GvSIG Incubation Checklist

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Document Status

Version: 2.0

Last Updated: October 2015.

Status: Draft

Purpose

The purpose of this checklist is to determine whether an Incubator Project produces quality products, remains true to its stated licence and is sustainable. Satisfying this checklist is a pre-requisite for graduation.

A project should have institutionalized the processes in this list or provide justification why the process is not used.

See also:

Terms and Definitions

Mentor
A member of the Incubation Committee chosen to assist a Project through the Incubation Process.
Institutionalized Process
A documented process which which addresses a need and is actively in use. It typically takes months before a process becomes institutionalized. A more detailed definition of institutionalization is found in the Capability Maturity Model (CMMI) - "Generic Goal 2: Institutionalize a Managed Process"
Open Source License
a license recognized by the Open Source Initiative

Incubation Checklist

Open

The project has demonstrated that it has an open, active and healthy user and developer community:

  1. Open: projects are expected to function in an open and public manner and include:
    • Open source license(s), yes: gvSIG is developed under GNU/GPL version 3 license
    • Open communication channels, yes: there are several users and developers mailing lists in different languages (http://www.gvsig.com/en/community/mailing-lists). There's also a mail address (info@gvsig.com), a phone number (0034-961110070) and a fax number (0034-901021995)
    • Open decision making process, yes: About gvSIG organization and technical decisions: https://redmine.gvsig.net/redmine/projects/gvsig-desktop/wiki/Wiki. A post is published after every version of gvSIG with the novelties of the next one.
  2. Active and healthy community: yes, there's an active community of users and developers from multiple countries at the world.
    • The project should have a community of developers and users who actively collaborate and support each other in a healthy way. yes. Users and developers use mailing lists for collaboration and supporting. There are four main mailing lists (in Spanish and English, for developers and for users) and there are also local mailing lists (in different languages or for different areas, like Argentina, Brazil, Italy or Russia among others). For mailing list activity visit: http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/gvSIG-project-f4102529.html Users and developers use the tracker for uploading the errors in gvSIG (https://redmine.gvsig.net/redmine/projects/gvsig-desktop/issues). There are a lot of testers at the community, and there's group of translators, who translate documentation and interface. There are developers that provide patches, new developments, and scripts (at the scripting repository: http://outreach.gvsig.org/scripts/). There's also a web portal for the gvSIG case-studies provided by the community (http://outreach.gvsig.org/case-studies).
      Eg. collaboration on project activities such as testing, release and feature development.
    • Long term viability of the project is demonstrated by showing participation and direction from multiple developers, who come from multiple organizations. yes. There are multiple developers from different organizations and a professional structure. The community is participating actively on the development. The commits by developer at the core, the main project, are shown in https://redmine.gvsig.net/redmine/projects/gvsig-desktop/repository/statistics. There are also different sub-projects for the different extensions with their own commits: https://redmine.gvsig.net/redmine/projects. The activity of the project every day is in: https://redmine.gvsig.net/redmine/projects/gvsig-desktop/activity. The gvSIG project is managed by the gvSIG Association, that is composed of four associate companies and more than 40 collaborating companies, as well as different public entities (governments, technical institutes...) and universities.
      Eg. The project is resilient enough to sustain loss of a developer or supporting organization, often referred to as having a high bus factor. Decisions are made openly instead of behind closed doors, which empowers all developers to take ownership of the project and facilitates spreading of knowledge between current and future team members.

Copyright and License

We need to ensure that the project owns or otherwise has obtained the ability to release the project code by completing the following steps:

  1. All project source code is available under an Open Source license. Yes, gvSIG is developed under GNU/GPL version 3 license. All the source code of the different versions is in https://devel.gvsig.org/svn/gvsig-desktop/
  2. Project documentation is available under an open license, such as Creative Commons. Yes. The documentation is under Creative Commons 3.0 CC BY-SA license (there are workshops, tutorials and manuals). They are available in http://www.gvsig.com/. There's a Youtube channel with a lot of videos about the project too: https://www.youtube.com/user/gvsig. All the presentations of the gvSIG Conferences are available too, and the videos are published when they are recorded. There are articles, books and posters about the project compiled at the gvSIG web portal. http://www.gvsig.com/en/diffusion
  3. The project code, documentation and data has been adequately vetted to assure it is all properly licensed, and a copyright notice included, as per a Provenance Review. Yes. All the information is vetted before publishing (manuals, source code, cartography...). See the gvSIG Code Provenance Review at http://docs.gvsig.org/plone/projects/gvsig-desktop/docs/devel/gvsig-devel-guide/2-1-0/provenance-review
  4. The project maintains a list of all copyright holders identified in the Provenance Review Document. No, as all the source code is owned by the gvSIG Association. All the developers have signed the CLA (http://docs.gvsig.org/web/projects/gvsig-desktop/docs/devel/como-contribuir-en-gvsig/contribuciones-y-parches-al-codigo-de-gvsig/cla-status).
  5. All code contributors have agreed to abide by the project's license policy, and this agreement has been documented and archived. Yes: http://docs.gvsig.org/web/projects/gvsig-desktop/docs/devel/como-contribuir-en-gvsig/contribuciones-y-parches-al-codigo-de-gvsig/cla-status

