[Gvsig_english] QUESTION gvSIG 1.9 (BN 1253) -- Future of gvSIG and Sextante

[Luis W. Sevilla]

Sorry not to enter into the questions. I think this thread seems to mix 
to much questions into one single thread, and I don't think how my 
comments could be usefull but ..
Benjamin Ducke wrote:
>> Well gvSIG is a +5 years old project, we're not on an start-up phase.
>> Maybe we're on a phase where we are talking more about government and
>> policies but gvSIG is not a newcomer to nothing
>
> Yes. But most of the publicly visible development is very young.
> Much of the community-related work has been done in the last two
> years or so and the user and developer base is just starting to
> get a lot more international and diversified. I understand that
> there are many Spanish-speaking people in the world, but the potential
> community for gvSIG (that can be reached via English) is much, much
> bigger.
>
> And besides: 5 years is nothing for a project of this complexity!
> GRASS GIS has taken > 20 years to get the loyal community it enjoys
> now.
>
> Face it: gvSIG is a junior in its league ;-)
>   
I don't think you're really searious about that statement. Grass it's 
the only geo project at present with this duration. Projects mature 
enough like Jump are only a year older than gvSIG. qGIS and uDIG are 
about same age, and old are mature projects.

I'm sure that your company has entered into gvSIG business because it's 
mature status, both as development project and as a user tool. An thus 
you see you may add with a small effort (compared with all the needed to 
carry the project up to here) some significant value that may serve to 
your company.

You could have chosen any other desktop GIS project, but you choose 
gvSIG as base. This means more than some of your words, and I think, as 
a people at this project from the early times, that you words doen't 
show appreciation not respect about all the effort that has successfully 
carried the project from 0 to here.

first gvSIG release: 6.8.2004
Some small numbers about gvSIG in public stage:
first message in spanish user list: 20.9.2004
total messages: 12428
first message in international list: 30.9.2005
total messages: 4883

Of course the project started to develop at the end 2003/begining 2004. 
The development project is now 6.5 years old.

So ... of course there's a lot of work that must be done, and a lot of 
flaws and bugs and defaults than need to be fixe (this is one of the 
reasons you're here, IMHO), but the well done things are far superior, 
there are a lot of users and not so many developers involved (probably 
because gvSIG was born as a end user tool with a good architecture and 
project support behind, not as a development framework), but please, try 
to be more carefull with all the people that pushes the project, and not 
so biased with the way you look to the main project on one side, and to 
your effort in the other.

An sorry about my English. As you probably know I'm writing in your 
language, not mine. In Spanish I'm capable of writing (almost) without 
mistakes

greetings
    Luis

-- 
Director Técnico / CTO
Sigrid - Grupo Acotelsa
Tel. +34 600 433 808
http://www.stereowebmap.com
http://www.sigrid.es 

The secret to programming is not intelligence, though of course that helps. It is not hard work or experience, though they help, too. The secret to programming is having smart friends. (Ron Avitzur)