1.
Open Source for Geospatial:
some challenges for the community
Incubation, open science & ethics
Prof. Massimiliano Cannata
FOSS4G-ASIA 2017
JANUARY 26-29
HYDERABAD, INDIA

2.
Free & Open Source Software for Geospatial

3.
Open Source
Geospatial foundation
FOSS4G is the conference of the
OSGeo community

4.
OSGeo structure

5.
Pillar
Projects
Subject
incubation process
Challenge
renew the process

6.
Acknowledge
Most of the information
hereinafter presented are
extracted from Cannata M.
and McKenna, J. (2016).
OSGeo incubation report,
funded by KRIHS.

7.
Why incubation?
when selecting a software solution
the level of risk of adoption should be
carefully considered and evaluated
traditional approaches in
evaluating software quality rely on
hierarchical decomposition of
quality into different criteria;
these are evaluated with metrics
that are the result of direct
measures of attributes which
express the different aspects
contributing to the product’s
quality

8.
Specific methods for FOSS
Due to its particularity, specific quality models have been
presented in literature: SQO-OSS (Salamoladas et al., 2008),
OSMM (Golden, 2005) and QSOS (Atos, 2010) are just an
example of such methods
QSOS defined maturity criteria of a project (source: QSOS, 2013)

9.
QSOS approach
QSOS approach is based on four steps:
1. define criteria,
2. evaluate criteria with metrics/rates,
3. qualify weighting the metrics/rates
4. select the most relevant product.

10.
OSGeo approach
Similarly to other quality assessment approaches OSGeo
has defined a procedure to evaluate the quality of a
software (incubation) and label to the quality ones (OSGeo
project):
1. Define criteria
2. Verify all criteria are satisfied (incubation)
3. Assign the OSGeo project label (graduation)
Criteria are not measured and weighting is never applied

11.
OSGeo criteria
• Encourage participation from all contributors
• Adopt open standards and collaborate with other OSGeo
projects
• Show responsibility to control their code base to ensure
Open Source integrity
• Document how project management occurs
• Maintain source code in a public versioning system
• Maintain a public tracking system for issues
• Maintain public mailing lists/forums
• Setup automated build and testing systems
• Maintain both user and developer documentation

12.
Perceived benefits
OSGeo promotes three possible benefits to a project, as it
becomes an official OSGeo project:
• infrastructure access,
• inclusion in foundation marketing, and
• entrance in the larger community.

13.
10 years of incubation (@ Jan 2017)
7 still incubatingaverage of
~2 years
for graduating
23 graduated projects

14.
Infrastructure choices

15.
Infrastructure choices

16.
Marketing

17.
Ecosystem
Project Officers are the official direct interface between the
project and the OSGeo board of directors; but in reality (at
least in the latest two years) they haven’t any specific direct
interaction or influence on the board that is different from
any interaction with any OSGeo charter members.
Preferential access to workshop slots at FOSS4G and to
Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program is provided.

18.
Openness
communication
license
PSC have regular meeting?

19.
Openness: governance
• With the exception of a couple of cases (see GRASS),
most project has no procedure to elect periodically the
PSC members: they are generally nominated and then
retired on voluntary basis or in case of evident inactivity.
• Some PSC have a chair role which gives that person the
final say in cases where also after discussion the
consensus cannot be reached.
Combining the two above points it lead to a benevolent
dictatorship model for some projects, very similar to that
adopted by Linus Trovalds in the Linux project.

20.
Review & development
100%
All of the projects have a developer guideline and have
performed a code provenance review at the time of
incubation.

21.
Public accessible documentation
for user & developer
In general the available documentation has a high quality
standard and is managed using plain text markup syntax
and parser system (reStructuredText, .rst).
both
none
only one

22.
Public accessible release
procedure
The release procedure is not easy accessible or available in
many cases

23.
Considerations / 1
«The OSGeo incubation process is one of the
core activities and performed very well by
providing flagship Free and Open Source
Software projects in the geospatial domain »

24.
Considerations / 2
It is evident that the major benefit those projects receive
from the incubation are:
• Increased popularity and diffusion due to OSGeo label of
quality
• Increased quality of the software due to the verification
process needed to fulfil the incubation requirements

25.
Considerations / 3
• With except of the mailing list infrastructure is not
used / required by the projects (those using it are
the older..)

26.
Consideration / 4a
Absence of any periodic project review checks may lead to
ambiguities, inconsistencies and wrong assumptions made
by users and decision makers looking at the mature OSGeo
software projects.

27.
Consideration / 4b cont.
New components: are also automatically
graduated?
Completely renewed software: is still the
graduation valid?
Expired or declined projects: if they don’t meet
anymore the incubation requirements are still
OSGeo projects?

