[SAC] Project Hosting

Committees SAC mailing list
1

Hi,

pgRouting has requested project hosting via OSGeo:

  http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/561

In general, I believe policy has been that a SAC member basically has
to step up to support organizations if they want to be hosted by
OSGeo (followed by rubber-stamping by the board, afaik).

I'd like to suggest that in general, we should encourage projects
which have a large, healthy community to pursue incubation (at least
in the form of creating an application for incubation/demonstrating
intent to pursue incubation). pgRouting is a mature project,
well-documented, with a significant history in the OSGeo community
(participation at conferences, etc.) There is no reason they
should not be pursuing incubation that I can see.

If a project is mature enough to be considered for incubation,
but is not interested in pursuing incubation, I feel like SAC
should take care in taking that project on as a hosting
candidate.

For projects that are small enough that incubation is not
appropriate -- like TileCache/FeatureServer, as well as others that
have requested incubation -- I'm fine with the current process,
but I think that we should really do our best to encourage projects
like pgRouting to become a part of the community via incubation,
rather than just taking advantage of OSGeo's hosting capabilities.

I'd be interested in any other opinions on this point.

Best Regards,
--
Christopher Schmidt
Nokia

2

On Jun 14, 2010, at 12:54 PM, <christopher.schmidt@nokia.com> wrote:

pgRouting is a mature project,
well-documented, with a significant history in the OSGeo community
(participation at conferences, etc.) There is no reason they
should not be pursuing incubation that I can see.

As far as precedent goes, we didn't put this condition on PostGIS when they came to us for hosting help. Or GEOS.

If a project is mature enough to be considered for incubation,
but is not interested in pursuing incubation, I feel like SAC
should take care in taking that project on as a hosting
candidate.

I understand this sentiment, but a project without a "champion" within SAC to be responsible for their project is going to be at the mercy of volunteerism's ebbs and flows regardless. An incubation-worthy project that would rather just freeload system resources from SAC either needs to bring with or create its champion within SAC. IMO, that's as high of a hurdle as the committee trying to make a determination of incubation worthiness.

3

On Jun 14, 2010, at 3:28 PM, ext Howard Butler wrote:

On Jun 14, 2010, at 12:54 PM, <christopher.schmidt@nokia.com> wrote:

pgRouting is a mature project,
well-documented, with a significant history in the OSGeo community
(participation at conferences, etc.) There is no reason they
should not be pursuing incubation that I can see.

As far as precedent goes, we didn't put this condition on PostGIS when they came to us for hosting help. Or GEOS.

I agree, and I think that is unfortunate. I'm not arguing changing
the past, but as we grow, our hosting actually does cost real money.
We recently had to make the transition from osgeo1 to the OSUOSL
hosting precisely because of the growing usage of trac/SVN --
load on that machine has gone down by 75% since the transition.

Free-for-all hosting is not practical, and I'd like to encourage
us to keep that in mind.

If a project is mature enough to be considered for incubation,
but is not interested in pursuing incubation, I feel like SAC
should take care in taking that project on as a hosting
candidate.

I understand this sentiment, but a project without a "champion"
within SAC to be responsible for their project is going to be at
the mercy of volunteerism's ebbs and flows regardless.

To be honest, I don't see evidence of that. My observation is that
projects which are not undergoing incubation are expecting the
same performance as every other project. In addition, the resources
for these projects are shared for all projects -- we didn't have
the option to tell PostGIS "Okay, we're not hosting you anymore
because if we continue hosting you, we'll have to migrate to a
new hosting solution."

An
incubation-worthy project that would rather just freeload system
resources from SAC either needs to bring with or create its
champion within SAC.

For the the initial setup cost of a transition, sure; though I've
now simplified that so much that it could practically be automated.
For ongoing promises on performance and the like, SAC is equally
responsible to all projects, and there's nothing we have done about
that so far. (The idea of a seperate SVN for projects that aren't
actually incubated with fewer resources dedicated to it would
theoretically solve this problem; in reality, it would probably
just make the initial headache more complicated to the point
that it's not worth it.)

