Difference between revisions of "GRASS Incubation Progress"

Revision as of 08:25, 27 April 2006

Document Purpose

The mentor will use this to inform the Incubation Committee of the project status and it will be the initial indication that a project is reaching graduation.

Basics

Has the project been approved for incubation by the OSGeo board?: Yes (but approval from GRASS community pending)

Has an Incubation Mentor been assigned to the project?: Norman Vine and Arnulf Christl are assigned mentors.

Infrastructure Transition

Note, for each of the following it isn't necessary to move to foundation infrastructure, but if you aren't a reason should be provided.

Has the projectname.osgeo.org domain been populated with the projects web presence?: http://grass.osgeo.org has been populated with initial content. More soon.

Is the OSGeo bug tracker being used for the project?: Currently the existing bug tracker is used. A migration may be possible in future.

Is the OSGeo mailing list manager being used for the project?: The announce list will be used, the other mailing lists will remain under http://grass.itc.it to maintain the long archives of emails (starting 1991).

Is the OSGeo SVN or CVS system being used for the project?: Currently the existing CVS is used. A migration may be possible in future.

Are binary and source downloads available from the OSGeo download area?: This can be easily added once the pages are better written.

Community Functioning

Is there a functioning user support mechanisms (ie. mailing list)?: Existing user support mechanisms are numerous mailing lists, IRC and WIKI. Companies are available for commercial support. There are also several national user groups. There is also a GRASS user map(server). A GRASS newsletter is also available.

Are source and binary downloads for the package available?: GRASS is a multi-platform GIS, the important operating systems are supported - see download page

Has a Project Steering Committee been formed, and given control of the project?: A RFC1 has been published to form a GRASS PSC. This issue is in discussion in the GRASS user and developers lists. Acceptance pending.

Does the Project Steering Committee have documentation on project procedures for PSC decisions, contributor guidelines, etc.: See RFC1 for a proposal. Acceptance pending.

How many active developers are there? Are they from multiple organizations?: Currently 31 developers have CVS write access. In 2006 around 16 developers of this group where active. ITC-irst (Trento) is supporting the project since 2001, universities, companies and individuals are contributing. For details, see the grass-commit mailing list archives. More than 10000 CVS commits have been done since 1st January 2000 (opening of CVS). See also CVS statistics which is part of the new GRASS Quality Assessment System.

Foundation Membership

Have project documents been updated to reflect membership in the foundation, and the relationship of the project to the foundation?: Not yet. This will occur once the GRASS Community approves the incubation.

Has an effort been made to brand the project web site with OSGeo foundation web styling and branding marks?: First an OSGeo web style has to be established. We also hope for/await the availability of a CMS from the OSGeo infrastructure.

Code Copyright Review

Has a Code Provenance Review document been prepared for the project?: Work in progress at GRASS Provenance Review.

