I'd like to open a discussion on how OSGeo is (or is not) supporting
brand new projects.
While at the FOSS4G 2007 conference (awesome job Paul R. and gang), a
number of new people (new to the conference and/or to me) approached
me to demonstrate their particular projects and ask how to make them
Open Source. This got me thinking about OSGeo's role in fostering
innovation and giving new projects a chance to get off the ground.
Our current incubation process favours established projects, ones
that have an established code base, established community, etc. It
does not, and arguably should not, be a place to start new projects.
For folks already established in OS and OSGeo, we have established
communities around ourselves that can be used to attract people to
new projects that we are spawning - Fusion, for instance. For
others, though, there is no such place to launch a new project and to
try to build the community of users and developers required to build
a project. They have no clue where to start. And I don't feel that
comfortable telling someone their project is a good idea or not - my
view of the world is usually quite limited to the things I'm
interested in and I have no clue if the rest of the community would
be interested or not.
The FOSS4G conference can be a good place to publicize new projects,
but I would argue that it is not generally convenient to get to for
most people in the world and perhaps more difficult for new projects
to get on the agenda if the presenters are relatively unknown.
It seems to me that there could be a role for OSGeo in providing a
breeding ground for new projects by providing advice on how to create
a brand new open source geospatial project, including a home, a
presence, and some initial marketing to the existing OSGeo communities.
What do others think about this? Should OSGeo be in the business of
helping new OSGeo projects get off the ground?
Cheers
Paul
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|Paul Spencer [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
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|Chief Technology Officer |
|DM Solutions Group Inc http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ |
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