den Broecke
>> Secretary OSGeo.nl Foundation
>> 
>> 
>> On 26-09-15 00:12, Milo van der Linden wrote:
>>> Being a "don't talk, act" member since 2008, entrepreneur and former
>>> chairman of a couple of local initiatives, I strongly agree.
>>> 
>>> Seeing all the "empty talkers" from my country run for charter
>>> membership and still not having geoserver, which is the most mature open
>>> geospatial product I can think of pas incubation made me completely lose
>>> interest in OSGeo.
>>> 
>>> I am disappointed, a little frustrated and plotting a business course
>>> that values open source and open knowledge. OSGeo or any in-crowd will
>>> have no part in my future.
>>> 
>>> Thank you for your honest and to the point analyses.
>>> 
>>> Milo
>>> 
> 
> ___
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss@lists.osgeo.org
> 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Frank Gasdorf]

Thanks Darrell for such a clear and structured statement.
I'd like to add a few thoughts. First I'd like to aggree to the
infrastructure thing, in times Open Source projects can get a space (SCM,
Ticket system, Build infrastructure, etc) for free everywhere it's kind of
wired OSGeo paying for it. Like Jo noticed, things changing over time and
maybe here projects can move forward - e.g. like GeoTools and GeoServer
did. The point was and still is, that's not OSGeo driven to provide a
common infrastructure for OSGeo projects. Each project cares about it's own
setup and that burns a lot of volunteering time. However, maybe here can
start the discussion, if that would be a benefit for projects.
IMHO FOSS4G is a brand, wheras OSGeo isn't. I never has been involved yet
organizing a FOSS4G but it sounds like a hugh effort from local teams
slightly supported by OSGeo. I love FOSS4G's because its a chance to have
face to face meetings with Contributors and Users from all over the world.
In the past I remember the WMS shootouts where I got the impression,
OSGeo/FOSS4G is the best place it can be happen: Several projects in a
battle to improve these all together. Thats making the world a better
place..
On other levels, would it be worth to setup similiar competitions for other
fields: Tile caches, Desktop clients, Processing Implementations and so on.
Would that help to push projects and provide comparable values between OS
and proprietary projects.

Same for codesprints and hackathons... Sponsoring such events helps growing
community, improving projects and finally helps users who using this great
software stack
How can OSGeo help creating Solutions with Components of this stack. OSGeo
Live is the first step I guess: Setup things and finding out how the fit
together. We learned a lot from other projects within OSGeo live and that
improves each project I guess. What's the major output for Users?

What about "Long Term Support", would that be a field OSGeo could help
projects and users in the same way?
Maybe we can think about other sponsoring models, where Companies paying
anual fees. What could the expect from OSGeo, what would be an added value
for these?
And finally, from a uDig perspective: Whats the different between
Geospatial organizations such as OSGeo and LocationTech. From my
perspective : They have a totally different history, I 'd say community
driven vs. company driven, which includes different sponsoring models.
Maybe its worth to think about: Whats the driver, the community or the
business behind sponsoring companies?

Again, Thank you Darrell for initial post, I guess the discussion helps a
lot to get a Strategy for the future

Warm regards, Frank

2015-09-26 15:29 GMT+02:00 Jo Cook :

> Hi All, and especially Darrel,
>
> In his email Darrel articulated some ideas that I have been having for a
> couple of years now, but haven't been able to clearly define.
>
> So firstly I'd like to say that I totally agree with Darrel's points (and
> Michael Gerlek's previously)- OSGeo is definitely in danger of becoming
> irrelevant. Some of this is down to being a victim of its own success. The
> projects have, in many cases, matured and become popular to the point where
> they no longer need OSGeo. I'd really like to see a thorough assessment of
> our goals and objectives to decide what is still important. The
> availability of infrastructure, version control, open data, etc have
> improved massively over the last 5 years so now is a great time for a real
> spring-clean and decide what we need to keep and what we don't.
>
> What does the world really need from OSGeo that it can't get from anyone
> else? What problems could we solve moving forward? Those are the things we
> should focus on.
>
> I'm currently trying to write an article on open geospatial in 2020 and I
> can honestly say I'm struggling to see a place for OSGeo in it. I'd really
> like to be proved wrong (and I'd love some predictions for my article, but
> that's for another discussion).
>
> Thanks
>
> Jo
> On 26 Sep 2015 1:40 pm, "Just van den Broecke" 
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Milo,
>>
>> That you agree Darrel's statements is your opinion and fine in any open
>> discussion.
>>
>> I react here on your phrase: '"empty talkers" from my country run for
>> charter membership'.
>>
>> We have 9 Charter Members from the Netherlands, including me. I know each
>> of them, and IMO they are far from "empty talkers". They all spend long
>> voluntary hours in an array of activities that support OSGeo's global and
>> OSGeo.nl local mission and FOSS in general. To name a few:
>> Sebastiaan Couwenberg (2015) spends ample time in Debian packaging
>> Barend Köbben (2012) helping/speaking at FOSS4G, org academic track
>> We all know what Jeroen and Bart have accomplished. I could go on. Not
>> all charter members need to make software, some make things happen like
>> organizing local OSGeo.nl events and acting in the LOC for 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Bart van den Eijnden]

