Liberación de la versión 2.1 de gisEIEL

En el día de hoy se ha procedido a liberar el código de la última versión de gisEIEL, la 2.1, que incorpora notables mejoras.

El código fuente de la aplicación así como toda la documentación de desarrollo está accesible desde la web de la EIEL en el siguiente enlace:

http://www.dicoruna.es/webeiel/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=83&Itemid=80&lang=es

También podéis acceder a una descripción del proyecto en la página de OSOR:

http://giseiel.forge.osor.eu/

Los cambios de esta versión con respecto a la anterior incluyen revisiones/mejoras de los módulos existentes así como nuevas funcionalidades para la aplicación.

A continuación incluimos una descripción de las principales novedades de esta versión.

Mejoras de carácter general:

·         Se han corregido los errores detectados por los usuarios así como por el equipo de desarrollo, mejorando la estabilidad general de la aplicación.

·         Se han reestructurado los menús para que sea más cómodo e intuitivo su uso.

·         Se ha mejorado notablemente la organización de los proyectos así como sus dependencias y se han simplificado los ficheros de ‘ant’ necesarios para compilarlos.

Mejoras en los módulos existentes:

·         Módulo de autenticación y gestión de usuarios:

1.       Se ha incluido una caché de  servidores que permite almacenar los datos de conexión a los servidores a los que se ha accedido de forma exitosa.

·         Módulo de impresión:

2.       Corregidos los problemas de consumo de memoria que impedían imprimir con calidad muy alta

3.       Posibilidad de imprimir a 96, 300 y 600 ppp

4.       Posibilidad de poder imprimir en horizontal y vertical

5.       Nuevos tamaños de impresión, ahora la aplicación soporta A0, A1, A2, A3 y A4.

6.       Incluido módulo de gestión de leyendas de impresión que permite configurar el nombre de cada capa EIEL que aparecerá en la leyenda del mapa impreso.

·         Módulo de digitalización y edición.

1.       Añadida herramienta de edición de polígonos que permite añadir polígonos o huecos a una entidad con geometría de tipo multipolígono.

2.       Añadida herramienta de edición que permite cambiar el sentido de geometrías de tipo polilínea.

·         Módulo de formularios de entidad:

1.       Incluido soporte a subformularios. De esta forma es posible definir formularios desde los que se pueda abrir subformularios para rellenar datos relativos a una entidad. Por ejemplo los formularios de equipamientos nos permitirán abrir subformularios donde podremos gestionar los usos que se le están dando a ese equipamiento.

·         Módulo de generación de fichas municipales:

1.       Revisadas las fórmulas de índices e indicadores de la ficha.

2.       Mejorado el rendimiento del módulo y reducido el tiempo necesario para la generación de las fichas municipales.

Nuevas funcionalidades de la aplicación:

·         Asistente para exportar cartografía a SHP y DXF de forma masiva: Permite exportar a SHP y DXF capas de la BDT-EIEL pertenecientes a un conjunto de municipios de forma rápida y cómoda.

·         Nuevo módulo de conectividad de redes con las siguientes herramientas:

1.       Herramienta para la comprobación de la conectividad de redes de abastecimiento y saneamiento: Permite realizar simulaciones de recorrido de redes sobre las vistas de gvSIG, de forma que facilita la detección de posibles errores en las conexiones de los elementos que forman una red.

2.       Herramienta para el cálculo de conectividad para las redes de abastecimiento y saneamiento: permiten calcular de forma automática las asociaciones de servicio entre elementos de las redes de saneamiento y abastecimiento, y los núcleos de población.

·         Herramienta para la eliminación de núcleos EIEL: Permite eliminar de forma cómoda núcleos EIEL, reasignando todos los equipamientos e infraestructuras pertenecientes a este núcleo a un nuevo núcleo EIEL indicado por el usuario.

·         Módulo de generación de registros temporales que proporciona al usuario herramientas para:

1.       Generar en la BDT-EIEL un esquema temporal, un esquema histórico, disparadores y procedimientos almacenados que permitan implementar la gestión temporal de los datos.