Having done a significant chunk of the work on the transition
from one server to another for SVN/Trac, I can state categorically
that there is a fair amount of effort expended there for projects
that I would not have volunteered to do it for. I can't say for
sure that projects wouldn't have seen the same need to transition
without all the extra projects, but I certainly think it's a
possibility.

In any case, I think we need something more informative to projects
looking for hosting than ignoring SAC tickets, if no one is willing
to champion them. The PostGIS ticket has been sitting for a couple
months; if no one is willing to step up, then I can respond and let
them know that right now, there are no SAC volunteers to do a
transition.

Best Regards,
--
Christopher Schmidt
Nokia

4

On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:40 PM, <christopher.schmidt@nokia.com> <christopher.schmidt@nokia.com> wrote:

On Jun 14, 2010, at 3:28 PM, ext Howard Butler wrote:

As far as precedent goes, we didn't put this condition on PostGIS when they came to us for hosting help. Or GEOS.

I agree, and I think that is unfortunate. I'm not arguing changing
the past, but as we grow, our hosting actually does cost real money.
We recently had to make the transition from osgeo1 to the OSUOSL
hosting precisely because of the growing usage of trac/SVN --
load on that machine has gone down by 75% since the transition.

75% of a six-year-old, poorly optimized machine. Not too bad, though it has been a PITA.

Free-for-all hosting is not practical, and I'd like to encourage
us to keep that in mind.

Ok, let's apply a carrot and stick solution. Shall we change our policy to have a carrot of hosting, and incubation/osgeo labs/your firstborn as the stick? With github as a true, useful, and usable alternative to sourceforge, a lot of our impetus for self hosting is going away anyway.

An
incubation-worthy project that would rather just freeload system
resources from SAC either needs to bring with or create its
champion within SAC.

For the the initial setup cost of a transition, sure; though I've
now simplified that so much that it could practically be automated.

creating new setups are not the same as importing others' trac/svn/phpcraptacularbugtracker/mailman dumps. In the my experience, setup was more than init'ing a repository, and a big chunk of the people-time cost. Not a cost to infrastructure at all, obviously.

5

Hi Chris,

Thank you for bringing up this topic and thank you for speaking for the pgRouting project.
pgRouting discussed the pro and contra to apply for incubation, but it didn’t happen yet because of a few reasons:

  • We feel that pgRouting is quite small compared to other projects that passed incubation already, and we thought we could start as an OSGeo Labs project at first. Maybe we could find other similar projects to join then for incubation. I’m not sure OSGeo aims to be there for a large number of small projects rather than the “big” ones.
    Nevertheless we want to keep pgRouting on the GIS Live DVD and thought it might be a good idea to have at least mailing list and SVN hosted by OSGeo for now (I’m not sure a migration of TRAC is possible).
  • Second reason for not having started incubation yet: it seems to me that incubation requires quite some paperwork and efforts (pgRouting user base might be relatively large, but active developers isn’t yet). Furthermore there are quite a few projects in incubation queue and I feel there is some lack of mentors.
    There are alternatives for hosting like Github, Sourceforge or just some company server, but we thought it would be best for the project to be less tied to a single company and show our relation to OSGeo and make it more attractive for others to join development.

Best regards,
Daniel

2010/6/14 <christopher.schmidt@nokia.com>

Hi,

pgRouting has requested project hosting via OSGeo:

http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/561

In general, I believe policy has been that a SAC member basically has
to step up to support organizations if they want to be hosted by
OSGeo (followed by rubber-stamping by the board, afaik).

I’d like to suggest that in general, we should encourage projects
which have a large, healthy community to pursue incubation (at least
in the form of creating an application for incubation/demonstrating
intent to pursue incubation). pgRouting is a mature project,
well-documented, with a significant history in the OSGeo community
(participation at conferences, etc.) There is no reason they
should not be pursuing incubation that I can see.

