Acuerdo de cooperación para la gestión de gisEIEL

Tras un proceso iniciado el pasado mes de noviembre, las Diputaciones de A Coruña, Ourense y Córdoba, el Consell Insular de Mallorca y la Universidad de A Coruña han adoptado el acuerdo de formalizar un convenio de cooperación para la gestión, seguimiento y desarrollo coordinado de la aplicación gisEIEL [1].

Tal como se explica en el propio texto del convenio [2], las entidades firmantes del mismo coinciden en utilizar la base de datos BDT-EIEL y el software gisEIEL para la confección y gestión de la Encuesta sobre Infraestructuras y Equipamientos Locales (EIEL) y, a fin de racionalizar la utilización de los recursos disponibles, han considerado que la cooperación interadministrativa "es, con carácter general, deseable en orden a racionalizar el uso de recursos y a garantizar la sostenibilidad de las actuaciones de la administración pública. Consideran así mismo que en el caso particular del proyecto gisEIEL esta cooperación llevará a la rentabilización de los recursos destinados al desarrollo, gestión y mantenimiento del proyecto, a su persistencia en el tiempo, a su continua mejora, a su mejor adecuación a los intereses y necesidades de sus usuarios y, en suma, a su más racional gestión."

Para ello, se comprometen a coordinar sus esfuerzos y desarrollos, y a acordar anualmente las líneas de actuación a desarrollar, de acuerdo con los siguientes

PRINCIPIOS BÁSICOS DE COLABORACIÓN:

1. Las entidades firmantes adoptan el modelo de datos de la BDT-EIEL de la Diputación de A Coruña como modelo básico para la gestión de la EIEL georreferenciada y como base para la construcción de un paquete de soluciones SIG dirigidas a la administración local.
2. Igualmente adoptan el software gisEIEL como herramienta SIG de partida para la gestión de los datos contenidos en la BDT-EIEL. En tanto no esté disponible la versión 2.0 de gvSIG, se adoptará la última versión liberada de gisEIEL. En cuanto se publique la primera versión estable de gvSIG 2.0, se adoptarán como base el conjunto de módulos de gisEIEL 3.0 y versiones posteriores, pudiendo complementarlas en cualquier momento con otro software compatible con los anteriores.
3. Las citadas entidades firmantes podrán, así mismo, adoptar las restantes aplicaciones de la plataforma eielAC como software de publicación y compartición de los datos almacenados en la BDT-EIEL.
4. Los desarrollos, modificaciones y actualizaciones a realizar a partir de la firma del presente convenio, serán compartidos entre los firmantes y serán, en todo momento, compatibles con gvSIG, a partir de su versión 2.0, por constituir la plataforma tecnológica más adecuada en el momento presente. Igualmente, se mantendrá la compatibilidad con cualquier otro software de base o complementario que decidan los órganos técnicos de seguimiento del convenio.
5. En la medida en que este Convenio se constituye sobre un proyecto ya iniciado por la Diputación de A Coruña y la Universidad de A Coruña y con el fin de que el resto de las entidades firmantes (refiriéndose tanto a desarrolladores como usuarios finales de la aplicación) se puedan incorporar rápida y plenamente al estado actual del mismo, las dos entidades citadas garantizan su colaboración en materia de formación, asistencias técnicas y redacción de la documentación adecuada que conforme un marco de transferencia de conocimiento y tecnología adecuado.

[1] http://giseiel.forge.osor.eu
[2] Texto completo del convenio:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OWuWltpEpQP3FM3_q_-i_uX77FObtv2OrFUGlv-wGyY/edit?hl=en&authkey=CNSpmvgJ

Cathedrals or bazaars?

Even I don´t fully agree with Reynold's proposal about Libre Software projects cathegorization [1], as I don't think that cathedrals were completely built by hierarchical organizations, whilst  bazaars are not actually "that" collaborative, there is no doubdt that it has been widely adopted by the LS community. Thus thinking about projects as bazaar-like managed is what prevails. And, well, maybe that, in general, this is the case with must LS projects. But, what happens with Public Administration led ones? Do they properly fit bazaar paradigma?

I begun thinking about this issue when we were preparing gisEIEL project releasing, last year. Being the "bible" of LS projects managing, I was then trying to follow Karl Fogel's reccomendations at his well known book "Producing Open Source software" [2]. But as we progressed in gisEIEL releasing tasks, I begun being more and more aware about that our project COULDN'T follow all of those reccomendations. As a consequence, I tried to figure out wether this happened to every PA led project.

To help myself in that task, I launched PA FOSS, a web based enquiry (not currently available) that contained a series of questions regarding all of the main points that Fogel mentions in his book. Even announced at several fora, it was completed just by four project managers (including myself), what can not be considered as statitically representative at all. Anyway, the contents of those four answers are homogeneous enough as to suspect that, when dealing with projects from Public Administration bodies, my thoughts about the existence of constrains to follow bazaar model are something more than just an intuition.

Why do I think so? Well, let's have a look at some of the results of the enquiry:

i. Developing

 In all of the four cases, developing is being made by teams from the own leading PA body, its associated institutions or contrated companies. In no case it was made by a free and self organized community.

