GvSIG incubator application request

This is the application request sent to the incubator applications mailing list on 7th June 2007 (message at incubator mailing list)

1. Please provide the name and email address of the principal Project Owner.

gvSIG Association: info@gvsig.com

2. Please provide the names and emails of co-project owners (if any).

3. Please provide the names, emails and entity affiliation of all official committers

Joaquín del Cerro: jjdelcerro@gvsig.com gvSIG Association

César Ordiñana: cordinyana@gvsig.com gvSIG Association/DiSiD

4. Please describe your Project.

gvSIG is a project mainly sponsored by the gvSIG Association (www.gvsig.com). It is aimed at developing a comprehensive desktop GIS solution that easily integrates services provided by Spatial Data Infrastructures as well as regular sources of geospatial data. More information can be found at the project web site (www.gvsig.org).

gvSIG is now widely used in many administrations, public and private organizations around the world.

5. Why is hosting at OSGeo good for your project?

* The gvSIG project would like to extend its community of international developers and users, providing a more open platform for collaboration. The adoption by OSGeo is expected to help us in doing that transition.

* The gvSIG project would like to strengthen its ties to other FOSS GIS projects.

* The gvSIG project aims at maintaining a high degree of quality and compliance with open standards and practices supported by international organizations, as well as participating in the improvement of those standards and practices.

6. Type of application does this project represent(client, server, standalone, library, etc.)

A multiplatform, Java-based standalone desktop application.

7. Please describe any relationships to other open source projects.

gvSIG has working relationships with many FOSS projects. In the geospatial area:

* i3GEO, MapServer, GeoServer, deegree, GeoNetwork, OpenLayers, Leaflet. Since gvSIG integrates services provided by these tools, direct contact has been established with developers and representatives of these projects, which in many cases have resulted in fixes and improvements on both sides.

* GeoTools, PostGIS. Results of these projects are used within gvSIG and direct contact has been established with project developers and representatives to define common interests.

8. Please describe any relationships with commercial companies or products.

gvSIG has been adding support for commercial geospatial web services and databases, adding drivers for ArcIMS (ESRI) Map and Feature services, and support for Oracle Spatial databases and ArcSDE (ESRI). However, no direct contact or agreement exists with those companies.

9. Which open source license(s) will the source code be released under?

gvSIG is released under GNU Public License (GPL 3).

10. Is there already a beta or official release?

Yes, gvSIG was first released on October 2004 and it is currently in version 2.0.

11. What is the origin of your project (commercial, experimental, thesis or other higher education, government, or some other source)?

It is government sponsored, originally within an open source migration programme. It currently has strong commercial and educational participation.

12. Does the project support open standards? Which ones and to what extent? (OGC, w3c, ect.) Has the software been certified to any standard (CITE for example)? If not, is it the intention of the project owners to seek certification at some point?

gvSIG wholeheartedly supports open standards, specifically:

* XML and related standards from W3C, in document persistence and in all accesses to remote services.

* OGC standards, as web service client:

** WMS (1.1.0 - 1.3.0)

** WFS (1.0.0) + GML import/export (2.1.2) at 1.0

** WCS (1.0.0)

** Catalogue search (OGC CSW 2.0, IDEC)

** Gazetteer search (WFS 1.0.0, WFS-G 0.9, ADL)

* GML 2.X, as data import and export

13. Is the code free of patents, trademarks, and do you control the copyright?

gvSIG is free of patents and trademarks, and the copyright is controlled by the project owners.

14. How many people actively contribute (code, documentation, other?) to the project at this time?

Core coding: 6

Documentation/testing: 10

Admin, support, training: 12

Other (collaborators, consultants) 50

15. How many people have commit access to the source code repository?

Currently, most developers, about 20. Access is restricted during stabilization phases.

16. Approximately how many users are currently using this project?

We estimate based on download numbers and list activity about 40,000 active users overall.

17. What type of users does your project attract (government, commercial, hobby, academicknow research, etc. )?

Mostly from government organizations and academic institutions (for education and research). Several companies are already providing customized versions and extensions used in different professional contexts.

18. If you do not intend to host any portion of this project using the OSGeo infrastructure, why should you be considered a member project of the OSGeo Foundation?

We would evaluate the options to use the OSGeo infrastructure, however, our goals in joining OSGeo (see question 5) do not depend on the actual hosting infrastructure.

19. Does the project include an automated build and test?

It does include automatic build procedures and some automated tests.

20. What language(s) are used in this project? (C/Java/perl/etc)

Java, with some JNI bridges to support C-based libraries like GDAL. Scripting: Python, Javascript and Groovy

21. What is the dominant written language (i.e. English, French, Spanish, German, etc) of the core developers?

English and Spanish, but a good number of them are proficient in Portuguese, French, Italian,..

22. What is the (estimated) size of a full release of this project? How many users do you expect to download the project when it is released?

Estimated size: Full binaries, about 400 Mb; Sources, including JNI, about 400 Mb.

The number of downloads since release of version 2.0 is about 100,000.