If a project is mature enough to be considered for incubation,
but is not interested in pursuing incubation, I feel like SAC
should take care in taking that project on as a hosting
candidate.

For projects that are small enough that incubation is not
appropriate – like TileCache/FeatureServer, as well as others that
have requested incubation – I’m fine with the current process,
but I think that we should really do our best to encourage projects
like pgRouting to become a part of the community via incubation,
rather than just taking advantage of OSGeo’s hosting capabilities.

I’d be interested in any other opinions on this point.

Best Regards,

Christopher Schmidt
Nokia

Sac mailing list
Sac@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/sac

–
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

6

Hi list,

May I ask what is the state about hosting pgRouting SVN on OSGeo servers?
I think this still hasn’t been clarified yet, right?

I would be glad if someone could help to import the SVN dump.
If you decide not to host it, that’s OK as well, and I will close the ticket and pgRouting project will look for alternatives. Just it would be nice to be able to proceed somehow.

Best regards,
Daniel

PS: the related tickets for reference:
http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/561

–
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

2010/6/15 Daniel Kastl <daniel@georepublic.de>

Hi Chris,

Thank you for bringing up this topic and thank you for speaking for the pgRouting project.
pgRouting discussed the pro and contra to apply for incubation, but it didn’t happen yet because of a few reasons:

  • We feel that pgRouting is quite small compared to other projects that passed incubation already, and we thought we could start as an OSGeo Labs project at first. Maybe we could find other similar projects to join then for incubation. I’m not sure OSGeo aims to be there for a large number of small projects rather than the “big” ones.
    Nevertheless we want to keep pgRouting on the GIS Live DVD and thought it might be a good idea to have at least mailing list and SVN hosted by OSGeo for now (I’m not sure a migration of TRAC is possible).
  • Second reason for not having started incubation yet: it seems to me that incubation requires quite some paperwork and efforts (pgRouting user base might be relatively large, but active developers isn’t yet). Furthermore there are quite a few projects in incubation queue and I feel there is some lack of mentors.
    There are alternatives for hosting like Github, Sourceforge or just some company server, but we thought it would be best for the project to be less tied to a single company and show our relation to OSGeo and make it more attractive for others to join development.

Best regards,
Daniel

2010/6/14 <christopher.schmidt@nokia.com>

Hi,

pgRouting has requested project hosting via OSGeo:

http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/561

In general, I believe policy has been that a SAC member basically has
to step up to support organizations if they want to be hosted by
OSGeo (followed by rubber-stamping by the board, afaik).

I’d like to suggest that in general, we should encourage projects
which have a large, healthy community to pursue incubation (at least
in the form of creating an application for incubation/demonstrating
intent to pursue incubation). pgRouting is a mature project,
well-documented, with a significant history in the OSGeo community
(participation at conferences, etc.) There is no reason they
should not be pursuing incubation that I can see.

If a project is mature enough to be considered for incubation,
but is not interested in pursuing incubation, I feel like SAC
should take care in taking that project on as a hosting
candidate.

For projects that are small enough that incubation is not
appropriate – like TileCache/FeatureServer, as well as others that
have requested incubation – I’m fine with the current process,
but I think that we should really do our best to encourage projects
like pgRouting to become a part of the community via incubation,
rather than just taking advantage of OSGeo’s hosting capabilities.

I’d be interested in any other opinions on this point.

Best Regards,

Christopher Schmidt
Nokia

Sac mailing list
Sac@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/sac

–
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

7

Hi Chris,

You told me at FOSS4G that I could ask you again regarding the pgRouting SVN repository for pgRouting, so I reactivate this mailing list thread.

The ticket and SVN dump haven’t changed because we didn’t commit new changes to the repository as long as the ticket was open:
http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/561
Whether pgRouting will become part of PostGIS in version 2.1 or not, I think it’s a good idea to have the repository on OSGeo servers.

If it’s not too much work, we would also like to run pgRouting TRAC on OSGeo servers, but it would be OK to start with an empty instance and copy the relevant pages and tickets manually. It’s not too much and it would be a good reason to clean up old stuff.

Thank you very much,
Daniel

2010/7/10 Daniel Kastl <daniel@georepublic.de>

Hi list,

May I ask what is the state about hosting pgRouting SVN on OSGeo servers?
I think this still hasn’t been clarified yet, right?

I would be glad if someone could help to import the SVN dump.
If you decide not to host it, that’s OK as well, and I will close the ticket and pgRouting project will look for alternatives. Just it would be nice to be able to proceed somehow.

Best regards,
Daniel

PS: the related tickets for reference:

http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/561

–
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

2010/6/15 Daniel Kastl <daniel@georepublic.de>

Hi Chris,

Thank you for bringing up this topic and thank you for speaking for the pgRouting project.
pgRouting discussed the pro and contra to apply for incubation, but it didn’t happen yet because of a few reasons:

  • We feel that pgRouting is quite small compared to other projects that passed incubation already, and we thought we could start as an OSGeo Labs project at first. Maybe we could find other similar projects to join then for incubation. I’m not sure OSGeo aims to be there for a large number of small projects rather than the “big” ones.
    Nevertheless we want to keep pgRouting on the GIS Live DVD and thought it might be a good idea to have at least mailing list and SVN hosted by OSGeo for now (I’m not sure a migration of TRAC is possible).
  • Second reason for not having started incubation yet: it seems to me that incubation requires quite some paperwork and efforts (pgRouting user base might be relatively large, but active developers isn’t yet). Furthermore there are quite a few projects in incubation queue and I feel there is some lack of mentors.
    There are alternatives for hosting like Github, Sourceforge or just some company server, but we thought it would be best for the project to be less tied to a single company and show our relation to OSGeo and make it more attractive for others to join development.

Best regards,
Daniel

2010/6/14 <christopher.schmidt@nokia.com>

Hi,

pgRouting has requested project hosting via OSGeo:

http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/561

In general, I believe policy has been that a SAC member basically has
to step up to support organizations if they want to be hosted by
OSGeo (followed by rubber-stamping by the board, afaik).

I’d like to suggest that in general, we should encourage projects
which have a large, healthy community to pursue incubation (at least
in the form of creating an application for incubation/demonstrating
intent to pursue incubation). pgRouting is a mature project,
well-documented, with a significant history in the OSGeo community
(participation at conferences, etc.) There is no reason they
should not be pursuing incubation that I can see.

If a project is mature enough to be considered for incubation,
but is not interested in pursuing incubation, I feel like SAC
should take care in taking that project on as a hosting
candidate.

For projects that are small enough that incubation is not
appropriate – like TileCache/FeatureServer, as well as others that
have requested incubation – I’m fine with the current process,
but I think that we should really do our best to encourage projects
like pgRouting to become a part of the community via incubation,
rather than just taking advantage of OSGeo’s hosting capabilities.

I’d be interested in any other opinions on this point.

Best Regards,

Christopher Schmidt
Nokia

Sac mailing list
Sac@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/sac

–
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

–
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

8

On Sep 22, 2010, at 11:33 AM, ext Daniel Kastl wrote:

Hi Chris,

You told me at FOSS4G that I could ask you again regarding the pgRouting SVN repository for pgRouting, so I reactivate this mailing list thread.

Daniel,

Yeah, I'm willing to do this, now that I think we've resolved most of
our trac/svn performance issues. I'm in the middle of an office move --
just got network set up at my workspace -- so I'm a few days behind,
I'll try to get to it this weekend.