28.
A challenge to be addressed
• Appeal: in 2006 ten projects started the incubation, in
the following 10 years we registered almost the same
amount of new graduated projects.
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
n° not graduated project beginning incubation
n° graduated project beginning incubation
n° project graduated

29.
OSGeo principles are exclusive?
OSGeo must guarantee quality software
nevertheless:
meet the requirements to graduate is often a big
extra effort for the community and the OSGeo
support is often missing
missing a single criteria lead to exclusion, even if the
project quality is evident: as a result many project do
not enter incubation (OpenSSL would never graduate
in OSGeo)
most of the benefits are gained in entering incubation
and low incentives to complete (quickly) the process
are on the table

30.
A possible view….
periodic review: report from the projects
(biannual?) to be evaluated by incubation
committee to renew OSGeo affiliation
measure the quality of the projects quantitatively
using the QSOS approach (or similar)
Guarantee the quality

31.
A possible view….
Welcome token: one-time-in-life 5’000 USD to be
used in the first year of incubation to support
incubation sprints
Annual benefit: 2’000 USD a year for graduated
project only to support sprint code and
maintenance
Support the projects

32.
A possible view….
Graduate project based on the overall quality:
set a minimum threshold of the aggregated-
quality-rate calculated by weighting the criteria
metrics
Apply an Achievement-Based Approach:
implement achievements in incubation to
promote and transparently show projects
qualities and encourage project improvement.
Guarantee the quality

33.
Achievement-Based Approach
All qualified OSGeo projects are differently labelled based
on criteria & metrics defined according to the software
ecosystem type.
It’s not a race, project are not ranked but labeled
based on their peculiarity and specific ecosystem
(libraries are not the same of user applications, astro-
physics tools are not the same of a climate change tools)

34.
Achievement-Based Approach
ideas
= 5 x
= science
(high scientific
publications)
= library
(high number of
indirect usage of your code)
= library & science

35.
Pillar
Committees
Subject
open science
Challenge
put in practice

36.
Open Science
«Open Science represents a new approach to the scientific
process, based on cooperative work and new ways of
diffusing knowledge by using digital technologies and new
collaborative tools.. »
(2015, EUROPEAN COMMISSION, «Open Innovation, Open Science, Open to the World - – a vision for Europe»)

37.
Open Science Perceived benefits
• Efficiency: access to inputs and outputs can improve
productivity of the research
• Quality and integrity: permits a greater and more
accurate replication and validation of research results.
• Economic benefits: access to scientific results boost
innovation, also in developing economies.
• Innovation and knowledge transfer: reduce delays in
transferring knowledge and create new products
• Public disclosure and engagement: open to society for
citizen’s participation
• Global benefits: international sharing of challenges
understanding
(Gema Bueno de la Fuente, https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/content/what-are-benefits-open-science)

38.
Open Geoscience in OSGeo
Open Geoscience Committee
Many «Open Science» principles are well established in
foundation so OSGeo’s scientists can provide guidance by
best practices on how these can be established within
colleagues in the Academia.

39.
Open Geoscience activities
• Open Geoscience and EGU activities
Outreach activity with the European Geoscience
Union (EGU) to engage EGU general assembly
participants (15’000 in one week) in OSGeo and
transfer FOSS knowledge.
• Open Monitoring Systems Working Group
Collaborative working group to share experience
on open monitoring systems for in-situ earth
observations with the aim of advancing beyond
the state-of-the-art in various involved scientific
fields.

40.
OSGeo & EGU
Townhall meeting
”… are meetings open to all
conference participants where
new initiatives are announced to
a larger audience, followed by an
open discussion on the matter
raised.” (source EGU Page)

41.
OSGeo & EGU

42.
OSGeo & EGU
FOSS session

43.
Persistent Identifiers
Persistent identifiers allow to reliably cite and refer to an
information.
This is important for the scientific process, both to properly cite
work of others and also to receive recognition by citation.
A URL-link is not a persistent identifier, as URL-links break easily
(404 error)
One example of persistent identifiers are Digital Object Identifiers
(DOI), as they are used for
• scientific journal publications
• research data
• scientific software
• scientific film

44.
Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) “Dog tags
for scientific information“
DOI, a “digital identifier of an object” : it identifies the
object itself and not the place where it is located.
Citation
by DOI
DOI 4
data

45.
www.datacite.org

46.
ORCID: Open Researcher and Contributor ID
“Dog tags for people / reseachers”
• ORCID is a nonproprietary alphanumeric code to uniquely
identify scientific and other academic authors and contributors.
• ORCID organization: An open and independent registry as the de
facto standard for contributor identification in research and academic
publishing since 2012.
• It provides a persistent identity for humans, similar to that created for
content-related entities on digital networks by digital object
identifiers (DOIs).