To at least have facts straight, GeoServer passed incubation in 2013

http://www.osgeo.org/news/geoserver-graduation

Bart

Sent from my iPhone

> On 26 sep. 2015, at 00:12, Milo van der Linden  wrote:
> 
> Being a "don't talk, act" member since 2008, entrepreneur and former chairman 
> of a couple of local initiatives, I strongly agree.
> 
> Seeing all the "empty talkers" from my country run for charter membership and 
> still not having geoserver, which is the most mature open geospatial product 
> I can think of pas incubation made me completely lose interest in OSGeo.
> 
> I am disappointed, a little frustrated and plotting a business course that 
> values open source and open knowledge. OSGeo or any in-crowd will have no 
> part in my future.
> 
> Thank you for your honest and to the point analyses.
> 
> Milo
> 
>> On Sep 25, 2015 21:58, "Darrell Fuhriman"  wrote:
>> The recent discussion on the board list that came out of the question of the 
>> 2014 videos has got me thinking about a few things again, and I want to try 
>> to get them out there.
>> 
>> Grab a mug of your favorite liquid and hunker down, because I put some time 
>> and effort into this, and your own well considered reply is appreciated.
>> 
>> Keep in mind that all of these comments are coming from my personal 
>> perspective, which, like everyone’s, is an incomplete picture of the whole. 
>> Much of what I’m going to say has been rolling around my head for a while, 
>> so I’m just going to put it out there.
>> 
>> I will start with a provocative thesis:
>> 
>> OSGeo lacks visionary unified leadership and without it will become 
>> irrelevant.
>> 
>> Of course, making such a claim requires support. So let me break down the 
>> statement. 
>> 
>> “Visionary leadership” is really two things, “vision” and “leadership.” I 
>> will address each in turn.
>> 
>> OSGeo lacks vision
>> 
>> I looked at the list of “Goals” for OSGeo. I wonder: when was the last time 
>> these goals were evaluated for both success and relevancy?
>> 
>> Here is my own opinion of success of some of  these goals. (In the interest 
>> of brevity, I haven’t tried to tackle everything. That’s left as an exercise 
>> to the reader.)
>> 
>> Example 1
>> 
>> To provide resources for foundation projects - eg. infrastructure, funding, 
>> legal.
>> 
>> Allow me to break each of those examples down.
>> Infrastructure
>> 
>> It’s true that OSGeo provides some infrastructure, such as Trac instance, 
>> Mailman, SVN repos. If the budget is to be believed, we pay some $3,500/yr 
>> to OSUOSL for said infrastructure. I wonder if such a service is necessary, 
>> however. Issue tracking and source control are much better provided by 
>> Github, which is free for organization such as ours.
>> I say this because a) that’s money that could be better spent elsewhere and 
>> b) supporting these services burns precious volunteer time (more on that 
>> below).
>> There are clear cost savings available, which are not taken advantage of. 
>> For example, OSGeo could be hosting FOSS4G infrastructure: conference 
>> websites and registration, a central location for conference videos 
>> (regardless of platform/provider). This neglect is especially galling given 
>> that FOSS4G is OSGeo’s sole source of income.
>> 
>> Funding
>> 
>> OSGeo does not fund projects. It has provided some funds to pay for Code 
>> Sprints — $15k in 2014 according to the budget.
>> 
>> Legal
>> 
>> I see nothing that has been done on this front recently. Please feel free to 
>> correct me.
>> 
>> Conclusion
>> 
>> OSGeo, where it actually does what it claims, has not adapted in ways that 
>> could save money.
>> 
>>  My grade: D
>> 
>> Example 2
>> 
>> To promote freely available geodata - free software is useless without data.
>> 
>> The geodata working group is dead. As near as I can tell by perusing the 
>> mailing list archives, and the wiki, there has been no meaningful activity 
>> in the past two years (maybe more).
>> 
>> My grade: F
>> 
>> Example 3
>> 
>> To promote the use of open source software in the geospatial industry (not 
>> just foundation software) - eg. PR, training, outreach.
>> 
>> The Board of Directors page says:
>> Packaging and Marketing
>> 
>> OSGeo’s marketing effort has primarily been focused around the packaging and 
>> documentation efforts of OSGeo-Live, and to a lesser extend[sic], osgeo4w. 
>> […] It has been entirely driven by volunteer labour, with 140 OSGeo-Live 
>> volunteers, and printing costs have been covered by local events or 
>> sponsors. In the last couple of years, OSGeo has covered local chapter 
>> expenses required to purchase non-consumable items for conference booths 
>> (such as a retractable banner). In moving forward, OSGeo hope to extend 
>> marketing reach by providing co-contributions toward printing costs of 
>> consumable items at conferences, such as toward OSGeo-Live DVDs.
>> 
>> Local Chapters
>> 
>> Much of 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Darrell,

