[MapFish-Users] MapFish Bof at FOSS4G2010: summary

[Claude Philipona]

Hi,

The MapFish BoF took place yesterday at the FOSS4G conference, with
about 11 participants from different organizations and with different
backgrounds. All are sharing a great interest in MapFish and are
interested in its future development.

The goal of the BoF was to pursue the discussions already started on
the list and on IRC.

Just to settle the global context, Claude quickly recalled the MapFish history:
- MapFish was initiated by Camptocamp to ease the development of
complex Web2.0 type webmapping application
- MapFish was made as a development framework to help the developer
address the project requirements without starting from scratch each
time.
- A growing interest from users, integrators, organizations outside
Camptocamp showed that MapFish meets some needs for implementing
webmapping application
- MapFish is now at a crossing point. It has been built iteratively
from the needs and requirements of different projects. It is now time
to decide for the future of MapFish community: what MapFish framework
should offer?, what should not be in MapFish? Briefly said, it is
time, based on the existing experiences, to set the future targets for
MapFish and to choose the best ways to do it.
- It is now time to organize the global community in a broader way, to
organize the project governance.
- Considering the wide range of interest and the need of such type of
solution, it is also time to apply for OSGeo incubation.

Then, a discussion took place about the PSC creation (Project Steering
Committee): what would be the goal of the PSC?, the decision made by
the PSC?, how many members?, and from which backgrounds?. 7
participants showed their interest to be part of the PSC and 2 persons
not present at FOSS4G have already reported their interest. During the
discussion, it turned out that the exact fixed number and the
background was not the biggest issue at the moment (except that a huge
number is probably not efficient). Meritocracy has to play a role in
regard to PSC. Additionally,it would be good that a majority of PSC
members are not also part of Camptocamp. The important issue was to
settle, at the moment, the global MapFish project's governance in an
open way. Instead of directly creating a formal fixed PSC, it was
agreed to create a constituent assembly, formed by any person willing
to put energy in the MapFish future. The goals of this assembly are:
- Set the rule for the PSC and lead to the official PSC start
- Organize the discussion about the MapFish future (general roadmap)

Anyone interested to actively participate to this assembly is welcome
to notify his interest on the dev mailing list.

After presenting each others, telling a little about their backgrounds
and explaining the reasons that make them have interest in MapFish,
each participant presented their global expectations related to
MapFish, which can be summarized with the following non-exhaustive
statements:
- MapFish needs to help the developer create webmapping application
without reinventing the wheel.
- MapFish is a development framework.
- MapFish has to be a complete web mapping solution that can simplify
the creation of web mapping infrastructure.
- The architecture of MapFish has to be clearly stated (typically the
position of GeoExt and MapFish client).
- MapFish has to be a framework providing easy way to implement high
level end user functionalities, both on client and server side.
- The importance of usability, look&feel, "sexiness" of capabilities
of MapFish framework were reported by several participants
- MapFish should use other powerful OSGEO technologies, collaborate
with the others projects and don't need to reinvent the wheel.
- A simple deployment procedure has to proposed to start with MapFish.
- The position of Studio and Print have to be clarified.
- The following needs were identified: Oracle, security, concurrent
editing support.
- The license question has to be discussed (GPLV3 vs other).
- Address the copyright issue (OSGEO?, contributor agreement,...)

These are the topics that will addressed in defining MapFish future.


Now, if you are interested in participating to the initial group
(constituent assembly), please raise your hands until October 30 on
the Mapfish dev list.


People who attended the BoF:
- Till Adams, Terrestris
- Yves Moisan, Borealis
- Jorge Gustavo Rocha, Portugal
- James Clonninger, SynCadd
- Julien Collaer, Sodiplan
- Michael Smith, US Corps of Engineer
- Julien-Samuel Lacroix, Mapgears
- Eric Lemoine, Camptocamp
- François Van der Biest, Camptocamp
- Cédric Moullet, Camptocamp
- Claude Philipona, Camptocamp