2.       Guardar registros temporales de las modificaciones de los datos contenidos en la BDT-EIEL, almacenando en el esquema histórico las modificaciones que ha sufrido la BD entre distintos momentos puntuales.

Mejoras en la BDT-EIEL:

·         Introducidos datos de fases anteriores de la EIEL, lo que permite análisis históricos de evolución de las infraestructuras y equipamientos.

·         Incluido un esquema temporal, un esquema histórico, disparadores y procedimientos almacenados que permitan implementar la gestión temporal de los datos.

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

SIGNERGIAS (II)_en

One month and one half after we SIGNERGIAS, workshop took place, I'm pleased to announce the its main consequence has been the launching of SIGNERGIAS Network. This way, what was born as a punctual event has evolved into an organization with the aim of persistence in time.

 

All of the information regarding the network is already available at its web site [1], as well as the minutes of the first meeting and the aditional documentation.

Next meeting: during Libre SIG Workshop at Girona next month.

[1] http://www.dicoruna.es/webeiel/signergias

SIGNERGIAS (II)_es

Mes y medio más tarde de haber celebrado el taller SIGNERGIAS, me cabe el placer de anunciar que el principal resultado de dicho taller ha sido la constitución de la RED SIGNERGIAS, de tal manera que lo que nació como una experiencia puntual se convierte así en una organización con voluntad de permanencia en el tiempo.

 

Toda la información está ya disponible en su sede web [1], junto con el acta de la reunión celebrada y la documentación adicional.

Próxima reunión: Durante las Jornadas de SIG Libre, en Girona.

[1] http://www.dicoruna.es/webeiel/signergias

Signergias.en

After several months of not publishing any new posts at this blog, I'm back to announce the holding of signergias , workshop during which we pretend establishing the basements for the mutual collaboration between the four main Libre GIS projects in Spain: gvSIG, gisEIEL, LocalGIS e IDEACV, by focusing on the integration of municipal managing utilities and on their interoperability, in order to avoid parallel developings and the consequent duplicities.

At workshop's site we will publish every documentation that is developed along it, and at this blog we will post all of the news that may surge regarding this issue.

Signergias.es

Tras un parón de unos meses en la incorporación de entradas a este blog (que no de trabajo en gisEIEL), vuelvo para anunciaros la próxima celebración de signergias , taller en el que pretendemos sentar las bases para la colaboración mutua entre los cuatro principales proyectos españoles de SIG libre: gvSIG, gisEIEL, LocalGIS e IDEACV, con el foco puesto en la integración de utilidades de gestión municipal y en su interoperabilidad, a fin de evitar desarrollos paralelos y las consiguientes duplicidades.

En la web del taller iremos publicando toda la documentación que se genere durante la celebración del mismo, y en este blog os iremos aportando las noticias que vayan surgiendo sobre dicho tema.

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'!

Call for help

Here we are again. After beach days, we are now working again in our project.

Next tasks to be undertaken are pretty much adequate to be developed by community members, what would be of great help. These are:

1. Localizing our software to other languages. First two are Galician and English, but we won't reject any other possibility.
2. Installing and testing gisEIEL under different OS: Unix/Linux (different distros), MacOS

In the first case, we need previously getting source code conveniently prepared, but we have already put hands on it.

In the latter, no previous action is needed: testers will have all the control on their hands. We just need that they  provide us with documentation on the experience, difficulties and solutions adopted until the application do correctly run on the selected OS.

Any volunteer to do some of these tasks?

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.

Changes in project's hosting sites

As a consequence of the decission taken regarding what forges would the project be registered in, today gisEIEL has been removed from Sourforge. Thus, project's site at that forge does now redirect traffic to both OSOR forge and gisEIEL own web sites. Nevertheless, by the moment and until we come to an agreement with Mancomún representatives, no change has already been made at this forge's site.

This way, and as commented in my previous posting, almost all of the collaborative development and support tools will be hosted only at gisEIEL site, whilst OSOR and Mancomún (this latter in the close future) will contain mainly information on the project and a code repository.

We hope that these changes may let us keep a tighter monitoring of the project, at the time that they will minimize the risk of being serving different contents at each different site: coherence and consistency must prevail over other considerations!