Invitation for all Open Source GPS software developers and users to join FOSS-GPS mailing list

September 19, 2008 in Open source | 2 comments

(C) Marble

Yesterday I wrote about this idea to start a mailing list to gather Open Source developers and users to a single mailing list to share their ideas, announce releases, share patches and so on on a single list. Only a day later it’s reality so now I warmly welcome all FOSS GPS software developers and users to foss-gps@lists.osgeo.org


Developers & project managers

First thing first, I think it’s vital for an open source project to communicate with the community – the end users of your software.

It’s useless for all projects to have their own mailing list so this FOSS-GPS is a nice tool for you to get in contact with the community.

Join the list to hear what the users think of your software. Ask them what kind of features they would like to to see in the following releases. Encourage skilled users to send patches. Release alpha and beta versions to be tested and get your feedback. Share ideas and solutions with other developers to get the most out of GPS. Let the community know how your project is doing, where would a path or two be needed and so on. Maybe you need a translation.

If your project already has a mailing list or a forum it’s still useful to join to hear what the users think and also let more users know right away about your releases.

You’re welcome to join the list! Write a little introduction when you join so people know that your project is there. Also tell about the list on your project web page to let the users know where to go to contact you and other users in case they want some more information about the software.

Users

Do you want to know what’s happening in the Open Source GPS world? What are the hottest programs and features? Maybe you want to know if your favorite program will release a new version soon and help them by testing the beta version. Or do you want to share your experiences about the software: what are the best features, what’s still missing? What did you find when you needed a tool to import gps tracks or navigate?

You’re welcome to join the list! Write a little ‘Hello World’ note telling who you are, what GPS software you use and so on. If you’re on some forums that have people who might be interested about this it’s more than encouraged to spread the world! Tell the developer of your favourite programs to join the list to get the latest from the community.

Host

After a long search finding mostly unrelated lists I was suggested to check OSgeo.org to host the list. I had never even heard about it but from the first minute on it seemed like a perfect match:

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo, is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation provides financial, organizational and legal support to the broader open source geospatial community…. [read more]

osgeo.org So I wrote to their discussion mailing list and also joined the IRC channel to ask what they think. They agreed that there was a need for a list like this and that they’d be happy to host it. I think that there couldn’t have been a better place to host this list. Non-profit, open geospatial technologies. I want to thank OSGeo for this. I’m sure the list will help many projects to advance through code sharing, user feedback, developer discussions and so on. The number of GPS devices out there is growing all the time and there is also more and more GPS users who would like to use their devices with Open Source software. Go and have a look at osgeo.org and see all the cool projects they have there!

More information

Mailing list and wiki page

Blog post with the original idea

community reactions on some lists (read the thread):
osgeo-discussion
openmoko-community

Related posts:

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  1. Uzytkownik’s avatar

    Uzytkownik on September 19, 2008 at 12:14 pm

    Any chances for gmane?