The document outlines the OSGeo Foundation's incubation process for open source geospatial software projects, emphasizing its mission to support collaborative development and promote widespread use. It highlights key elements including community engagement, code safety, and available resources for projects, while encouraging participation without limiting options. Various committees and support mechanisms are presented to assist both new and existing projects in their development journey.

1. OSGeo Incubation
Putting the Software in our Foundation

2. Welcome
!
!
!
!
!
• Jody Garnett
• Senior Software Engineer
• Boundless
• @jodygarnett
• how2map.com
!
• Projects:
• GeoTools
• GeoServer
• uDig
• OSGeo
• Incubation Chair
• GeoTools Officer
• Eclipse Foundation
• LocationTech PSC
• Technology Project

3. TLDR
• Incubation: the welcome wagon for projects entering OSGeo
1. Published as Open Source
2. Check where the code came from
3. Project willing to accept new people
•We have a slightly longer checklist we are quite proud of!
• http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/
project_graduation_checklist.html

4. Programming in Public
How to be safe
(and not be embarrassing)

5. This is About Public Safety
• If you are programming in public please play safely:
• Safe for you
• Safe for users of your software

6. Open Source
Geospatial Foundation
We are here to help and we are not alone!

7. OSGeo
Open Source Geospatial
Foundation
Mission: To support the
collaborative development of open
source geospatial software, and
promote
its widespread use.
•
Non-Profit, Vendor Neutral
•
International
•
Open Education, Open Data

8. Are you Lonely?
• OSGeo Foundation offers
• A community of your peers
• People who understand you!
• Great cross project code sprints
• Assistance in building community
• Marketting to help you find users
• Incubation can help with Open Development

9. Are you threatened?
• Foundations offer some safety
• Incubation review to check your code is in the clear
• OSGeo has healthy body of prior art
• An area where we collaborate with other foundations:
• Our focus is on fostering spatial software and promoting use
•We are not a strict “IP” machine

10. Are you confused?
• OSGeo has a range of mapping experts
• Helpful, engaging and educational
• Great for collaboration on tough problems
• Do the mapping experts make you more confused?
•Wide range of developers can help translate “expert” advice
• If you are confused
• how do you know you are confused?

11. Are you Broke
• OSGeo participation is free
• Sign up to an email list or committee and get involved
• Charter members are nominated yearly
• Board members are voted on by Charter members

12. Who Pays?

13. Want to get back to coding?
• Perfect - Foundations are here to help with everything else
• Lonely: Community
• Threatened: Protection
• Confused: Experts available (and developers to translate)
• Broke: OSGeo Participation is free
• Funded: Through Sponsorship

14. We are not alone
• Eclipse Foundation
• LocationTech
Working Group
• locationtech.org
• Apache Foundation
• Spatial Information System
• sis.apache.org

15. Do I have to Choose?
• The OSGeo Foundation does not limit your options
• Our mandate is to help and promote
• OSGeo does not need control of the code
• Indeed we often work with other foundations
• As we do not want to be experts on license,
trademarks, intellectual property, etc..

16. Brand OSGeo

17. Users!
•What “OSGeo Project” means for you:
• It is actually open source!
• There is documentation
• Open to your involvement and participation
• Code ownership has been checked
(so it is unlikely to be pulled suddenly)
• Project has a measure of legal protection
(unlikely to be pushed under)

18. Developers!
• “Community” - join your map making peers!
• Marketting: OSGeo badge / branding / OSGeo Live DVD
• Infrastructure: hosting, mailing lists, version control, etc..
• Collaboration: Education, Open Data, Standards, Code Sprint
• Other: Shelter, Communication, Outreach
• Tip: OSGeo Foundation has a mandate to promote open
source spatial (even before your project joins)

19. Foundation!
• Mandate - to promote open source spatial
• Additional capabilities for open source mapping
• Additional prior art (safety in numbers)
• Communication
• Projects provide an “officer” as contact person
• Project name, branding, license, details are quickly available

20. Checklist: Open
Project has open, active and healthy user and developer community

21. Open and Public
• Open Source License
• Anything approved by the Open Source Initiative
• Open communication channels
• Email, Issue Tracker, Conference Call (with minuets)
• Open decision making process
• Example Project Steering Committee
• (Not a "dictatorship" of one)

22. (Small Rant)
• You do not have to form a steering commit
• as long as what you are doing
welcomes new participants we are cool

23. Community
• Active
• Community of users and developers
• Support each other
• Example: Collaboration during release
• Healthy
• Long term viability
• Example: Participation from range of developers / organisations

24. Copyright and License
Check a project has obtained the ability to release

25. Open Source License
• Source code available under an open source license
• Any Open Source Initiative approved license is fine with us
• (we are not the license police)

26. Documentation License
• Documentation available under an open license
•When Citation is not enough!
• Give authors the same ability to “remix” we enjoy as
developers - really helps when pulling together course packs
and training material.
• Example: Creative Commons
• Tip: Contact Regional OSGeo Chapters for help with
translation and internationalisation

27. Sanity Check
•We ask for a Provenance Review
• Check source code
• Check documentation
• Check data
• Do you know who gave it to you?

28. (Small Rant)
• This is a CHECK not a FIX
• projects can graduate with known problems
• we just want your customers to know what they are getting
• If they care they may help/fund fixes!