Processes

  1. The project has code under configuration management. Yes: the main svn is in https://devel.gvsig.org/svn/gvsig-desktop
    Eg, subversion, git.
  2. The project uses an issue tracker and keeps the status of the issue tracker up to date. Yes: The main project is in https://redmine.gvsig.net/redmine/projects/gvsig-desktop/issues. gvSIG is composed of different sub-projects or extensions: https://redmine.gvsig.net/redmine/projects with their own trackers.
  3. The project has documented its management processes. Yes. There are different documents for the different areas


This is typically done within a Developers Guide or Project Management Plan.

    • The project has a suitable open governance policy ensuring decisions are made, documented and adhered to in a public manner. Yes: there's a Technical Steering Committee (TSC) formed by professional structure of gvSIG Association and active developers of the community. More information about this in: https://redmine.gvsig.net/redmine/projects/gvsig-desktop/wiki/Wiki. A post is published after every version of gvSIG with the novelties of the next one decided in TSC meetings.
    • The project uses public communication channels for decision making to maintain transparency. Yes: A post is published in gvSIG blog after every version of gvSIG with the novelties of the next one decided in TSC meetings. The road map for the following versions of the application, with the changes, is in https://redmine.gvsig.net/redmine/projects/gvsig-desktop/roadmap.
      E.g. archived email list(s), archived IRC channel(s), public issue tracker.

Documentation

  1. The project has user documentation: Yes: User documentation is available in http://www.gvsig.com/en/products/gvsig-desktop/documentation. There are workshops, tutorials, posters, articles, presentations and books in http://www.gvsig.com/en/diffusion. There's a Youtube channel with a huge quantity of videos about the project too: https://www.youtube.com/user/gvsig.
    • Including sufficient detail to guide a new user through performing the core functionality provided by the application.
  2. The project has developer documentation: Yes: Developer documentation http://www.gvsig.com/en/products/gvsig-desktop/development

Release Procedure

In order to maintain a consistent level of quality, the project should follow defined release and testing processes.

  1. The project follows a defined release process: yes: http://docs.gvsig.org/web/projects/gvsig-desktop/docs/devel/gvsig-devel-guide/2-1-0/release-guide
  2. The project follows a documented testing process. There's also a quick testing process for an initial test: http://downloads.gvsig.org/download/testing/testgvSIG_en.pdf
    This includes manual testing
  3. Release and testing processes provide sufficient detail for an experienced programmer to follow. Yes, it's available at the documentation section for developers: http://www.gvsig.com/en/products/gvsig-desktop/development.

OSGeo Committees and Community

The OSGeo Foundation is made up of a number of committees, projects and local chapters. This section gathers up information these groups have requested from OSGeo projects. These expectations are not mandatory requirements before graduation, but a project should be prepared to address them in order to be considered a good OSGeo citizen.

Board

The OSGeo Board holds ultimate responsibility for all OSGeo activities. The Board requests:

  1. A project provide a Project Officer as a contact point: Yes
    • The Project Officer should be listed at: Project Officer
    • This person is established when the incubation committee recommends the project for graduation
    • Your community can change the project officer as needed (just add an agenda item to the next board meeting so they can recognise the change of officer).

Marketing

Access to OSGeo's Marketing_Committee and associated Marketing_Pipeline is one of the key benefits of joining the OSGeo foundation. The Marketing Committee requests:

  1. Marketing artefacts have been created about the project in line with the incubation criteria listed in the OSGeo Marketing Committee's Marketing Artefacts. This lists the documentation requirements for OSGeo-Live. Marketing Artefacts include:
  2. Ideally, stable version(s) of executable applications are bundled with appropriate distributions. Yes: OSGeo-Live.
    In most cases, this will at least include OSGeo-Live, but may also include DebianGIS, UbuntuGIS, and/or osgeo4w ms4w, etc.)

Projects

Projects do not exist in isolation; and are expected to communicate and collaborate on key issues.

As an example the PostGIS release procedure asks that the release be checked with MapServer, GeoServer and others. gvSIG uses several libraries, like gdal or NASA World Wind, and they are reviewed and updated before releasing the gvSIG versions.

SAC

gvSIG has several mailing lists operating by the OSGeo infrastructure: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo

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