[Pkg-osm-maint] OpenStreetMap tile rendering stack in debian-gis

[Andreas Tille]

[Forgot to CC Debian OpenStreetMap Team <pkg-osm-maint at lists.alioth.debian.org>
 in my first posting at
 https://lists.debian.org/debian-gis/2013/07/msg00012.html]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 02:34:36PM -0700, Hamish wrote:
> Andreas:
> > if you ask me it is a bad idea to split GIS and OSM into different list.
> 
> there is some package maintainer overlap, but in general they come from two
> different communities with two different approaches and two different sets
> of upstream developers + end-product goals.

Did you read my full posting?  Did you noticed that I was arguing out of
experience between two different groups in another project?  What do you
think about joining to groups with some admittedly different approaches
but also a lot in common to reach some critical mass together?  Have you
ever heard about pkg-perl team with > 1000 packages which definitely
have different sets of upstream developers + end-product goals?
Pkg-perl is IMHO one of the most successful teams inside Debian and
regarding the packages they are way more distinct than OSM and GIS.

> so while I'm always eager for more inter-project communication, I don't
> think I'd try to forcibly mush OSM + the OSGeo stack together into a single
> box.

In Free Software world there is no such thing like forcibly doing
anything.  We just could try to reach some consensus to use a common Vcs
and mailing lists.  So in case a maintainer of a package that is
currently maintained by pkg-osm would decide to use Debian GIS Project
<pkg-grass-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org> as maintainer address and move
the packaging to git.debian.org/pkg-grass would you tell him he should
not do this?  What else would a merge of the groups mean other than
people use common communication channels and development Vcs?  I do not
see any reason to "forbid" people joining and if OSM people do not want
to join (for whatever reason) we can not do much about it.

>From my point of view the only thing that might cause hesitation for a
merge is the term "grass" in the name of the repository / developer list
of the Debian GIS project.  This term might OSM people (and other GIS
people) simply scare away because it somehow implies that the project is
about GRASS exclusively.  I personally would have choosen the Git
migration[1] to also choose a more generic name for the team.

Kind regards

      Andreas.

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianGis/Svn2Git

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