29. Contributors
• Do you know who gave you the code?
• List contributors:
• Either as copyright holders; or
• Ask for a “Code Contribution” agreement
• This is really handy if you ever have to change license!
• The Foundation can act as a legal entity if required
• Update: GeoServer OpenPlans --> OSGeo

30. Process
Version control, issue tracker, decisions

31. Version Control
• Formally “Configuration Management”
• Anything will do: subversion, git, CVS
• Think of the users: If they run across a copy of your
application from three years ago - will you be able to help
them? Will they be able to help themselves?
• Tip:The OSGeo foundation is “relaxed” and asks projects to
choose the hosting option that best suits their community.
(Indeed some of our projects have migrated to “github”)

32. Issue Tracker
• Issue trackers are great for communicating, both problems, but
also the context (and eventual fix)
• I know:This is one step up from email
• OSGeo Foundation can offer “Trac”
• But our projects are all over the map
(from codehaus to github)
• Sounds like Board is de-emphasising hosting

33. Management
• Not just “how to build” but also “how decisions are made”
• This is the key point of “open development” where we can
confidently recommend a project is open to participation
• Public communication channels
(Email, IRC, meeting with sponsors, breakfast ...)
• Many of our projects follow a variation of the Apache Process
(project steering committee and votes of +1, 0 and -1)

34. Documentation
Looking for a basic quickstart
(and enough for a volunteer to help out)

35. User Documentation
• Basic Quickstart
• Guide new user through performing “core functionality”
• Tip: That was not so bad was it?

36. Developer Documentation
• Checkout and build instructions
• Code documentation
• Publish API if possible (Javadocs, Sphinx, etc...)
• Comments!

37. (Small Rant)
• Q: How to submit a patch or fix?
• Q: How to contribute a new feature?

38. Release
"Real artists ship" - Steve Jobs

39. Release Instructions
• Do you have some instructions on how to release?
(any automated or manual testing?)
• Informal:
• Verify nightly build passed tests and Tag
• Formal:
• Code freeze, release candidates, tag in version control

40. Testing Instructions
• Just tell us what you actually do :-)
• Automated “Jenkins” build server, with core modules at 80%
test coverage
• Make a Release Candidate, and it can still perform the
quickstart instructions it is “good to go”
• It it compiles we ship it? (ie user-list testing)

41. (Small Rant)
• Q: Can a volunteer follow the instructions to make a release?
• Q: Are you sure?
•Would you let them upload to the project site?

42. Community & Collaboration
OSGeo groups who want to help you

43. Board
•Who: The OSGeo Board is responsible for running the foundation,
they are elected by the Charter Members annually.
•What they want:
• Project Officer: volunteer contact point
(Can change officer as needed)

44. Marketting Committee
•Who: The Marketting Committee is very active, getting information out to
the public, helping prep material for conferences and taking charge of
publicity.
•What they want:
• Application Overview (name, logo, etc...)
• Application Quickstart
• Graphic Image (screen snap or layer diagram)
• Recommend:
• Stable release they can point users at
(DebianGIS, OSGeo-Live, osgeo4w, website...)

45. Sys Admin Committee
•Who: That is “sudo” to you and me, the System Admin
Committee is responsible for foundation infrastructure.
• Link on the OSGeo Home Page
• Optional infrastructure:
• OSGeo issue tracker
• OSGeo mailing list
• OSGeo svn
• http://downloads.osgeo.org

46. Other Project
•Who: OSGeo projects have graduated - play nice together!
• Some communication and collaboration is expected
(often around release or data QA issues)
• Example: PostGIS release procedure checks functionality
with MapServer and GeoServer
• Example: MetaCRS "project" is a meeting place to discuss
location accuracy issues (so the data is aligned correctly)

47. Other Stuff
•Who: The following groups are around, but have not asked anything
from the projects yet!
• Public Geospatial Data Committee
• Education and Curriculum Committee
•Website Committee
• Conference Committee
• Local Chapters: Chapters have been set up all over the world,
activities range from talking shop at the pub, through to focused code
sprints or raising funds for the development of specific features.

48. Incubation Committee

49. Graduated!
• Marble Virtual Globe (2012-2013)

50. Hatching
• rasdaman (2013-present)
- code review and checklist good
- stuck on how to do open development

51. Busy
• gvSIG (2007-present)
Really close - mentor needed!
• MetaCRS (2008-present)
- a bit stuck on how to handle PROJ and friends
- may need to relax our requirements?
• Opticks (2012-present)
• ZOO-Project (2012-present)
• pycsw (2013-present)

52. Missing
• TEAM Engine (2012-present)
- OGC Project very much in the spirit of OSGeo.
- No communication ... ever

53. Question and Answer

54. Q&A
• Q: How do you know that the download matches the source
A: We don't!
(The Apache foundation makes a clean room build of each
release and keeps tight control of downloads. This is not very
common.)
A: The code is open for review.
(GeoServer gets a couple of external security audits a year.
Sometimes they go away quietly, sometimes we get an issue
report, sometimes we explain the difference between CQL and
SQL (Hint CQL is not vulnerable to SQL Injection)

55. Q&A
• Q: Well how about GeoServer/
(does build binary match source)
A: No direct proof, each build is build on Boundless
infrastructure, and the log of the build process is public and
has a public log)
• Q: Where can I sign up?
A: There is a form you can fill in and attach to a Trac ticket.
http://www.osgeo.org/incubator/process/application.html
(I should of put that in the presentation)

56. Q&A
• Q: We are pretty close to everything on your list, but we are
all in Finland. How could we do "open development"?
A: Ask on your email list if anyone wants to join, and give
them a conference call number. Send meeting minuets to your
email list after.
GeoServer meets on Skype, ask to join on IRC, meetings posted to
email list afterwards

57. Show some Love
• OSGeo is a Software Foundation
• Many of our incubation projects are stuck
• How can you help?