[location-iwg] Incubation Proposal feedback from Wayne on scope and comi

[Jody Garnett <jody.garnett@xxxxxxxxx>]

Wayne Beaton very kindly submitted a pull request (https://github.com/uDig/udig-docs/pull/4), cleaning up a few references and changing them to say LocationTech. And passing a few sections back for revision ...

Scope

- Revised scope (discussion and current text follows after the break)

- If this proposal is going out Eclipse wide we need to explain what a GIS. If the proposal is limited to the industry working group, my definitions will appear very lax. Any suggestions on how to ride this line?

Committers

- We had tried to factor out common responsibilities to avoid repetition, Wayne did not go for it.

- Took the current list of those who have obtained commit access on master (split it up into who is currently active)

- Informally: there are a lot more forks on github (https://github.com/uDig/udig-platform/network/members) only a few of which submit pull requests back up

Current draft:

- https://github.com/uDig/udig-docs/blob/master/admin/proposal/proposal.html

-- 

Jody Garnett

SCOPE

WTB: "Mapping" seems too generic and meaningless. Perhaps this is because I don't live in the space.

What sorts of things does uDig enable users/adopters to do?

JG: that is our traditional scope definition from the initial project plan. Let me try and 

translate... 

DESKTOP GIS

Well frankly the goal is to build a Desktop GIS so I will write that down. The answer

however will not help - since what a GIS does is simialr to what a word processor does. Different

professionals will use the tool for different uses. The actual utility depends on the data

being used. As an example the same network traversal functionality can be used for water managements,

SCADA system planning, road maintenance, enivornmental analysis and so on.

GIS Platform SDK

We want to bundle up all this stuff for normal Eclipse RCP developers. Drop in GIS

components with clear documented integration path for developers used to working on a normal

buisness domain model. 

LOCAL AND EXTERNAL DATA

How to put this bluntly. GIS professionals are still not used to the internet, most of the web

service standards die when presented with GIS data volumes. The fact that we consider both

local and external data (let alone OGC standard support) is still fairly unusual.

The scope of uDig is to:

• Produce a Desktop Geographic Information System (GIS) using Eclipse RCP technology. A Desktop GIS application is a general purpose tool, similar to a wordprocessor, that can be put to a wide range of uses. Often the only limitation is the ingenuity of the operator and the data information they have available to work with.

  The Wikipedia entry for Geographic Information System provides the following:

  • Relating information from different sources
  • GIS uncertainties
  • Data Representation
  • Data Capture: ranging from digitisation to automated techniques
  • Raster to vector conversation
  • Projection, coordinate systems and registration
  • spatial analysis with GIS
  • Data output and Cartography
  • Graphical display and techniques
  • Spatial ETL
  • GIS Data Mining

• Provide Eclipse RCP developers an SDK of GIS components. Used by business applications for integration spatial information, rendering or display servies, and in-depth spatial analysis. Allow the business domain model to be extended with minimal background knowledge in mapping. Enable business applications to add "just enough" GIS to get the job done.
• Enable integration of local and external spatial data sources. The rich history, and unusual size, of spatial data presents a great integration challenge. To be effective uDig must remain data provider, and data format, neutral. Respecting where organisations store their information while leveraging international (ISO TC211) and industry (OGC) standards for interoperability.

COMITTERS

WTB: Do you expect steering committee members and other contributors to be committers? It's not clear from this text. 

JG: See email list we could not make sense of this section, changing it back and grabbing our full comitters list from github 

The following individuals are proposed as initial committers to the project:

Jody Garnett, Open Source Geospatial Foundation, LISAsoft, PSC

Jody is a committer on the uDig project where he has made significant contributions over many years. He will contribute to the architecture and direction of this new project.

Andrea Antonello, HydoloGIS, PSC

Andrea has provided significant contributions to the existing code base. He will contribute scientific guidance and raster expertise to this new project.

Jesse Eichar, Camptocamp, PSC

Jesse Eichar has made significant contributions over many years, acting as project lead for some of that time. Jesse keeps track of the rendering and tools plugins. PSC member.

Mauricio Pazos, PSC

Mauricio is a major contributor to the codebase with a deep understanding of the edit tool framework.

Frank Gasdorf, PSC

Frank has played a strong role in the codebase most recently championing documentation, translation and project OSGi packaging.

Craig Taverner, AmanziTel

GSoC mentor for several projects to build support for the neo4j.org graph database spatial capabilities and bridges to GeoTools, uDig and GeoServer

Davide Savazzi, AmanziTel

GSoC mentor for 2012 project to build support for routing tools in uDig using theneo4j.org graph database. Initial contributor to Neo4j Spatial and uDig plugin for Neo4j Spatial

Naz Chan, LISAsoft

Naz has recently completed the Document view, and is currently working on a Legend view.

Mark Leslie, LISAsoft

Mark longstanding contributor and initial author of the style editor. Mark brings the project a background in Sphinx documentation generation and is available for uDig training courses.

John Hudson, LISAsoft

John has been making uDig plugins for several years and is focused on interoperability with OGC web servies.

Sam Guymer, QPWS

Sam is a new addition to the community who has recently upgraded the version of Tycho used and sorted out various build and packaging issues.

The following developers have commit access but are not currently active:

Levi Puntna

Levi is responsible for the recent tool palette work.

Cliff Broadbent, QPWS

Cliff is responsible for the recent transition to the Tycho build system.

Scott Henderson, LISAsoft

Scott is responsible for the recent contribution of ExpressionViewer.

Paul Pfeiffer, QPWS

Paul is responsible for the recent Area of Interest work, and refactoring the core uDig EMF model.

We welcome additional committers and contributions.