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Re: Bug#609772: ITP: osmpbf -- Java access library for OpenStreetMap PBF file format



On Fri, 21 Jan 2011 10:36:20 +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 07:51:41PM +0100, David Paleino wrote:
> [..]
> > So, osmpbf is a perfect candidate for pure pkg-osm maintainance.
> 
> What means "pure" in this context and why do you think that it is
> necessary to be pure here.

It means that osmpbf has really *nothing* GIS in it, not even those small
things needed for an advanced OSM usage/understanding. Apart from the fact that
it deals with OSM data, that is. ;)

> > About the critical mass: we're all the same people maintaining those
> > packages. The OSM guys in debian-gis are mainly Giovanni and me, so it
> > would be us maintaining those packages anyway ;)
> 
> Yes, that's true and you will probably be mentioned as uploaders and it
> might turn out that nobody else from the Debian GIS team will touch your
> package.  But that's not the point and I've thought you know the game
> from Debian Med:  We also have our people who are dedicated / focussed
> on for instance microbiology and medical imaging.  I think you might
> agree that booth fields are at least that different as "pure" GIS and
> "pure" OSM (whatever you might understand by this).  The only common
> thing between microbiology and medical imaging is probably that both are
> to some extend used in health care.  You will probably remember that you
> (as a dentist in spe) without any direct affiliation to both topics has
> once touched packages of this field to push some packaging standards,
> help fixing bugs etc.  So the fact that we widened the project and not
> narrowed the focus on "pure" microbiology" and "pure" medical imaging
> (from a maintainers perspective this distinction would make perfectly
> sense) has widened your focus, has strengthened the team, has enabled
> some semi-automatic changes for packaging regarding new
> Standards-Versions or something like this and was finally successful
> for Debian Med.

I understand what you mean.
To be honest, I don't have a strong opinion on this. Team work might help
when the "proper" maintainers are inactive, but given the strong involvement of
Giovanni and me, and that both of us (+ frankie) are those who would ultimately
do the teamwork on debian-gis too... :)

> [..]
> To come back to Debian GIS with the experiences above: I have the vision
> to join all those people who are working with geographic information to
> some extend and make this whole group *visible* *inside* Debian and well
> known *outside* Debian.  So what is your plan to make pkg-osm as a
> single packaging team visible inside Debian?  How do you want to attract
> other packagers which are keen on packaging OSM packages?  From time to
> time I just learn *by chance* that there are interesting teams some of
> my packages would fit in.  I personally was about to package OSM
> software as well - but I would probably not have known about pkg-osm
> because I was not explicitely seeking for it (might be my fault ...).

I usually tend to contact maintainers of already-packaged OSM software, and
keep track of ITPs on d-d.
I've also had negative responses (merkaartor), and that's fine too :)

OSM is still a rather young and unpopulated (software) field, so I don't still
see a need to 

> Even the larger focussed Debian GIS team is not doing well in
> advertising their work.  I personally feel not really in the position to
> *speak* *for* the *team*.  So I only suggested a DPN article[1] and
> asked again two weeks later[2].  I got no "go for it" / "don't do it" or
> something like this (which is really not much work) and I think I now
> will push the thing to make a project which is worth becoming popular
> more known.  Do you want to do this announcement work on your own for
> OSM or isn't it more simple to just plug in a "by the way, there are
> some peeople doing cool OSM stuff in Debian GIS"?

I agree the second is easier. And a note about pkg-osm could be put inside the
Debian GIS announcement. ;)

In my original vision of pkg-osm, I intended to make it a "subset" of
debian-gis (i.e. all packages co-maintained by both teams, and kept in
debian-gis' repos). A couple of packages would've been out of debian-gis scope
(see osmpbf), and would've been kept into pkg-osm repo.

Probably the biggest misunderstanding is that you consider pkg-osm at the same
level of debian-gis. I don't, I consider it one of its sons ;)

Kindly,
David

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