Live GIS Disc Press Release 75
Descoping OSGeo-Live for next 11.0 release
18 April 2017
We are starting the build cycle for our next OSGeo-Live release, 11.0, and for this release we will be de-scoping what is included. There are a few factors leading to this decision:
- While many OSGeo projects are consistently improving and growing, others have been gradually loosing their communities and are not being maintained.
- OSGeo-Live build processes have been continuously been improving, allowing us to build more applications more efficiently, now supporting both 64 bit and 32 bit architectures - however this creates a larger testing load for the team.
- OSGeo-Live is growing from just a marketing tool to also being used as the core virtual machine used in many FOSS4G and OSGeo related workshops and training sessions, and there is a desire to focus more on establishing these initiatives.
- With the last couple of releases, we haven't been as successful at engaging projects to help with reviewing, testing and maintaining applications, project overviews and quickstarts, putting greater pressure on the core team.
- With our 10.5 release, for the first time in 8 years we have missed a release deadline.
Consequently, we have needed to admit to ourselves that we need to fit our scope to be within our resources. So, we are faced with the choices of:
- Reduce quality
- Become more efficient
- Increase volunteer base
- Find a sponsor for paid resources to cover core work
- Reduce scope
We feel strongly about maintaining quality. Demonstration of OSGeo quality is one of our core project goals.
We have been improving efficiency for many releases now, which has allowed us to grow and improve as much as we have. There isn't much scope for improving more.
We have had the pleasure of having some new people join our core team, and we will endevour to become more engaged with each of the OSGeo communities with the next release.
If anyone knows of a potential sponsor, please let us know
We are starting osgeolive 11 release. This time, we beleive we need to de-scope for a few reasons. 1. There are included projects which have lost community and probably shouldn’t be recommended by us. 2. We have been continually increasing what we have taken on and we have capped out our volunteer effort. 3. We missed our last deadline for the first time, and we don’t like doing that. Either we need to descope, reduce quality, or get more resources (volunteers or sponsorship). We will be reaching out to communities and asking for help getting projects up to date and quickstarts up to date and help with testing. But we will also be planning to drop some projects. (I think we should also drop 32 bit).
We are starting the build cycle for version 11.0 of the OSGeo-Live DVD/USB/VM which will be released in August 2016, ready for the global FOSS4G conference in Bonn, Germany.
This release is going to be more challenging than usual as we be moving to the next Long Term Release (LTS) of Ubuntu,16.04 Xenial. We expect to be asking for help to solve the multitude of dependency conflicts likely to be introduced. In particular, we expect most debian packages and bash installers will need tweaking once an alpha OSGeo-Live build is working. Initial packaging efforts have started and the Debian packages will soon appear in UbuntuGIS Unstable (currently in Testing).
We would like to hear from anyone wishing to add new projects to OSGeo-Live, anyone wishing to extend or add translations, or anyone who has ideas on how we should shape the upcoming release.
Key Milestones
- xx
About OSGeo-Live
OSGeo-live is a Lubuntu based distribution of Geospatial Open Source Software, available via a Live DVD, Virtual Machine and USB. You can use OSGeo-Live to try a wide variety of open source geospatial software without installing anything.