gvSIG Desktop wiki

Welcome to the gvSIG Desktop wiki, this place is aimed to be used by developers and users of gvSIG that need somewhere to publish their information. Use the links at the sidebar to browse the pages by title or date.


About gvSIG organization

gvSIG is a project that is supported by the gvSIG Association (1).

The gvSIG Association works in the field of free geomatics and use of standards in order to benefit an environment where companies, especially SMEs, can develop their business model around open source software and knowledge sharing.

We strongly believe in building a space where we succeed in transforming expenses (purchase of proprietary software licenses) into investment (purchase of services) guaranteeing Technological Sovereignty (open source software). A space that will help us to find synergies between public administration, universities and the business world; synergies that allow us to find better scenarios in relation to the management of existing resources and the development of new ethics of business where Sovereignty and Solidarity are reference values.

In this context we understand the software as a tool, as a means, and never as an purpose in itself. An essential tool, a transformation tool, but still just a tool. This is one of the reasons why the gvSIG events (2) have a strong focus on users of these technologies.

A gvSIG professional structure has been set up to ensure the sustainability of a gvSIG development model based on our principles of Sovereignty and Solidarity.

Goals of the association include:
1. Maintain a small and stable core,
2. Have a well-defined API,
3. Make it easy for the community to develop plugins,
4. Reduce the learning curve in gvSIG,
5. Help to train new developers,
6. Encourage sponsors of gvSIG developers to contribute new features back to gvSIG for the common good,
7. Foster a culture where contributing back to gvSIG is encouraged and supported.

Day-to-Day technical decisions

The day-to-day decisions are made by people of the professional structure (there's an architecture and development manager, and a product manager). The Professional Structure of the gvSIG project includes the team that performs all tasks related to the maintenance of the project. This team is responsible for maintaining the following areas in constant contact with the Community:
- Strategy
- Commercial
- Architecture, Development and Publishing
- Technical Collaborations
- Documentation
- Testing
- Internationalization
- Communities
- Product
- Infrastructure and Web spaces

The main roles at the development area are the following ones:
- Contributors: Initially, newcomers to the project generally participate in an informal role as a contributor. These types of contributors have no long term responsibility to the project
- Committers: Contributors who give important contributions to gvSIG (docs and bug fixes) can become a formal “Committer”
- Module Maintainers: They take some responsibilities as maintaining a module, update some documentation, etc.

Major technical decisions

The gvSIG Technical Steering Committee (TSC), that is composed of the main developers that are working on gvSIG, meet after every final version in order to make decisions about the next version. Currently gvSIG releases 2 versions per year (one version in May and another one in December). Important decisions are published on the gvSIG blog (3).

Decisions about objectives for future versions are collected in the gvSIG redmine “whislist”. (4)

(1) http://www.gvsig.com/en/gvsig-association
(2) http://www.gvsig.com/en/conferences
(3) http://blog.gvsig.org/
(4) https://redmine.gvsig.net/redmine/projects/gvsig-desktop/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&set_filter=1&f[]=status_id&op[status_id]=o&f[]=tracker_id&op[tracker_id]=%3D&v[tracker_id][]=11&f[]=&c[]=tracker&c[]=status&c[]=priority&c[]=subject&c[]=assigned_to&c[]=updated