Rich, I'll respond to your questions in a separate thread. :] (I invite any other OSGeo members that work with OpenJUMP or UDig to correct mistakes or add details to my post.)
JUMP was originally developed by Vivid Solutions with some assistance (I'm not sure how much) by Refractions Research. I believe the funding for the development for JUMP came from some source in the Canadian government. (This source was one of the Canadian Provinces, if I remember correctly.) At some point funding was awarded for "JUMP 2". This time the funds went to Refractions Research. Their development team had identified some of the design flaws in the original JUMP, and decided to fix these. In the end they decided to go with a completely new design, and UDig was the result. In the meantime Steve Tanner and some other JUMP users decided to fork the code base for JUMP. This was not done hastily. It's been a while since all this happened, and I'm not clear on every detail, but I believe one main reason we forked was a desire to internationalize JUMP's source code. The bottom line is that Vivid Solutions was (in my modest opinion) unresponsive to outside developers desire to make reasonable improvements or even contribute patches. At the same time they were doing very little with the code base themselves. This is what led to the fork. At one point we had a handful of different individual developers and organization maintaining their own versions of JUMP, and we realized we could all get together and benefit from a common core. This is still how OpenJUMP operates. We've got guys that maintain their own code bases with individual tools and modifications, but they all make a good effort to port the best (and least controversial) stuff back to the core. There really is no formal governance mechanism in place. We all get along well and try to help each other out. There are some issues with our model of development. We don't have a great release cycle, although that has been discussed in the last few months, and developer turnover can be fairly high. I'm also easily distracted, and I have to exercise self discipline to finish as task once I start it. I must regretfully admit this has not helped the project. (I'm consciously working on that personality flaw.) A couple of interesting things to note: - Our relationship with Vivid Solutions seems to have improved over the course of the last year. The two developers at the company that are "in charge" of JUMP occasionally help out with a problem on the OpenJUMP mailing list, and users of JUMP and OpenJUMP share a common mailing list. We've even talked about the possibility of merging JUMP and OpenJUMP back to a common core, but I think this is unlikely without some major funding at Vivid Solutions. - Had Steve and I known about Refractions Research involvement with "JUMP 2" OpenJUMP and UDig would probably be the same program. I look at this with deep regret, although I don't think it is anyone's fault in particular. Still, I think about what the JUMP user community could have accomplished with Refractions Research and I get little tears in my eyes. :] Still, I get a kick out of Jody Garnett, and I hope OpenJUMP and GeoTools/UDig can work together more in the future. We definitely have some different approaches to certain aspects of software design, but I think at a minimum we can share data I/O or data access code and map projection code. Landon -----Original Message----- From: Richard Greenwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 7:32 PM To: Landon Blake Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models On Jan 3, 2008 4:37 PM, Landon Blake <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think OpenJUMP might be an example of the opposite case. In this situation the less-than-ideal management of a FOSS GIS program by a private company led to a fork. The fork was made, not by another company, but by a group of individual users/developers. I'm interested in more details of the history and relationship between Jump, OpenJump, and uDig. I think OpenJump and uDig have roots in Jump, which was started by Martin Davis, or am I incorrect? And the fork came about when? And why? Maybe you would prefer to reply directly to the OSGeo-Discuss thread "FOSS4GIS business models", but I'm afraid my questions are tangential to that thread. Rich -- Richard Greenwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.greenwoodmap.com Warning: Information provided via electronic media is not guaranteed against defects including translation and transmission errors. If the reader is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this information in error, please notify the sender immediately. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss