[GRASS-dev] GRASS OSGEO Steering Committee

GRASS GRASS developer
,
1

This message has been cross posted to reach as many possible GRASS users and developers as possible. I Apologize for any inconvenience.

There was some movement on this subject a while back ago. To bring yourself up to speed check out the following including past letters to the GRASS community and some initial nominations

http://grass.gdf-hannover.de/wiki/GRASS_Project_Steering_Commitee#2nd_Letter_to_GRASS_mailing_lists

As first introduced………

"in the Chicago meeting the GRASS project was suggested to
as one of the initial OSGeo foundation projects.

So far I only received positive feedback on the idea of
moving GRASS more formally to the foundation (while the
individual authors are keeping their copyright which is
a major difference to the Apache Foundation.)

A couple of things will have to be sorted out in the
coming months to make GRASS’s membership possible (below
list is inspired by Frank’s mail to the GRASS project):"

A large and important benefit to the greatest number of people in the GRASS community may very well be….

“One benefit of the foundation is some degree of legal
support and protection for the project. The flip side of that
is that the foundation needs to ensure some degree of
rigor and process in how code comes into the project. One
part of that is getting committers to sign a legal agreement
indicating that they agree that changes they commit will
be under the license of GRASS (GPL) and that they have
the right to submit the code (they wrote it, it is not
patented, have permission from their employer, etc).”

Recently in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada) we have merged a GRASS users group and a Mapserver user group into a local OSGEO chapter (ottawa.osgeo.org).

Over some brews afterwards and talking about the possibilities of a local OSGEO affiliation I was floored to learn that GRASS is not necessarily OFFICIALLY a member in OSGEO due to the lack of OFFICIAL acceptance from the GRASS user community.

The first step in this whole process would be to form a GRASS project Steering Committee (PSC). The above link has many great ideas and directions hammered out but it seems that activity has dwindled.

As a GRASS user representing GRASS in a local OSGEO chapter I hope to contribute to the community, because membership in OSGEO IMHO will benefit GRASS development as it reaches a broader audience.

So. Who is up for helping out to allow GRASS to move forward into becoming an official and accepted member in OSGEO?

If you have questions, comments or reservations to GRASS’s involvement in OSGEO let them be known so we can work them out. I personally had initial reservations that were mostly due to lack of information that were nicely attended to by the president of OSGEO (Frank Warmerdam) who attended our meeting and is also a contributor to the GRASS project (GDAL/OGR).

I propose a separate mailing list for business referring to the PSC. I propose psc@grass.osgeo.org if the owner of http://grass.osgeo.org agrees.

I would also like to hear some chatter as to opinions on the whole matter.

Thanks for your time

2

Sampson, David wrote:

So. Who is up for helping out to allow GRASS to move forward into becoming an official and accepted member in OSGEO?

Dave,

Thanks for bringing up this topic again - OK, I did do some browbeating
to get you active on the topic. :slight_smile:

If you have questions, comments or reservations to GRASS's involvement in OSGEO let them be known so we can work them out. I personally had initial reservations that were mostly due to lack of information that were nicely attended to by the president of OSGEO (Frank Warmerdam) who attended our meeting and is also a contributor to the GRASS project (GDAL/OGR).

I propose a separate mailing list for business referring to the PSC. I propose psc@grass.osgeo.org if the owner of _http://grass.osgeo.org_ agrees.

I would also like to hear some chatter as to opinions on the whole matter.

I feel it would undermine the need to get the broad community behind a PSC
to segregate the discussion from the main grass mailing lists. The problem
so far hasn't been that PSC discussions have overwhelmed the available the
existing mailing list traffic.

There were some reservations raised a few months ago about the PSC. I wonder
if the folks with those reservations could propose some specific changes
to Markus' first draft of a PSC RFC.

From the OSGeo point of view the key issues are:
  o There needs to be an accepted mechanism for making decisions.
  o The mechanism needs to be followed!
  o Someone needs to be designated as the spokesperson for the GRASS
    project, who will be considered responsible for it to some degree
    in reporting back to the board, and that it follows it's own rules.
  o Core OSGeo rules (ie. not improperly incorporating others code into
    the code base) need to be followed.
  o The process needs to be open to additional contributors in some
    fashion.

Beyond the above, the GRASS community has a great deal of flexibility in
deciding how to approach governance.

Best regards,
--
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam@pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org

3

Alright, some thoughts from the peanut gallery

  o There needs to be an accepted mechanism for making decisions.
1. If you want something to happen then you vote for a movement
2. if you don't want something to happen, you vote against
  * if you vote against you have a given period of time to offer a
realistic alternative otherwise your vote against is cancelled
3. The question would be who votes, what is quorum, and how to solve
stalemates
4. is there a voting system that works like bugzilla?

  o The mechanism needs to be followed!
1. keeping it simple, open and transparent

  o Someone needs to be designated as the spokesperson for the GRASS
    project, who will be considered responsible for it to some degree
    in reporting back to the board, and that it follows it's own rules.

I hope I don't speak for anyone, but here it goes. I have always
thought, Ohhh Markus will take care of this, that , the other thing...
But I think this is a great opportunity for someone to jump in without
fear that Markus will be left out. I think he has his hand QUITE full
and could really use some help from the community at large. The way I
look at it is that if the lead developer and organizer takes on
everything then that keeps GRASS on shaky ground...

A steering committee headed by someone that can learn from the big
honchos and bridge between the users and developers...

Perhaps we need some active community members to nominate some people.
On the other hand maybe some appropriate people can step up. I'd like
to see someone that has worked with grass through the ages and
understand some of the challenges.

On my third hand (ok my foot) what about someone that has worked close
with Markus, one of the big code contributors who are in regular
positions of suggesting direction and making decisions of where to go.

Just some thoughts

  o Core OSGeo rules (ie. not improperly incorporating others code into
    the code base) need to be followed.

Is this not already a given?... Is GRASS not a truly open source and
ethical project? Have there been cases in the past to worry about the
future?... How did this happen? What mechanisms are in place to prevent
it?.... Is this not something that GRASS could benefit from joining
OSGEO?

  o The process needs to be open to additional contributors in some
    fashion.

How is this different than the current process?

Cheers

-----Original Message-----
From: grass-dev-bounces@grass.itc.it
[mailto:grass-dev-bounces@grass.itc.it] On Behalf Of Frank Warmerdam
Sent: July 25, 2006 14:45
Cc: grassuser@grass.itc.it; grass-dev@grass.itc.it
Subject: [GRASS-dev] Re: [OTT_OSGEO] GRASS OSGEO Steering Committee

Sampson, David wrote:

So. Who is up for helping out to allow GRASS to move forward into
becoming an official and accepted member in OSGEO?

Dave,

Thanks for bringing up this topic again - OK, I did do some browbeating
to get you active on the topic. :slight_smile:

If you have questions, comments or reservations to GRASS's involvement

in OSGEO let them be known so we can work them out. I personally had
initial reservations that were mostly due to lack of information that
were nicely attended to by the president of OSGEO (Frank Warmerdam)
who attended our meeting and is also a contributor to the GRASS
project (GDAL/OGR).

I propose a separate mailing list for business referring to the PSC.
I propose psc@grass.osgeo.org if the owner of _http://grass.osgeo.org_

agrees.

I would also like to hear some chatter as to opinions on the whole

matter.

I feel it would undermine the need to get the broad community behind a
PSC to segregate the discussion from the main grass mailing lists. The
problem so far hasn't been that PSC discussions have overwhelmed the
available the existing mailing list traffic.

There were some reservations raised a few months ago about the PSC. I
wonder if the folks with those reservations could propose some specific
changes to Markus' first draft of a PSC RFC.

From the OSGeo point of view the key issues are:
  o There needs to be an accepted mechanism for making decisions.
  o The mechanism needs to be followed!
  o Someone needs to be designated as the spokesperson for the GRASS
    project, who will be considered responsible for it to some degree
    in reporting back to the board, and that it follows it's own rules.
  o Core OSGeo rules (ie. not improperly incorporating others code into
    the code base) need to be followed.
  o The process needs to be open to additional contributors in some
    fashion.

Beyond the above, the GRASS community has a great deal of flexibility in
deciding how to approach governance.

Best regards,
--
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------
---------------------------------------+------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam,
warmerdam@pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush | President OSGF,
http://osgeo.org

_______________________________________________
grass-dev mailing list
grass-dev@grass.itc.it
http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev

4

Sampson, David wrote:

Just some thoughts

  o Core OSGeo rules (ie. not improperly incorporating others code into
    the code base) need to be followed.

Is this not already a given?...

Dave,

Obviously, it is the normal practice, but going forward we may need
to be more explicit and careful about what is acceptable to contribute
and what is not. I know there were a number of items I played a bit
fast and loose with in GDAL that I'm being more careful as GDAL becomes
a GDAL project.

  o The process needs to be open to additional contributors in some
    fashion.

How is this different than the current process?

This isn't a problem for the GRASS project which has certainly been
quite open to additional contributors for as long as I have had any
association. Keep in mind the various items I pointed out are general
requirements of OSGeo. Just because I mention them doesn't mean I think
GRASS has a problem with them.

From my point of view the main issues with GRASS for incubation into OSGeo
are the legal review of code (hard because there is so much code accumulated
over such a long period of time), and establishing a functioning PSC. The
PSC shouldn't be terribly hard since GRASS already has had a very consensus
oriented decision making approach. It's just that the decision making
approach so far is so informal as to defy knowing if a decision has been
made or not!

Best regards,
--
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam@pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org

5

======

From my point of view the main issues with GRASS for incubation into

OSGeo are the legal review of code (hard because there is so much code
accumulated over such a long period of time), and establishing a
functioning PSC. The PSC shouldn't be terribly hard since GRASS already
has had a very consensus oriented decision making approach. It's just
that the decision making approach so far is so informal as to defy
knowing if a decision has been made or not!

It sounds like a PSC should not be hard to follow through with since
GRASS already sounds on track. I'm for helping out with the PSC

+1

Whos next?

Cheers

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Warmerdam [mailto:fwarmerdam@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Frank
Warmerdam
Sent: July 25, 2006 15:27
To: Sampson, David
Cc: grassuser@grass.itc.it; grass-dev@grass.itc.it
Subject: Re: [GRASS-user] RE: [GRASS-dev] Re: [OTT_OSGEO] GRASS OSGEO
Steering Committee

Sampson, David wrote:

Just some thoughts

  o Core OSGeo rules (ie. not improperly incorporating others code

into

    the code base) need to be followed.

Is this not already a given?...

Dave,

Obviously, it is the normal practice, but going forward we may need to
be more explicit and careful about what is acceptable to contribute and
what is not. I know there were a number of items I played a bit fast
and loose with in GDAL that I'm being more careful as GDAL becomes a
GDAL project.

  o The process needs to be open to additional contributors in some
    fashion.

How is this different than the current process?

This isn't a problem for the GRASS project which has certainly been
quite open to additional contributors for as long as I have had any
association. Keep in mind the various items I pointed out are general
requirements of OSGeo. Just because I mention them doesn't mean I think
GRASS has a problem with them.

From my point of view the main issues with GRASS for incubation into
OSGeo are the legal review of code (hard because there is so much code
accumulated over such a long period of time), and establishing a
functioning PSC. The PSC shouldn't be terribly hard since GRASS already
has had a very consensus oriented decision making approach. It's just
that the decision making approach so far is so informal as to defy
knowing if a decision has been made or not!

Best regards,
--
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------
---------------------------------------+------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam,
warmerdam@pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush | President OSGF,
http://osgeo.org

6

Thanks, Dave, for putting energy into the GRASS PSC discussions.
I accept the nomination for the PSC.

A few remarks:
I think of OSGeo as an "umbrella" foundation [1]; it would be "funny"
if GRASS didn't make part of it. What's such a foundation without
a "pure" GIS project? And, since the GRASS project itself makes use
of some proposed member projects, we can just gain from joined
efforts.
If you make part of something you can much easier control it.
Staying outside will just keep us in the niche.

However, I strongly agree with Helena (earlier postings from her)
to work against unnecessary bureaucracy. We should keep the our
decision process as free as possible since this worked for us pretty
well. The PSC should take care of formal things as much as needed
but GRASS should certainly remain community driven.
Helena has quite some experience due to her participation in
the Open GRASS Foundation efforts in the early 90's (not sure if she
was actually a member of it) which became pretty complicated in
the end. We don't want to repeat that, I think. But OSGeo.org is
much more community driven and I am sure that it will stay like
that (just see who is active there!).