Have issues raised in the provenance review been adequately addressed?: We have to verify around 3000 files (520000 lines of C). A big code review has been done in 1999 for the change to GPL. Another review has to be done now.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-== Project Evaluation Criteria ==
+== Document Purpose ==
-=== Requirements ===
+The mentor will use this to inform the Incubation Committee of the project status and it will be the initial indication that a project is reaching graduation.
-; Project description
-: Commonly referred to as [http://grass.itc.it GRASS] GIS, this is a Geographic Information System (GIS) used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics/maps production, spatial modeling, and visualization. GRASS is currently used in academic and commercial settings around the world, as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting companies.
-; Language and code size?
+== Basics ==
-: Written in C; code size: 510.000 lines in around 3000 files.
-; Origin of project (commercial, experimental, thesis or other higher education, government)?
+; Has the project been approved for incubation by the OSGeo board?
-:GRASS was developed from 1982-1995 by the US CERL (government). From 1997 it is developed in academic/research environment with worldwide contributors
+: Yes (but approval from GRASS community pending)
-; The project is "geospatial", or directly in support of geospatial applications?
+; Has an Incubation Mentor been assigned to the project?
-: The software is a GIS, so, yes. Screenshots at http://grass.itc.it/grass60/screenshots/
+: [[User:Nhv|Norman Vine]] and [[User:Arnulf Christl|Arnulf Christl]] are assigned mentors.
-; Type of application (client, server, standalone, library, etc.)?
+== Infrastructure Transition ==
-: standalone with library (SWIG interface under development)
-; Hosted code in subversion?
+''Note, for each of the following it isn't necessary to move to foundation infrastructure, but if you aren't a reason should be provided.''
-: No. Code is hosted in CVS at intevation.de and will be migrated to SVN on wald.intevation.de soon
-; Downloadable binaries?
+; Has the projectname.osgeo.org domain been populated with the projects web presence?
-: Yes, visit http://grass.itc.it/download/
+: http://grass.osgeo.org has been populated with initial content. More soon.
-; Documentation online?
+; Is the OSGeo bug tracker being used for the project?
-: Yes, visit http://grass.itc.it/gdp/
+: Currently the existing bug tracker is used. A migration may be possible in future.
-; The code is under an OSI approved license (data & doc projects need to specify their choice for a type of license)?
+; Is the OSGeo mailing list manager being used for the project?
-: GRASS is licensed under the [http://grass.itc.it/index.php/GNU_GPL GNU GPL]
+: The announce list will be used, the other mailing lists will remain under http://grass.itc.it to maintain the long archives of emails (starting 1991).
-; Project willing to keep code clear of encumbrances (committer agreements, etc)?
+; Is the OSGeo SVN or CVS system being used for the project?
-: Strong opposition of several members of the GRASS Development Team against the currently suggested committer agreement which would theoretically permit to relicense GRASS under MIT/X11. Clearly high interest to keep code clear of encumbrances. The GRASS Development Team made code provenance review for the GPL clearance in 1999 (some parts of the code had to be removed). Also the Debian clearance was done. More verifications were done for the [http://mpa.itc.it/radim/g50history/ indended relicensing of GRASS vector lib under LGPL].
+: Currently the existing CVS is used. A migration may be possible in future.
-; Approved for Incubation?
+; Are binary and source downloads available from the OSGeo download area?
-: Yes, selected for "founding project" incubation by the OSGeo board.
+: This can be easily added once the pages are better written.
-; Project Steering Committee (PSC) established?
+== Community Functioning ==
-: Partially. There are sufficient people nominated but not yet approved. This is blocked due to the proposed Committers Agreement which will not be accepted by various team members.
-; If you are not hosting at OSGeo, why should you be considered a member project of the OSGeo Foundation?
+; Is there a functioning user support mechanisms (ie. mailing list)?
-: At least partial hosting make sense, if desired tools are available, also full hosting may be possible. In the meantime, by use of similar style sheets, logo etc. branding issues can be resolved.
+: Existing user support mechanisms are [http://grass.itc.it/community/support.php numerous mailing lists], [irc://freenode/grass IRC] and [http://grass.gdf-hannover.de/twiki/bin/view WIKI]. Companies are available for [http://grass.itc.it/community/commercial.php commercial support]. There are also several [http://grass.itc.it/community/usergroups.php national user groups].  There is also a [http://grass.itc.it/community/index.php GRASS user map(server)]. A [http://grass.itc.it/newsletter/index.php GRASS newsletter] is also available.
