[Geoserver-devel] 'Roadmap ideas'

GeoServer GeoServer Developer
1

Hey all, so I used to maintain a page that was called 'roadmap', with short, medium and long term plans. With the new jira based roadmap it got relegated to 'Roadmap Ideas' (which it should have been, it was _hopelessly_ out of date).

I just spent some time at least updating it, see http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/Roadmap+Ideas

My ideas is that there should be a more 'user friendly' way for people to see what may be coming next in GeoServer land.

What I'm hoping to do is to have it linked up with the actual roadmap, and have the two reflect one another. Someone should be able to navigate from an individual feature the Roadmap Ideas page to an overall jira task for it, potentially to an RnD page, and then eventually to a number of individual tickets.

Do people think this is a good idea?

I just took a rough pass at things, if there is anything that I missed please go ahead and fill it in.

Does anyone have better ideas of what to call this document? I think roadmap makes sense for the more granular one, but I'd like something to call this. 'Plans'?

thanks,

Chris

--
Chris Holmes
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.

2

Great work Chris!

This is a fantastic resource.

Its also been useful for me just to understand some of the threads
floating around.

thanks a lot

Rob

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 9:04 AM, Chris Holmes <cholmes@anonymised.com> wrote:

Hey all, so I used to maintain a page that was called 'roadmap', with
short, medium and long term plans. With the new jira based roadmap it
got relegated to 'Roadmap Ideas' (which it should have been, it was
_hopelessly_ out of date).

I just spent some time at least updating it, see
http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/Roadmap+Ideas

My ideas is that there should be a more 'user friendly' way for people
to see what may be coming next in GeoServer land.

What I'm hoping to do is to have it linked up with the actual roadmap,
and have the two reflect one another. Someone should be able to
navigate from an individual feature the Roadmap Ideas page to an overall
jira task for it, potentially to an RnD page, and then eventually to a
number of individual tickets.

Do people think this is a good idea?

I just took a rough pass at things, if there is anything that I missed
please go ahead and fill it in.

Does anyone have better ideas of what to call this document? I think
roadmap makes sense for the more granular one, but I'd like something to
call this. 'Plans'?

thanks,

Chris

--
Chris Holmes
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.

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3

hello Chris,

apologies for barging in on the developers list but i didn't want to
miss the opportunity for registering my enthusiastic approval for such
an effort. this for sure is a valuable tool for people like me who are
asked to help plan for future releases of a product that depends on
GeoServer.

two additional things you might want to consider:

a. add dates (tentative ones or year quarters are fine) for releases
beyond the next immediate one.

b. give an idea about the end-of-life period/date of earlier versions.
this would help planning for conversion between different versions of
the GeoTools and other libraries for oragnizations that use the same
versions as those in GeoServer.

On Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:04:54 am Chris Holmes wrote:

Hey all, so I used to maintain a page that was called 'roadmap', with
short, medium and long term plans. With the new jira based roadmap
it got relegated to 'Roadmap Ideas' (which it should have been, it
was _hopelessly_ out of date).

I just spent some time at least updating it, see
http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/Roadmap+Ideas

My ideas is that there should be a more 'user friendly' way for
people to see what may be coming next in GeoServer land.

What I'm hoping to do is to have it linked up with the actual
roadmap, and have the two reflect one another. Someone should be
able to navigate from an individual feature the Roadmap Ideas page to
an overall jira task for it, potentially to an RnD page, and then
eventually to a number of individual tickets.

Do people think this is a good idea?

I just took a rough pass at things, if there is anything that I
missed please go ahead and fill it in.

Does anyone have better ideas of what to call this document? I think
roadmap makes sense for the more granular one, but I'd like something
to call this. 'Plans'?

thanks,

Chris

cheers;
rsn

4

Raif S. Naffah wrote:

hello Chris,

apologies for barging in on the developers list but i didn't want to miss the opportunity for registering my enthusiastic approval for such an effort. this for sure is a valuable tool for people like me who are asked to help plan for future releases of a product that depends on GeoServer.

You're definitely welcome to barge in, I just kept it on the devel list to keep the audience a bit smaller, and to make sure it was a good idea. It sounds like there's support for it, so I'll definitely follow up with an email to the users list and a blog post.

two additional things you might want to consider:

a. add dates (tentative ones or year quarters are fine) for releases beyond the next immediate one.

This one is tough. My organization at least won't commit to any dates until we have a client paying for it. Anything else can get bumped by another client. So in our last roadmap even some of the things I put in short term (3 months) didn't get done, even though I'm not updating the roadmap like nine months later.

We could just put dates when developers know clients are demanding it. But often times that's not even an indication that it will be in a general geoserver release, as that takes more time, and few clients require it.

What I'd ideally like to do is set up a mechanism where a group of clients could put in money to ensure that a group of developers finishes things by a certain date. But with the open source nature of things it's hard to get any guarantees, so I just dropped it.

I think some of these may be able to have some dates on it though, I know the complex feature stuff is well supported and they have deadlines, so I'll see if I can get them to fill out some more details of their deliverables that they hope to meet.

b. give an idea about the end-of-life period/date of earlier versions. this would help planning for conversion between different versions of the GeoTools and other libraries for oragnizations that use the same versions as those in GeoServer.

You mean like on a separate page? And are you saying put the anticipated end of life? Or just the end of lifes of the last versions? And by end of life you just mean when there's not going to be any more releases on the branch?

Some of this is a bit tough, as my organization was not planning a 1.6.5, but we had enough clients that were paying for bug fixes on 1.6.x that it made sense for us to put out the release for all. But in general we move fairly aggressively towards developing the next release, and only _guarantee_ bug fixes on stable branches for paying clients. And for our paying clients we'll fix anything that's a bug that affects them. Also note that other organizations may do patches and put out a stable release even if we're not planning on it.

But yeah, point taken, and I'd like to at least make my organization's intentions more clear, so others can plan on what we're going to do, even as they understand those priorities may shift due to our clients, and make it easier to understand that they can influence our priorities with funding.

best regards,

Chris

On Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:04:54 am Chris Holmes wrote:

Hey all, so I used to maintain a page that was called 'roadmap', with
short, medium and long term plans. With the new jira based roadmap
it got relegated to 'Roadmap Ideas' (which it should have been, it
was _hopelessly_ out of date).

I just spent some time at least updating it, see
http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/Roadmap+Ideas

My ideas is that there should be a more 'user friendly' way for
people to see what may be coming next in GeoServer land.

What I'm hoping to do is to have it linked up with the actual
roadmap, and have the two reflect one another. Someone should be
able to navigate from an individual feature the Roadmap Ideas page to
an overall jira task for it, potentially to an RnD page, and then
eventually to a number of individual tickets.

Do people think this is a good idea?

I just took a rough pass at things, if there is anything that I
missed please go ahead and fill it in.

Does anyone have better ideas of what to call this document? I think
roadmap makes sense for the more granular one, but I'd like something
to call this. 'Plans'?

thanks,

Chris

cheers;
rsn

--
Chris Holmes
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.

5

Hi Chris;

As you can see anything that will help with planning is encouraged. I have found it very scary ground however. With uDig the moment an idea was expressed publicly (even when it had no funding) we have had funding dry up from other sources for the same idea (why pay for something if it is going to get done anyways?).

As such I would encourage you to have a list of good ideas that is clearly labeled as required funding. Or at least be very careful as you walk this ground.
Jody

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 11:18 AM, Chris Holmes <cholmes@anonymised.com> wrote:

Raif S. Naffah wrote:

hello Chris,

apologies for barging in on the developers list but i didn’t want to
miss the opportunity for registering my enthusiastic approval for such
an effort. this for sure is a valuable tool for people like me who are
asked to help plan for future releases of a product that depends on
GeoServer.

You’re definitely welcome to barge in, I just kept it on the devel list
to keep the audience a bit smaller, and to make sure it was a good idea.
It sounds like there’s support for it, so I’ll definitely follow up
with an email to the users list and a blog post.

two additional things you might want to consider:

a. add dates (tentative ones or year quarters are fine) for releases
beyond the next immediate one.

This one is tough. My organization at least won’t commit to any dates
until we have a client paying for it. Anything else can get bumped by
another client. So in our last roadmap even some of the things I put in
short term (3 months) didn’t get done, even though I’m not updating the
roadmap like nine months later.

We could just put dates when developers know clients are demanding it.
But often times that’s not even an indication that it will be in a
general geoserver release, as that takes more time, and few clients
require it.

What I’d ideally like to do is set up a mechanism where a group of
clients could put in money to ensure that a group of developers finishes
things by a certain date. But with the open source nature of things
it’s hard to get any guarantees, so I just dropped it.

I think some of these may be able to have some dates on it though, I
know the complex feature stuff is well supported and they have
deadlines, so I’ll see if I can get them to fill out some more details
of their deliverables that they hope to meet.

b. give an idea about the end-of-life period/date of earlier versions.
this would help planning for conversion between different versions of
the GeoTools and other libraries for oragnizations that use the same
versions as those in GeoServer.

You mean like on a separate page? And are you saying put the
anticipated end of life? Or just the end of lifes of the last versions?
And by end of life you just mean when there’s not going to be any more
releases on the branch?

Some of this is a bit tough, as my organization was not planning a
1.6.5, but we had enough clients that were paying for bug fixes on 1.6.x
that it made sense for us to put out the release for all. But in
general we move fairly aggressively towards developing the next release,
and only guarantee bug fixes on stable branches for paying clients.
And for our paying clients we’ll fix anything that’s a bug that affects
them. Also note that other organizations may do patches and put out a
stable release even if we’re not planning on it.

But yeah, point taken, and I’d like to at least make my organization’s
intentions more clear, so others can plan on what we’re going to do,
even as they understand those priorities may shift due to our clients,
and make it easier to understand that they can influence our priorities
with funding.

best regards,

Chris

On Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:04:54 am Chris Holmes wrote:

Hey all, so I used to maintain a page that was called ‘roadmap’, with
short, medium and long term plans. With the new jira based roadmap
it got relegated to ‘Roadmap Ideas’ (which it should have been, it
was hopelessly out of date).

I just spent some time at least updating it, see
http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/Roadmap+Ideas

My ideas is that there should be a more ‘user friendly’ way for
people to see what may be coming next in GeoServer land.

What I’m hoping to do is to have it linked up with the actual
roadmap, and have the two reflect one another. Someone should be
able to navigate from an individual feature the Roadmap Ideas page to
an overall jira task for it, potentially to an RnD page, and then
eventually to a number of individual tickets.

Do people think this is a good idea?

I just took a rough pass at things, if there is anything that I
missed please go ahead and fill it in.

Does anyone have better ideas of what to call this document? I think
roadmap makes sense for the more granular one, but I’d like something
to call this. ‘Plans’?

thanks,

Chris

cheers;
rsn

–
Chris Holmes
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.

Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA
-OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise
-Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation
-Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD
http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H

Geoserver-devel mailing list
Geoserver-devel@anonymised.comsts.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-devel

6

Jody Garnett ha scritto:

Hi Chris;

As you can see anything that will help with planning is encouraged. I have found it very scary ground however. With uDig the moment an idea was expressed publicly (even when it had no funding) we have had funding dry up from other sources for the same idea (why pay for something if it is going to get done anyways?).

As such I would encourage you to have a list of good ideas that is clearly labeled as required funding. Or at least be very careful as you walk this ground.

At the moment only the items that are scheduled for a specific release
in the short term road map officially have funding.
Everything else does not (with the notable exception of complex feature
effort) so it may be either just waiting for funds, or may be something
that a developer is working on in his spare time, and that may get
stuck at any point (see WPS, I haven't been working on it for 2 months
due to other stuff keeping me away from it).

How do we communicate this better?
Cheers
Andrea

--
Andrea Aime
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.

7

Thanks for the clarification Andrea.

At the moment only the items that are scheduled for a specific release
in the short term road map officially have funding.

The description for Medium term also mentions funding: “These projects have funding or commitments from developers, but are larger projects that will take more time. They should get on for 2.0 or 2.1”

Everything else does not (with the notable exception of complex feature
effort) so it may be either just waiting for funds, or may be something
that a developer is working on in his spare time, and that may get
stuck at any point (see WPS, I haven’t been working on it for 2 months
due to other stuff keeping me away from it).

How do we communicate this better?

The intro to the page does a pretty good job; I just skipped over it until now (bad jody no cookie).

My preference would be a nice little picture saying “funding opportunity” (or the slightly nicer “volunteer needed” ). This could be contrasted with associating a contact person or organization next to the items in the short term roadmap?

The intro did a good job of stating that these items have no set schedule; and if you are interested in having any of these features available in a set time line you should talk to the community volunteering or commercial development options.

Jody

8

Jody Garnett ha scritto:

Thanks for the clarification Andrea.

    At the moment only the items that are scheduled for a specific release
    in the short term road map officially have funding.

The description for Medium term also mentions funding: "These projects have funding or commitments from developers, but are larger projects that will take more time. They should get on for 2.0 or 2.1"

    Everything else does not (with the notable exception of complex feature
    effort) so it may be either just waiting for funds, or may be something
    that a developer is working on in his spare time, and that may get
    stuck at any point (see WPS, I haven't been working on it for 2 months
    due to other stuff keeping me away from it).

    How do we communicate this better?

The intro to the page does a pretty good job; I just skipped over it until now (bad jody no cookie).

I changed the page formatting so that the relevant part is in italic,
should make it stand out so that most people should notice it now:
http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/Roadmap+Ideas

I also added some wording on the "GeoServer roadmap" page, that is,
the roadmap page linked from the home page:
http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/Roadmap
to better express the idea that the fact an item is in the long term
roadmap does not necessarily mean there is any specific commitment on it. In fact the roadmap page is build by querying jira, so any user can
add a new feature request, and it'll end up being in that page too.

My preference would be a nice little picture saying "funding opportunity" (or the slightly nicer "volunteer needed" ). This could be contrasted with associating a contact person or organization next to the items in the short term roadmap?

Hum, this sounds like a good idea to me, it expresses the need for
some external help without looking "pushy".

Cheers
Andrea

--
Andrea Aime
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.