For the skeptical people: due to the GRASS discussions, OSGeo
already changed the original proposal of a "contributor agreement".
This indicates that things are not set in stone and that we - as
GRASS people - do have influence, even on the procedures.

I would accept that GRASS contributors sign some document to ensure
that they know what they do: contributing to a GPL'ed project and
no knowingly having copyright infringments in their submissions.
This (low) level of legal control we should follow. In fact, we would
just continue to follow it because in 1999 we did a rigorous source
code verification and removed quite a bit from the repository which
wasn't GPL compliant. Since we already do so, we can also ask
contributors to send a GPG signed message stating this (or Fax or
whatever is appropriate).

Finally: I would appreciate if some people who already declined
to make part of the proposed PSC would think again about it. We
need accepted and well known people in the PSC to make it a reliable
group which is well embedded in the GRASS community. Let's make the
GRASS PSC special with the needed conformity for OSGeo.

cheers
Markus

[1] http://grass.gdf-hannover.de/wiki/Potential_tasks_and_responsibilities

--
Markus Neteler <neteler itc it> http://mpa.itc.it/markus/
ITC-irst - Centro per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica
MPBA - Predictive Models for Biol. & Environ. Data Analysis
Via Sommarive, 18 - 38050 Povo (Trento), Italy

7

Amen to that, Markus! I second/third/whatever Helena and Maciej's nominations and I really hope that Glynn and Radim reconsider accepting their nominations. The PSC may sound like bureaucracy but it is what you make of it. Thus, the need for you to be a part of it.

-Perry

Markus Neteler wrote:

Thanks, Dave, for putting energy into the GRASS PSC discussions.
I accept the nomination for the PSC.

A few remarks:
I think of OSGeo as an "umbrella" foundation [1]; it would be "funny"
if GRASS didn't make part of it. What's such a foundation without
a "pure" GIS project? And, since the GRASS project itself makes use
of some proposed member projects, we can just gain from joined
efforts.
If you make part of something you can much easier control it.
Staying outside will just keep us in the niche.

However, I strongly agree with Helena (earlier postings from her)
to work against unnecessary bureaucracy. We should keep the our
decision process as free as possible since this worked for us pretty
well. The PSC should take care of formal things as much as needed
but GRASS should certainly remain community driven.
Helena has quite some experience due to her participation in
the Open GRASS Foundation efforts in the early 90's (not sure if she
was actually a member of it) which became pretty complicated in
the end. We don't want to repeat that, I think. But OSGeo.org is
much more community driven and I am sure that it will stay like
that (just see who is active there!).

For the skeptical people: due to the GRASS discussions, OSGeo
already changed the original proposal of a "contributor agreement".
This indicates that things are not set in stone and that we - as
GRASS people - do have influence, even on the procedures.

I would accept that GRASS contributors sign some document to ensure
that they know what they do: contributing to a GPL'ed project and
no knowingly having copyright infringments in their submissions.
This (low) level of legal control we should follow. In fact, we would
just continue to follow it because in 1999 we did a rigorous source
code verification and removed quite a bit from the repository which
wasn't GPL compliant. Since we already do so, we can also ask
contributors to send a GPG signed message stating this (or Fax or
whatever is appropriate).

Finally: I would appreciate if some people who already declined
to make part of the proposed PSC would think again about it. We
need accepted and well known people in the PSC to make it a reliable
group which is well embedded in the GRASS community. Let's make the
GRASS PSC special with the needed conformity for OSGeo.

cheers
Markus
[1] http://grass.gdf-hannover.de/wiki/Potential_tasks_and_responsibilities

8

2006/7/28, Pericles S. Nacionales <pnaciona@gis.umn.edu>:

Amen to that, Markus! I second/third/whatever Helena and Maciej's

So do I.
Helena +1
Maciej +1

I also hope the two fellows I emailed join the happy band!
--
Paulo Marcondes = PU1/PU2PIX
-22.915 -42.229 = GG87vc (http://www.amsat.org/cgi-bin/gridconv)
Debian GNU/Linux = http://rj.debianbrasil.org = http://www.debian.org

9

Helena +1
Maciej +1

from me. I hope Glynn and Radim would also join the PSC.
My +1 for both of them.

I also propose

Paolo Zatelli +1