-; GRASS Provenance Review
+; Are source and binary downloads for the package available?
-: see [[GRASS Provenance Review]]
+: GRASS is a multi-platform GIS, the important operating systems are supported - see [http://grass.itc.it/download/index.php download page]
-=== Desirable ===
+; Has a Project Steering Committee been formed, and given control of the project?
-; Already reasonably mature (working quality code)?
+: A [http://mpa.itc.it/markus/grass61progman/rfc/rfc1_psc.html RFC1] has been published to form a GRASS PSC. This issue is in discussion in the GRASS user and developers lists. Acceptance pending.
-: GRASS has been in productive use for more than 15 years (developed for > 20 years). There are thousands of users worldwide.  The roots go back to the year 1982 when the software was first implemented (see [http://grass.itc.it/devel/grasshist.html History]). Since 31. Dec. 1999 its hosted in a CVS.
-; Already has a substantial user community?
+; Does the Project Steering Committee have documentation on project procedures for PSC decisions, contributor guidelines, etc.
-: The GRASS-user mailing list counts 628 subscribers (March 2006), the GRASS-dev counts 425 subscribers, there are more that 10 other [http://grass.itc.it/community/support.php mailing lists]. The GRASS main site (1 million hits per month) is [http://grass.itc.it/mirrors.php mirrored] at more than 25 Web sites worldwide in a 2-tier cascased model. There is an IRC channel: irc://irc.freenode.org#grass
+: See  [http://mpa.itc.it/markus/grass61progman/rfc/rfc1_psc.html RFC1] for a proposal. Acceptance pending.
-; Already has a substantial developer community?
+; How many active developers are there?  Are they from multiple organizations?
-: since 1/2000 31 contributors in CVS with 10180 commits
+: Currently 31 developers have CVS write access. In 2006 around 16 developers of this group where active. ITC-irst (Trento) is supporting the project since 2001, universities, companies and individuals are contributing. For details, see the [http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass-commit/ grass-commit] mailing list archives. More than 10000 CVS commits have been done since 1st January 2000 (opening of CVS). See also [http://web.soccerlab.polymtl.ca/grass-evolution/grass-browsers/stat-browser.html CVS statistics] which is part of the new [http://web.soccerlab.polymtl.ca/grass-evolution/grass-browsers/grass-index-en.html GRASS Quality Assessment System].
-: 10 contributors with more than 100 commits
-: looking at 2006: 16 contributors (we are observing growing interest)
-: Commits per week, averaged over 5 years: 37; in 2006: 53 commits per week
-: GRASS implements core GIS functionality for 2D/3D raster/voxel and 2D/3D vector along with vector network analysis and DBMS integration
-; Has linkages with existing foundation projects?
+== Foundation Membership ==
-* [http://gdal.osgeo.org GDAL/OGR] (adopted OSGeo project) - for interoperability
-* [http://mapserver.osgeo.org Mapserver] (adopted OSGeo project) - as Web rendering engine
-* [http://proj.maptools.org PROJ] (external OSGeo friend project) - projection support
-* [http://postgis.refractions.net PostGIS] (external OSGeo friend project) - data storage
-; Fills a gap in the foundation software stack?
+; Have project documents been updated to reflect membership in the foundation, and the relationship of the project to the foundation?
-: GRASS is probably the only complete FOSS GIS. It fills the gap of being the software for geospatial data creation and analysis.
+: Not yet. This will occur once the GRASS Community approves the incubation.
-; Prepared to develop in an open and collaborative fashion?
+; Has an effort been made to brand the project web site with OSGeo foundation web styling and branding marks?
-: GRASS was ever developed in an open fashion. Contributors are always welcome.
+: First an OSGeo web style has to be established. We also hope for/await the availability of a CMS from the OSGeo infrastructure.
-; Has contributions and interest from more than just one company/organization?
+== Code Copyright Review ==
-: GRASS is used in public administration, private companies, by individuals and in academia ([http://grass.itc.it/intro/index.php Who is using GRASS?])
-; Willing to migrate to foundation support infrastructure, and adopt website style consistent with the foundation?
+; Has a [[Code Provenance Review]] document been prepared for the project?
-: The idea of OSGeo branding is generally supported. A complete migration, however, depends on the flexibility of provided tool. Currently functional infrastructure is available. The GRASS project seeks to use CMS for the Web pages (to migrate away from hand written HTML/PHP).
+: Work in progress at [[GRASS Provenance Review]].
-; Estimated bandwidth usage
+; Have issues raised in the provenance review been adequately addressed?
-: GRASS main site generates around [http://grass.itc.it/webalizer/ 40-50GB monthly]; there are > 25 mirror sites running, sync'ed via rsync
+: We have to verify around 3000 files (520000 lines of C). A big code review has been done in 1999 for the change to GPL. Another review has to be done now.