Sean Gillies (Posts about open source)

Python typing mulligan

Sean Gillies — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 02:16:36 GMT

This is why I've been hesitant to add type hints to Fiona, Rasterio, and Shapely. David Lord on missteps and misgivings:

I want a "start over" tool for type annotating a Python library. I started with Flask as untyped code, then added annotations until mypy stopped complaining. But this didn't mean the annotations were _correct_. Over time I've fixed various reported issues. I feel like if I could start from scratch again, I'd probably get closer to correct with the experience I've gained. But removing all existing annotations and ignores is too time consuming on its own. #python

On not using Slack for open source

Sean Gillies — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 17:10:53 GMT

I completely agree with Matthew Rocklin about the suitability of Slack for open source projects:

Real-time chat systems make everyone feel productive (it’s fun to have a face-paced technical conversation with colleagues), but do relatively little for long-term community consensus building, particularly when the users and developers of a project span a variety of institutions and a long range of time.

I created two discussion groups for Rasterio on groups.io because I don't want real-time support chat to suck up all the community's oxygen and because the community's collective wisdom is more powerful when it is searchable. I also don't do live support for my projects on any Slack other than Mapbox's.

Current status

Sean Gillies — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 13:29:08 GMT

I've been neglecting my open source projects this summer due to time constraints. At Mapbox we've been onboarding a new President and COO and a raft of new employees, plus a manager for my team at Mapbox. These are hugely positive developments, but have also been a big lift. Moving back to Colorado and bringing our lives here out of suspension has similarly taken all of my personal time. I've been the blocker for new releases of Fiona, Rasterio, and Shapely all summer long and have been feeling rather guilty about it.

Things are looking up now. My kids are back in school and have seen their doctor and dentist. Their schedule of soccer practices and other activities for the season is getting settled quickly. I'm resuming weekly yoga and gym workouts along with my existing running schedule. I like having a weekly routine; it helps me stay relaxed and gives me time for personal projects like writing and computering.

Open source continues to be a big part of my job and as my share of the onboarding lift eases I've been able to increase my time on Fiona, Rasterio, and Shapely. I released the long overdue Shapely 1.6.0 and have supported the GeoPandas team on getting 0.3.0 out. Fiona 1.7.9 was the first bug fix release of that project since June and I'm happy to have that in user hands. This week I'm working on coding and writing about the upcoming Rasterio release. I feel like I'm doing a good job as an open source maintainer and mentor again and am excited about what I'll be able to do in the next few months.

None of these projects would be viable without the help of other developers. To my open source collaborators: thanks for hanging in there and being patient with me!

Trying something new

Sean Gillies — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 07:00:00 GMT

I'm working on submissions for the upcoming FOSS4G-NA conference (aka MapServer User Meeting XI) and am experimenting with opening the abstracts up to comments and forks as I write them at https://gist.github.com/sgillies/4745903. If you like the direction I'm going with the abstracts, feel free to comment. If it looks like I'm overlooking something important, please comment. If you're interested in co-presenting please fork the Gist and we'll talk. The results will go into the FOSS4G-NA submission spreadsheet on the 14th.

Comments

Re: Trying something new

Author: Martin Davis

This looks like a couple of good reasons to try and make it to FOSS4GNA-2013!

Libspatialindex 1.8.0 released

Sean Gillies — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 07:00:00 GMT

Good bye, LGPL. Hello, MIT (and iOS). Howard Butler writes:

I'm pleased to announce the release of libspatialindex 1.8.0. Two significant changes have been made in this release to necessitate incrementing the libtool versioning. The first exciting change is the license of libspatialindex was changed from LGPL 2.1 to MIT. This licensing change is to support the use of libspatialindex in embedded systems development situations (such as iOS) where dynamic linking to satisfy the LGPL is not possible for whatever reason. The second, more mundane change, is to add a flush() method to the IStorageManager to support saving the index in situations where you do not want to completely tear down the object. This is useful in situations where you are using libspatialindex on top of some other system and are providing your own index storage implementation.