Thank you for you assessment, I think this is a great call for action 
and it puts words to a lot of my feelings about OSGeo.


If you look at most of the successful projects they are driven by 
someone with vision and passion that pulls in others to work toward 
concrete goals.


If you take the structure of a successful project (ie: the process, PSC, 
voting, etc) and apply it to project that does not have the leadership, 
it does not make it successful. OSGeo feels like this later case.


For OSGeo to be relevant to me, it needs to be more about what OSGeo is 
doing for its members and helping it members be successful and 
profitable so they are invested in growing and sustaining OSGeo, rather 
than what can I do for OSGeo. If OSGeo is not helping the projects that 
I care about and/or helping me grow my business (this can be as simple 
as brand marketing so my clients are aware of the value of working with 
someone that is part of OSGeo), then what is it doing?


If OSGeo didn't exist, it is not clear to me that the projects would 
suffer greatly, with the exception that FOSSG has been successful.


I'm not say that everything is bad, but I think a realistic reassessment 
is needed and maybe a total overhaul should be on the table.


Thanks,
  -Steve

On 9/25/2015 3:57 PM, Darrell Fuhriman wrote:

The recent discussion on the board list
that
came out of the question of the 2014 videos has got me thinking about a
few things again, and I want to try to get them out there.

Grab a mug of your favorite liquid and hunker down, because I put some
time and effort into this, and your own well considered reply is
appreciated.

Keep in mind that all of these comments are coming from my personal
perspective, which, like everyone’s, is an incomplete picture of the
whole. Much of what I’m going to say has been rolling around my head for
a while, so I’m just going to put it out there.

I will start with a provocative thesis:

OSGeo lacks visionary unified leadership and without it will become
irrelevant.

Of course, making such a claim requires support. So let me break down
the statement.

“Visionary leadership” is really two things, “vision” and “leadership.”
I will address each in turn.


OSGeo lacks vision

I looked at the list of “Goals” for OSGeo
. I wonder: when was
the last time these goals were evaluated for both success and relevancy?

Here is my own opinion of success of some of  these goals. (In the
interest of brevity, I haven’t tried to tackle everything. That’s left
as an exercise to the reader.)


  Example 1

To provide resources for foundation projects - eg. infrastructure,
funding, legal.

Allow me to break each of those examples down.


Infrastructure

It’s true that OSGeo provides some infrastructure, such as Trac
instance, Mailman, SVN repos. If the budget is to be believed, we pay
some $3,500/yr to OSUOSL for said infrastructure. I wonder if such a
service is necessary, however. Issue tracking and source control are
much better provided by Github, which is free for organization such as ours.
I say this because a) that’s money that could be better spent elsewhere
and b) supporting these services burns precious volunteer time (more on
that below).

There are clear cost savings available, which are not taken advantage
of. For example, OSGeo could be hosting FOSS4G infrastructure:
conference websites and registration, a central location for conference
videos (regardless of platform/provider). This neglect is especially
galling given that FOSS4G is OSGeo’s sole source of income.


Funding

OSGeo does not fund projects. It has provided some funds to pay for Code
Sprints — $15k in 2014 according to the budget
.


Legal

I see nothing that has been done on this front recently. Please feel
free to correct me.


Conclusion

OSGeo, where it actually does what it claims, has not adapted in ways
that could save money.

My grade: D


Example 2

To promote freely available geodata - free software is useless without data.

The geodata working group is dead. As near as I can tell by perusing the
mailing list archives, and the wiki, there has been no meaningful
activity in the past two years (maybe more).

My grade: F


Example 3

To promote the use of open source software in the geospatial industry
(not just foundation software) - eg. PR, training, outreach.

