Incubator Application: GeoFunctions

[warmerdam]

Dear Incubation Committee,

Please find attached my responses to the questionnaire which I found on your web site, for a project I propose to call "GeoFunctions". I have a small code base (attached), as you can see from the responses, which I am anxious to share and broaden through the open source collaboration process.

Also, please find attached the geofunctions library, as it stands at this time, for your review and information.

Making this an OSGEO project is desirable in my view. I would gain the possible addition of like-minded OSGEO members. In addition, I will try to recruit some XSLT developers from the XSL community, which is also very large.

I have created a mailing list and project on sourceforge, and my next step is to set up a web site. I rented server hosting for a year (geofunctions.org) (actually, I've got 9 months left in my year, so I've got to get going!), but if OSGEO was willing to host, I would be happy to move there, as OSGEO is the focus for the open source community. Having access to a tomcat server would make on-line demonstrations possible, although I don't know if you do that sort of thing.

I hope you will give due consideration to my application for GeoFunctions for

incubator status in OSGEO!

Sincerely,

Peter Rushforth
Technology Advisor / Conseiller technique
GeoConnections / GéoConnexions
650-615 Booth St. / rue Booth
Ottawa ON K1A 0E9
E-mail / Courriel: Peter.Rushforth at NRCan.gc.ca
Phone / Télephone: (613) 943-0784
Fax / telecopier: (613) 947-2410

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1. Please provide the name and email address of the principal Project Owner.

Peter Rushforth
Technology Advisor / Conseiller technique
GeoConnections / GéoConnexions
650-615 Booth St. / rue Booth
Ottawa ON K1A 0E9
E-mail / Courriel: Peter.Rushforth at NRCan.gc.ca
Phone / Télephone: (613) 943-0784
Fax / telecopier: (613) 947-2410

2. Please provide the names and emails of co-project owners (if any).

None as yet. Ron Lake and Cameron Shorter have expressed some interest. There are a couple of mailing list participants, so I guess they could be considered project co-owners. First come, first serve!

3. Please provide the names, emails and entity affiliation of all official committers

I have not opened up committer access, because I have concerns about my legal responsibilities to users of this library. Basically I don't want to endanger my livelihood through what amounts to a professional interest.

4. Please describe your Project.

Geo Functions is an open-source library of XSLT-2 / XQuery functions, templates, stylesheets and classes devoted to the processing of geographic data in XML. The primary goal is to enable processing of GML, KML and GeoRSS in the XSLT-2 / XQuery languages5. Why is hosting at OSGeo good for your project?

6. Type of application does this project represent(client, server, standalone, library, etc.):

Library, potentially useful on server and client.

7. Please describe any relationships to other open source projects.

It relies upon the Saxon XSLT 2/XQuery open-source project.

8. Please describe any relationships with commercial companies or products.

None.

9. Which open source license(s) will the source code be released under?

LGPL

10. Is there already a beta or official release?

No. There is a codebase which I am anxious to release but want to be ready prior to.

11. What is the origin of your project (commercial, experimental, thesis or other higher education, government, or some other source)?

I developed it as a library for quality control of geospatial products.

12. Does the project support open standards? Which ones and to what extent? (OGC, w3c, ect.)

Has the software been certified to any standard (CITE for example)? If not, is it the intention of the project owners to seek certification at some point? It supports XSLT 2, and intends to support GML 2/3.X, KML and GeoRSS.

13. Is the code free of patents, trademarks, and do you control the copyright?

Yes, I think so. I developed the XSLT code based on algorithms I found for other languages on the web. For instance, the point-in-polygon algorithm I found on softsurfer.com. I would be willing to re-write any code which is copyrighted.

14. How many people actively contribute (code, documentation, other?) to the project at this time?

One: me. I am recruiting though.

15. How many people have commit access to the source code respository?

As I mentioned before, I haven't initialized a code repository because of my legal concerns. For instance, can I get sued because someone uses my code to calculate the area of a polygon but I have an error which returns the wrong area in some circumstances? (Just asking mind you I don't think this is an actual problem :-) ).

16. Approximately how many users are currently using this project?

One: me. I sent the code to Cameron Shorter and he seemed to think he had a need for something already developed in the library. So I think there is great potential for re-use for this library.

17. What type of users does your project attract (government, commercial, hobby, academic research, etc. )?

All of the above, I think.

18. If you do not intend to host any portion of this project using the OSGeo infrastructure, why should you be considered a member project of the OSGeo Foundation?

I would be glad to use the OSGEO infrastructure. I paid for a domain name for this year to see if I could get the project going, plus web hosting for a year. But, I would need to have a java/tomcat server available to easily demonstrate some of the functionality and that isn't provided by my web hosting service. If OSGEO could help there, that would be great.

19. Does the project include an automated build and test?

Not sure yet. There won't be any building because saxon is a java/.net application which compiles XSLT / XQuery files prior to execution. I would like to develop an extension to saxon for geofunctions which would provide a "driver" for geo-data sources (ie shapefiles) to provide canonical access to shapefiles for XSLT developers. So this would be a java class which would require building and maintenance, so perhaps the answer will be "yes, eventually". Also, I have to learn some of these techniques which is a corollary goal of starting a project: to learn open-source development methods. Why don't I join another project and contribute there? I probably will, and I lurk on the MapBuilder and GDAL lists to learn in a passive way, but time is short and I am really interested in XSLT, so I plan to devote most of my efforts to geofunctions.

20. What language(s) are used in this project? (C/Java/perl/etc)

XSLT, XQuery, and possibly Java, as per comment in 19., above.

21. What is the dominant written language (i.e. English, French, Spanish, German, etc) of the core developers?

English.

22. What is the (estimated) size of a full release of this project? How many users do you expect to download the project when it is released?

1-2M. 1000+. (?) Who knows, the sky's the limit. If it's usefull I could see 10,000 users of it, but I don't really know what defines the maximums. I would think GDAL/OGR is likely the broadest used library of all open source projects, so if I got up to 25% of that I would be happy. My goal is to spread the use of XSLT to process GEO /GML data.

[warmerdam]

From incubator mailing list:

Motion: The OSGeo Incubation Committee chooses not to recommend GeoFunctions for incubation at this time.

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I declare this motion passed with support from FrankW, PaulS, SteveL, CameronS, BobB, and ArnulfC.

I'm hoping to do a "project spotlight" on GeoFunctions in the coming weeks, and I think it is a promising project. It just isn't suitable for incubation at this time.