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

Sat Mar 27 03:35:33 CET 2010

Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas escribió:
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> On 26/03/10 19:17, Benjamin Ducke wrote:
>> ----- "José Antonio Canalejo Alonso" <jacanalejo en yahoo.es> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Jose,
>>
>>> Hello Ben,
>>> there are a lot of people working on gvSIG Project and trying to make
>>> it sustainable for the future. That's not easy but they make it
>>> possible.
>> Yes, I understand. I am one of them. I have dedicated a lot of time
>> to gvSIG because I am convinced that it is a great project (and has
>> some equally great developers and users, btw.) and I believe that it is the 
>> first time an open source GIS is getting close to breaking the ESRI monopoly.
>>
>> That's why I feel it is important to talk about anything that may be
>> going wrong!
>>
>>> Your sentence is not true: "we have an official version for use at CIT
>>> and branches for use by the rest of the world" . The official version
>>> of gvSIG is for use all over the world.
>> My expression was probably a bit drastic. What I meant to say was:
>> A lot of users are expecting gvSIG to run on Java 1.6, to include
>> SEXANTE, to run on Win7 and Mac OS X. When these demands are not
>> being met, even though it is technically possible to do so, users
>> start wondering "why?". If the answer to that question is: "Because
>> of some internal consideration at CIT", then that is likely to frustrate
>> people outside CIT. I think we can see this start happening now and
>> it is not a good thing...
>>
>> Also, the way gvSIG is being developed very much to fit CIT workflows
>> increases the risk that users with very different data and workflows
>> will get into trouble. An example of this happened to us at OA 
>> (problems with the raster engine and affinely transformed rasters) and
>> was the reason why we had to fork off the code for gvSIG OADE 2010.
>>
>>> How do you want to make gvSIG OADE sustainable for the future us an
>>> open source project in the true spirit of it?
>>>
>> I have worked in other open source projects before this one and
>> had a chance to study some of the dynamics involved, so let me
>> share some of my experience with you.
>>
>> From my point of view, these are the most important things that
>> need "fixing" (a lot of overlap with Silvio's last message):
>>
>> 1. Publish an up-to-date and complete roadmap. So everyone can
>> see where gvSIG is going (and be ready to make adjustments if
>> there are good reasons being voiced by the community).
>>
> 
> I agree, maybe we tried to have a so much detailed roadmap that was
> not sustainable. I simple approach will be, in my opinion, more useful
> for all, the ones who have to maintain it and the ones who need them.

In fact we updated it some weeks ago :)
https://gvsig.org/web/projects/gvsig-desktop/roadmap/Roadmap2010a/

We go little by little but always in the same direction: the one of the 
open source mindset. We've been working hard for a long time on solving 
all the things Silvio and Ben pointed, as Jorge has explained, but it's 
a very huge task. It's only a matter of time (or resources, better said).

Have a nice weekend.
Manuel.

> 
>> 2. Complete English translations and communication (all web pages, 
>> all documentation, all traffic on the bug tracking list,
>> source code comments, error messages and GUI strings). Otherwise
>> this project will remain largely closed to non-English speaking
>> code contributors.
> 
> We are working on that, gvSIG user docs are more or less all in
> English right now, except some JCRS docs.
> 
> All the new bug reports are being filled in English, and the new code
> comments too.
> 
> The lacking English GUI strings will be easily detected and will be
> marked as a bug. That task was not easy with more than 4600 strings. A
> this time 89% of gvSIG is translated, and 524 remain untranslated.
> Take a look at:
> 
> https://gvsig.org/web/projects/gvsig-desktop/gvsig_desktop_i18nstorefolder/gvsig-desktop-i18n/TRACatalogoInforme/
> 
> This report is part of the new i18n web app to maintain the huge
> number of strings in gvSIG and in fact is also a free software project
> for the Plone CMS
> 
> http://forge.osor.eu/projects/gvsig-i18n/
> 
> 
> Regarding the source code, the new code will be documented in English,
> at least the public APIs. But, yes, there are a lot of javadocs in
> Spanish. If you need help on any, ask here and someone will help you.
> 
>> 3. Open up discussion of new features and design. Let your users
>> share their thoughts about how to get features "just right". 
>> It will give interesting perspectives and improve quality all over.
>>
> 
> I agree also, we've talked so many times regarding to have some kind
> of structurated place for new feature request... Soon we will have all
> our tickets on OSOR and there will be a tracker for feature requests
> available.
> 
> http://forge.osor.eu/tracker/?group_id=89
> 
> But remember someone has to develop them, even more, has to be paid
> for it!!
> 
> So before blaming any of the gvSIG promoters remember that gvSIG is so
> good or so bad because of their envision and commitment with free
> geomatics. Maybe sometimes is not aligned with others ideas or
> principles, but they've always been "bona fide", believe me.
> 
>> 4. Open up the bug tracker read-only for everyone, but also
>> give ticket writing privileges to those users who would like
>> to go bug hunting and file reports directly. Urgent: switch
>> all communication on the bug tracker to English as soon as
>> possible. Essentially, this means external peer review 
>> -> huge quality booster!
> 
> Well in fact is at this time public, but as we are migrating it to
> OSOR, we didn't publish it to create more confusion.
> 
> https://gvsig.org/trac/bugtracking/report
> 
>> 5. And finally, most importantly: release early, release often!
>> Don't worry about every release being perfect or even able to
>> run at all. People can always switch back to an earlier version. 
>> But do give plain users a chance to try even small improvements 
>> and provide feedback on how a major release is shaping up. 
>> This actually was done quite well on the way up to gvSIG 1.9 
>> which sometimes had a release every week (Ideal! Please let's 
>> have weekly builds again!), but somehow no longer happens. 
>> Note: this would also need to be done for extensions!
>> All we need is an automatic snapshot of the SVN binaries once
>> on a Friday evening.
> 
> I wrote about this on my last mail, so yes, we want to do it, with a
> six month release plan, some releases won't have all the features,
> other will have. The weekly builds are an effort on stabilization
> process, as they are right now, are not possible because the consumes
> a lot of resources.
> 
> BUT, we are reaching the place were automatic builds will be possible,
> so the classical "nightly builds" in any form will appear, Fran has
> been doing some tests with Hudson to achieve it.
> 
>> Along the lines of what Silvio said: Some things to ponder over the weekend!
>>
> 
> Sure!!
> 
> - -- 
> Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas
> gvSIG Team
> Tehcnical Steering Committe Manager
> http://www.gvsig.org
> http://www.gvsig.com
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-- 
Manuel Madrid.
Product manager.
gvSIG project (http://www.gvsig.org).

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