The Board of Directors
page
says:


Packaging and Marketing

OSGeo’s marketing effort has primarily been focused around the packaging
and documentation efforts of OSGeo-Live, and to a lesser extend[sic],
osgeo4w. […] It has been entirely driven by volunteer labour, with 140
OSGeo-Live volunteers, and printing costs have been covered by local
events or 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo is becoming irrelevant. Here's why. Let's fix it.

[Milo van der Linden]

Being a "don't talk, act" member since 2008, entrepreneur and former
chairman of a couple of local initiatives, I strongly agree.

Seeing all the "empty talkers" from my country run for charter membership
and still not having geoserver, which is the most mature open geospatial
product I can think of pas incubation made me completely lose interest in
OSGeo.

I am disappointed, a little frustrated and plotting a business course that
values open source and open knowledge. OSGeo or any in-crowd will have no
part in my future.

Thank you for your honest and to the point analyses.

Milo
On Sep 25, 2015 21:58, "Darrell Fuhriman"  wrote:

> The recent discussion on the board list
>  that
> came out of the question of the 2014 videos has got me thinking about a few
> things again, and I want to try to get them out there.
>
> Grab a mug of your favorite liquid and hunker down, because I put some
> time and effort into this, and your own well considered reply is
> appreciated.
>
> Keep in mind that all of these comments are coming from my personal
> perspective, which, like everyone’s, is an incomplete picture of the whole.
> Much of what I’m going to say has been rolling around my head for a while,
> so I’m just going to put it out there.
> I will start with a provocative thesis:
>
> OSGeo lacks visionary unified leadership and without it will become
> irrelevant.
>
> Of course, making such a claim requires support. So let me break down the
> statement.
>
> “Visionary leadership” is really two things, “vision” and “leadership.” I
> will address each in turn.
> OSGeo lacks vision
> I looked at the list of “Goals” for OSGeo
> . I wonder: when was
> the last time these goals were evaluated for both success and relevancy?
>
> Here is my own opinion of success of some of  these goals. (In the
> interest of brevity, I haven’t tried to tackle everything. That’s left as
> an exercise to the reader.)
>
> Example 1
> To provide resources for foundation projects - eg. infrastructure,
> funding, legal.
>
> Allow me to break each of those examples down.
> Infrastructure
> It’s true that OSGeo provides some infrastructure, such as Trac instance,
> Mailman, SVN repos. If the budget is to be believed, we pay some $3,500/yr
> to OSUOSL for said infrastructure. I wonder if such a service is necessary,
> however. Issue tracking and source control are much better provided by
> Github, which is free for organization such as ours.
> I say this because a) that’s money that could be better spent elsewhere
> and b) supporting these services burns precious volunteer time (more on
> that below).
>
> There are clear cost savings available, which are not taken advantage of.
> For example, OSGeo could be hosting FOSS4G infrastructure: conference
> websites and registration, a central location for conference videos
> (regardless of platform/provider). This neglect is especially galling given
> that FOSS4G is OSGeo’s sole source of income.
> Funding
>
> OSGeo does not fund projects. It has provided some funds to pay for Code
> Sprints — $15k in 2014 according to the budget
> .
> Legal
>
> I see nothing that has been done on this front recently. Please feel free
> to correct me.
> Conclusion
>
> OSGeo, where it actually does what it claims, has not adapted in ways that
> could save money.
>
> My grade: D
> Example 2
> To promote freely available geodata - free software is useless without
> data.
>
> The geodata working group is dead. As near as I can tell by perusing the
> mailing list archives, and the wiki, there has been no meaningful activity
> in the past two years (maybe more).
>
> My grade: F
> Example 3
> To promote the use of open source software in the geospatial industry (not
> just foundation software) - eg. PR, training, outreach.
>
> The Board of Directors
> 
> page says:
> Packaging and Marketing
>
> OSGeo’s marketing effort has primarily been focused around the packaging
> and documentation efforts of OSGeo-Live, and to a lesser extend[sic],
> osgeo4w. […] It has been entirely driven by volunteer labour, with 140
> OSGeo-Live volunteers, and printing costs have been covered by local events
> or sponsors. In the last couple of years, OSGeo has covered local chapter
> expenses required to purchase non-consumable items for conference booths
> (such as a retractable banner). In moving forward, OSGeo hope to extend
> marketing reach by providing co-contributions toward printing costs of
> consumable items at conferences, such as toward OSGeo-Live DVDs.
> Local Chapters
> Much of OSGeo’s marketing initiates are applied at the local level. In
> many cases, this is best supported through as little as an email list and
> wiki page. OSGeo also supports local chapters by offering to pay for