If nothing has happened in a week, nag me :slight_smile:

-- Chris

The ticket and SVN dump haven't changed because we didn't commit new changes to the repository as long as the ticket was open:
http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/561
Whether pgRouting will become part of PostGIS in version 2.1 or not, I think it's a good idea to have the repository on OSGeo servers.

If it's not too much work, we would also like to run pgRouting TRAC on OSGeo servers, but it would be OK to start with an empty instance and copy the relevant pages and tickets manually. It's not too much and it would be a good reason to clean up old stuff.

Thank you very much,
Daniel

2010/7/10 Daniel Kastl <daniel@georepublic.de>
Hi list,

May I ask what is the state about hosting pgRouting SVN on OSGeo servers?
I think this still hasn't been clarified yet, right?

I would be glad if someone could help to import the SVN dump.
If you decide not to host it, that's OK as well, and I will close the ticket and pgRouting project will look for alternatives. Just it would be nice to be able to proceed somehow.

Best regards,
Daniel

PS: the related tickets for reference:
http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/561

--
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

2010/6/15 Daniel Kastl <daniel@georepublic.de>

Hi Chris,

Thank you for bringing up this topic and thank you for speaking for the pgRouting project.
pgRouting discussed the pro and contra to apply for incubation, but it didn't happen yet because of a few reasons:
  • We feel that pgRouting is quite small compared to other projects that passed incubation already, and we thought we could start as an OSGeo Labs project at first. Maybe we could find other similar projects to join then for incubation. I'm not sure OSGeo aims to be there for a large number of small projects rather than the "big" ones.
Nevertheless we want to keep pgRouting on the GIS Live DVD and thought it might be a good idea to have at least mailing list and SVN hosted by OSGeo for now (I'm not sure a migration of TRAC is possible).
  • Second reason for not having started incubation yet: it seems to me that incubation requires quite some paperwork and efforts (pgRouting user base might be relatively large, but active developers isn't yet). Furthermore there are quite a few projects in incubation queue and I feel there is some lack of mentors.
There are alternatives for hosting like Github, Sourceforge or just some company server, but we thought it would be best for the project to be less tied to a single company and show our relation to OSGeo and make it more attractive for others to join development.

Best regards,
Daniel

2010/6/14 <christopher.schmidt@nokia.com>

Hi,

pgRouting has requested project hosting via OSGeo:

http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/561

In general, I believe policy has been that a SAC member basically has
to step up to support organizations if they want to be hosted by
OSGeo (followed by rubber-stamping by the board, afaik).

I'd like to suggest that in general, we should encourage projects
which have a large, healthy community to pursue incubation (at least
in the form of creating an application for incubation/demonstrating
intent to pursue incubation). pgRouting is a mature project,
well-documented, with a significant history in the OSGeo community
(participation at conferences, etc.) There is no reason they
should not be pursuing incubation that I can see.

If a project is mature enough to be considered for incubation,
but is not interested in pursuing incubation, I feel like SAC
should take care in taking that project on as a hosting
candidate.

For projects that are small enough that incubation is not
appropriate -- like TileCache/FeatureServer, as well as others that
have requested incubation -- I'm fine with the current process,
but I think that we should really do our best to encourage projects
like pgRouting to become a part of the community via incubation,
rather than just taking advantage of OSGeo's hosting capabilities.

I'd be interested in any other opinions on this point.

Best Regards,
--
Christopher Schmidt
Nokia

_______________________________________________
Sac mailing list
Sac@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/sac

--
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

--
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

9

Hi Chris,

Not sure you received my previous two “nag mails” or they went to a spam folder maybe. :wink:

Would it be possible to import pgRouting dump to OSGeo SVN?
If not we will think about other ways of hosting, but we just need to be able to proceed with pgRouting.
Everything SVN related is in a queue right now.

Thanks,
Daniel

2010/9/23 <christopher.schmidt@nokia.com>

On Sep 22, 2010, at 11:33 AM, ext Daniel Kastl wrote:

Hi Chris,

You told me at FOSS4G that I could ask you again regarding the pgRouting SVN repository for pgRouting, so I reactivate this mailing list thread.