47.
Critical Mass of Technology
reached: Let‘s build bridges
Software
Data
Video
DOI
Benefits for
OSGeo
communities:
• Software
• Data
• Documentation
• Video

48.
Mining OSGeo advocates (for video)

49.
Mining OSGeo advocates (for
video)

50.
Open monitoring systems WG
Enabling sustainable
environmental
monitoring system
that is open and
interoperable
we are enabling
Open Science

51.
Open monitoring systems WG
Open Hardware to measure parameters,
Open Software to collect and manage data,
Open Standard to semantically communicate
Open Data licenses to share information

52.
Open monitoring systems WG
Workshops series: «building fully open climatic station»

53.
Open monitoring systems WG

54.
Open monitoring systems WG

55.
4ONSE
4 times Open
Non-coventional monitoring system
for Sensing the Environment

56.
The challenge is use geoscience to
impact people life
Share knowledge in an open community
to
advance in open science & impact the real world
by
supporting the actions that increase the resilience

57.
Pillar
Community
Subject
changing world
Challenge
prevent «ethical abuses»

58.
A buzzing bee in my head…
after facing these sources of information
• Road and bridges, the unseen labor
behind our digital infrastructure (Nadia
Eghbal, 2016)
• Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free
Software (R. Stallman, 2016)
• Entrepreneurial state (M. Mazzucato, 2015)
• FREEWORK project (S. Greppi, 2016)

59.
Open Source is the base
of modern society
Nadia Eghbal, «Road and bridges, the unseen labor behind our digital
infrastructure», Ford foundation.

60.
Nadia Eghbal wrote:
Almost all of the today software rely on free & open
source code: «…by 2014 two third of the world Web
servers use Open SSL»
Software infrastructure, like physical infrastructure,
requires maintenance. But nobody is pushed to
sustain it as it is a public good…
Sharing, rather then building proprietary code,
turned to out to be cheaper, easier, and more
efficient.
Most of users take opening an application for
granted, the way we take turning on the lights for
granted
2/3

61.
Free Software or Open Source?
1983, Stallman launched GNU
1985, Free Software Foundation was established (FS)
1998, Open Source Initiative (OS)
«Open Source is a development methodology;
free software is a social movement» (*)
«In a world of digital sounds, images, and words, free
software becomes increasingly essential for freedom in
general» (*)
Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (Stallman, 2017)

62.
Free Software or Open Source?
«We in the free software movement don't think of the open
source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary
(nonfree) software. But we want people to know we stand
for freedom, so we do not accept being mislabeled as
open source supporters.»
« We have to say, “It's free software and it gives you
freedom!”—more and louder than ever”»
OR
Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (Stallman, 2017)

63.
Free Work

64.
«Freework»: a new business model?
More and more often the worker is requested to do some job not
adequately payed.
This:
• reduce the costs of the company and increase its profit
• do not produce an adequate benefit to the person
Examples:
IKEA model, not payed stages, design contests, free editorial works
Note that payment should not necessary be monetary, could also
be a saved cost or equivalent value: co-working is not freework !

65.
«Freework» may be destabilizing
Modern countries relies on taxes from citizens
Growing «freework» may lead to reducing
state efficiency and the social cohesion which
is based on payed work

66.
Marianna Mazzucato wrote…
Big companies makes money
by
using state funds
socializing the risks
&
privatizing the revenues

67.
One of her slides…
[http://www.slideshare.net/Stepscentre/mariana-mazzucato-the-green-entrepren]

68.
My buzzing bee…
Free work
Socialized risks & privatized revenue
Open Source or Free Software
Everyone use FOSS

69.
…interesting messages from the
cloud…
Bounties can dictate which work does or
doesn’t get done, and sometimes that work
doesn’t align with a project’s priorities.
“This is a freely licensed work is not free
work”

70.
My buzzing bee…
Free work
Socialized risks & privatized revenue
Open Source or Free Software
Everyone use FOSS
Wealth
Inequality?

71.
A challenge for the community…
?
?

72.
My feeling is we, as a community,
should…
Push more and more the free
software ideals
Share benefits & rebound
“ethical abuses”

73.
Personally…
I don’t contribute to make
others billionaire…
I contribute to make a better
world with less inequality!

74.
Toward a modern
Don’t worry… I’m done !

75.
3 actions call for OSGeo
Review incubation process
Realize Open Geoscience
Promote ethical aspects

76.
Credits

77.
धन्यवाद
FOSS4G is OSGeo &
OSGeo is you !