[Gvsig_english] FOSSGIS 2008 in Freiburg /Germany

[Jorge Sanz]

Hi Wolfgang

Your comments are more than welcomed, as always.

> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: gvsig_internacional-bounces at runas.cap.gva.es [mailto:gvsig_internacional-
> bounces at runas.cap.gva.es] En nombre de Wolfgang Qual
> Enviado el: viernes, 04 de abril de 2008 10:46
> Para: gvsig_internacional at runas.cap.gva.es
> Asunto: [Gvsig_english] FOSSGIS 2008 in Freiburg /Germany
> 
> Dear list,
> just some short remarks on the FOSSGIS-Conference that took place the last days
> in Freiburg/Germany (for details see --> http://www.fossgis.de). The conference
> was very intersting: many new and thrilling projects were presented - FOSSGIS
> becomes more and more interesting and important. I visited the sextante-workshop
> and I have to say that I am really impressed by it's functionality. Many thanks
> to Victor!
> 
> Regarding core-gvSIG: the project was mentioned very often, as organisations and
> smaller offices are looking for a substitute of proprietary GIS-software and the
> bundle of functionalities of gvSIG is very big. People really like the programme,
> as it is very easy to handle.
> This is one side.

Really pleased to listen that, SEXTANTE and gvSIG are growing fast and it's encouraging to see how many people is looking what we are doing.

> 
> On the other side, people ask more and more about the status of gvSIG's way to
> become an osgeo-project. Are there any news about the incubation status of the
> project (--> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GvSIG_Incubation_Status)?
> Especially, people asked:
> * what about a public SVN/CVS-repository?
> * When will this repository be available? And:
> * How can developers contribute (self-developed code/functions) to gvSIG?
>   - When will it be possible for external developers to write extensions and
> other contributions for this great project?
> Today, the source code of gvSIG is available for download, but it is so important
> to open it more to the public (by creating a svn-repository). Everyone is
> yearning to see those things happen.
> Maybe we can start a discussion on this. The FOSSGIS clearly showed the
> importance of these issues.
> 

About the SVN, and in my opinion, I think we will have a public svn repository on midterm, but obviously I can't give dates. We need to assure that we (the gvSIG team) have the proper infrastructures to open the svn's and to don't stop the full-time developers working. It's so important that we have to do that carefully and well planned. I must say that we have that in mind for many time and we want to do it, but step by step.

It has been always the aim of the project (and maybe it differentiates it from other FOSS projects) to have first a wide community of users, and give them all the tools they need (like these mailing lists, tutorials and user docs) and after that we knew that the developers would arrive as it's happening.

With the opening of the developers docs section on the new website (which we need to translate into English, I know) we are just giving a very valuable for the developers. Moreover, wanting to become a full graduated project in OSGeo shows the intention of opening the project to the community is in our minds.

Developers can participate sending bugs and patches to this list and they are always welcomed and very appreciated.

We are working now to offer a public repository of contributed extensions on the downloads area of the new website. This will act as a public catalog of official and un-official contributions not only for extensions but also for example for catalogs of north arrows (like the one recently included in the 1.1.2 release) sets of icons, whatever.

I hope we will have this catalog soon, in fact the infrastructure to provide it is being tested right now.

Bes regards and again, thanks for your comments!!!
--
Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas
Ingeniero en Geodesia y Cartografía
Prodevelop S.L. - Valencia - España
Tlf.:  96.351.06.12 - Fax:   96.351.09.68 
jsanz[en]prodevelop[punto]es
http://www.prodevelop.es