Daniel,

Yeah, I’m willing to do this, now that I think we’ve resolved most of
our trac/svn performance issues. I’m in the middle of an office move –
just got network set up at my workspace – so I’m a few days behind,
I’ll try to get to it this weekend.

If nothing has happened in a week, nag me :slight_smile:

– Chris

The ticket and SVN dump haven’t changed because we didn’t commit new changes to the repository as long as the ticket was open:
http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/561
Whether pgRouting will become part of PostGIS in version 2.1 or not, I think it’s a good idea to have the repository on OSGeo servers.

If it’s not too much work, we would also like to run pgRouting TRAC on OSGeo servers, but it would be OK to start with an empty instance and copy the relevant pages and tickets manually. It’s not too much and it would be a good reason to clean up old stuff.

Thank you very much,
Daniel

2010/7/10 Daniel Kastl <daniel@georepublic.de>
Hi list,

May I ask what is the state about hosting pgRouting SVN on OSGeo servers?
I think this still hasn’t been clarified yet, right?

I would be glad if someone could help to import the SVN dump.
If you decide not to host it, that’s OK as well, and I will close the ticket and pgRouting project will look for alternatives. Just it would be nice to be able to proceed somehow.

Best regards,
Daniel

PS: the related tickets for reference:
http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/561

–
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

2010/6/15 Daniel Kastl <daniel@georepublic.de>

Hi Chris,

Thank you for bringing up this topic and thank you for speaking for the pgRouting project.
pgRouting discussed the pro and contra to apply for incubation, but it didn’t happen yet because of a few reasons:
• We feel that pgRouting is quite small compared to other projects that passed incubation already, and we thought we could start as an OSGeo Labs project at first. Maybe we could find other similar projects to join then for incubation. I’m not sure OSGeo aims to be there for a large number of small projects rather than the “big” ones.
Nevertheless we want to keep pgRouting on the GIS Live DVD and thought it might be a good idea to have at least mailing list and SVN hosted by OSGeo for now (I’m not sure a migration of TRAC is possible).
• Second reason for not having started incubation yet: it seems to me that incubation requires quite some paperwork and efforts (pgRouting user base might be relatively large, but active developers isn’t yet). Furthermore there are quite a few projects in incubation queue and I feel there is some lack of mentors.
There are alternatives for hosting like Github, Sourceforge or just some company server, but we thought it would be best for the project to be less tied to a single company and show our relation to OSGeo and make it more attractive for others to join development.

Best regards,
Daniel

2010/6/14 <christopher.schmidt@nokia.com>

Hi,

pgRouting has requested project hosting via OSGeo:

http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/561

In general, I believe policy has been that a SAC member basically has
to step up to support organizations if they want to be hosted by
OSGeo (followed by rubber-stamping by the board, afaik).

I’d like to suggest that in general, we should encourage projects
which have a large, healthy community to pursue incubation (at least
in the form of creating an application for incubation/demonstrating
intent to pursue incubation). pgRouting is a mature project,
well-documented, with a significant history in the OSGeo community
(participation at conferences, etc.) There is no reason they
should not be pursuing incubation that I can see.

If a project is mature enough to be considered for incubation,
but is not interested in pursuing incubation, I feel like SAC
should take care in taking that project on as a hosting
candidate.

For projects that are small enough that incubation is not
appropriate – like TileCache/FeatureServer, as well as others that
have requested incubation – I’m fine with the current process,
but I think that we should really do our best to encourage projects
like pgRouting to become a part of the community via incubation,
rather than just taking advantage of OSGeo’s hosting capabilities.

I’d be interested in any other opinions on this point.

Best Regards,

Christopher Schmidt
Nokia

Sac mailing list
Sac@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/sac

–
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

–
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de

–
Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
eMail: daniel.kastl@georepublic.de
Web: http://georepublic.de