Developing decissions are, thus, taken by project managing teams.

ii. Project releasing
All of the four projects were firstly released only when they had achieved all of the decided functionality. No alfa, beta or candidate releases. No code sharing until the applications were fully developed and functional enough. And, by the time when the enquiry was held, this applied as well to former versions.

iii. Funding
 Again, in no case funding came, not even partially, from the community or from private sources. Developing costs were totally paid with Public Administration funds.

iv. Community
So, is there any "community" around those projects? Well! Yes, it is! But not a self organized one. In general, what exists is a more or less wide series of tools to support the use of the applications and the intercommunication between their users and the project managing team, regarding mainly issues such as news announcement, applications testing, improvement proposals, bug tracking and so on. In some cases (i.e. gisEIEL [3]), there is also a Community Code of Conduct that rules that community's activity.

As said, this pattern does perfectly fit both four projects. Only in the case of gvSIG [4], given its wide success and the fact that its use has spreaded all over the world, the Public Administration body that launched the project (Generalitat Valenciana, in Spain) has begun to feel "over charged" by managing tasks and has been preparing project's total independence and self managing by means of the constitution of an Association that will take care of gvSIG from some time in this year on. From that moment, the project will no more depend on GV decissions and funding and, in the close future, these will only regard the developing of given components that the mentioned institution may be interested in.

But, why does this happen? Why PA lead projects seam to be that tightly dependent on PA bodies decissions and that poorly built on communities activity? Well, PA activities are tightly controled by a broad series of legislative rules that try to assure that they rely, between other principles, on that of the save and care use of public funds and on that PA bodies have always to preserve their prestige and public trusting. This implies that wells, services and products paid with public funds can not be distributed if they do not pass quality and completeness controls. The responsibility (and liability) of PA bodies on those products are clearly higher than in the case of those produced by private institutions. So, regarding PA Libre software projects, "control" is, more than a convenience, an absolute need. If not a legal imposition.

And this makes that a new question arises: are them actually "Libre" projects? In my opinion, must of them are. Freedom does not depend on how much community driven are the projects, but on what are the conditions under which the software is released. As far as they are distributed under an approved "Libre" license, with no added use constrains, for me they are "Libre" themselves. Tighter or looser managed, more or less community driven, but "Libre" anyway.

So, cathedrals or bazaars?


PS: As you probably noticed, I do always use the expresion "Libre Software" instead of "Free Software". That's because I understand that "Free" is quite a more ambiguous word (remember that of "Free as in freedom, not free as in free beer", what becomes useless if you simply use "Libre" instead). And, moreover this, "Libre" is independent from any given definition of what can be considered as "free" or "non free" software [5] [6], what IMHO becomes a valuable added value. :-)

[1]: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/
[2]: http://producingoss.com/
[3]: http://www.dicoruna.es/webeiel/giseiel/soportecomunidad.do
[4]: http://www.gvsig.org
[5]: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
[6]: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

About the future of this blog

Hi again!

This posting will suppose a change in the course that this blog has been following this far.

'Going Free' was born as part of my practicum at Libre Software Master, held by Caixanova, Igalia and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. It would be the log of my work regarding the releasing of gisEIEL project. And, being an accademic exercise, it would:

• Be personally (and exclusively) written by me
• Relate only to gisEIEL project, and
• Be written in English (Yes, that was the very reason! What were you thinking of? :-D )

But in the meanwhile, it became the official news bulletin of our project, and now that the Master ends (Buaaahhhh!!!!!! LOC!!!!!! -Lots of crying-), the blog itself gets free of any conditionings. Hence from now on it may happen that you find that some postings are not written by me, but by any of the core developers and managers. Puede también ocurrir que algunas entradas estén escritas en español. Ou en galego. Oppure in Italiano. Aagso i dansk. Or in any other language, just in the same way as we decided having a single set of collaborative tools, despite what's the language of each single contributor, this way taking full advantage of the fact that we all can communicate one with all of the rest through the Internet and its tools.

A crazy experiment? Well, maybe! But as in the song:

The future will tell us

¿Qué será, será?

(or "Che sará, sará?", depending on the versions)

What will be, will be?

We don't believe in misticisms, but we strongly believe in "mestizaje". And as 'Blade Runner' followers, we also believe in "interlingua" ;-)

Our project is not very big, at least by the moment, and this fact will (I hope) let us keep things under control.

Finally, even still focused on gisEIEL, this blog may be open to other subjects. But always (and this is a promise) relating to GIS and Libre Software realms.

So: Farewell, you old blog! Wellcome (bienvenido, benvido, benvenutto, benvingut, welkome, willkomen,...) new 'Going Free'!

Consell Insular de Mallorca adopts gisEIEL

After a period of checking our software, Consell Insular de Mallorca (Majorca Island Council) has decided to adopt gisEIEL as software tool to manage EIEL and to be used as integration environment for all of their other GIS applications.

To prepare that adoption, a meeting was held at Diputación de A Coruña on 23rd July 2008 along which technicians from both institutions, as well as developers from UdC Database Lab, have discussed about what are the probable difficulties to overcome and the way to do so. Information on that meeting has been published at Diputación de A Coruña web site.

Now, it is Diputación de Valencia (Valencia Province Council) technicians who are evaluating gisEIEL. Hope that they also decide joining us.