Howard has also compiled Windows binaries: http://libspatialindex.github.com/#download.

Closing down the Lab

Sean Gillies — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 06:00:00 GMT

If you're a suscriber to the GIS-Python projects mailing list, you've seen the discussion about migrating projects to other hosting services. If you're not a subscriber your first notice might have been seeing this at the Trac site:

OWSLib is going to Sourceforge, the zgeo.* projects are being superceded by the collective.geo suite at CoActivate, and most everything else has been moved to GitHub.

When Kai and I started the GIS-Python effort in 2005, running our own development site looked like the best option. Today, it's nowhere near the best option and feels increasingly like a hinderance. I'm looking forward to spending less time on operations and more time on coding. I hope you'll stick with the projects through the move and beyond.

That's more like it

Sean Gillies — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Pulling the unflattering and inaccurate stereotype of open source GIS pioneers from the FOSS4G 2011 home page is the right move.

In which I try to help more and complain less

Sean Gillies — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Update (2011-01-12): Better: http://sgillies.net/blog/1065/thats-more-like-it

A reader suggested to me in comments that I should approach the words on the FOSS4G 2011 site (which I quoted previously) from a different angle and try to appreciate that they're aimed at folks outside the FOSS4G community. Speaking to them using their own language including, apparently, their own unflattering stereotypes of open source users in an anything goes effort to lure them in to the event. I suppose this makes some twisted sense if you ignore an eventuality: that this corporate audience will at some point discover themselves fully surrounded by these very same wild-eyed open source hippy freetard philosophers. But nevermind that for now, I'm fully onboard with the FOSS4G rhetoric and have some other stereotypes that the marketers are free to use or repurpose if the original

Many early adopters of FOSS solutions chose them based on "philosophical" reasons, but ...

starts to wear thin. How about this one, which uses unnecessary quotes to maintain the right style?

Many early adopters of FOSS solutions were into GIS as a "fun" hobby, but ...

That will have strong appeal for certified professionals.

Many early adopters of FOSS solutions felt "everything" should be free, but ...

The conference is coming back to the USA, and nothing is more American than using Communists as bogeymen.

Many early adopters of FOSS ranted about the "difference" between freedom and free beer, but ...

Always with the damn philosophizing, those freetards.

Many early adopters of FOSS were from "academic" backgrounds, but ...

I almost forgot the Ivory Tower! Nobody is less pragmatic than an academic researcher, right? Hope this helps, and Merry Christmas.

Copywriting run amuck?

Sean Gillies — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Bullshit.

Recent years have seen substantial changes in the geospatial industry. One of those changes has been the growth in maturity and adoption of free and open source solutions. Many early adopters of FOSS solutions chose them based on "philosophical" reasons, but increasingly large enterprises and government organizations are choosing these solutions for pragmatic business reasons. In many cases organizations are using a mixture of open and closed source solutions.

Emphasis above is mine. What the hell is up with the scare quotes and the impractical, ideology-driven, early adopter strawman? If you were there in the early FOSS4G days, you'll remember that it was in fact about pragmatic solutions: proprietary software often lacked features that we needed to do our jobs or was riddled with bugs that we suspected wouldn't be fixed any time soon. The need to get shit done was the driving force behind GDAL, MapServer, PostGIS, and friends. Driving a stake through the heart of ArcIMS was just gravy.

Update (2011-01-12): Better: http://sgillies.net/blog/1065/thats-more-like-it

Comments

Re: Copywriting run amuck?

Author: Karsten Vennemann

Seems that the quote above is straight from the foss4g 2011 home page...

Certainly a driving force behind the OS GIS solutions was getting things done, but functionality comes, matures and is added on over time as we all know ;) . I can see in the small GIS consulting business that I am running a huge and growing client demand for OS web based solutions unfolding over the last 4 years. I have seen that OS web based solution already where competitive over the last 5 years when I have been using them. However with OS desktop GIS that increasingly became true over the last 2 years when e.g. QGIS and gvSIG became so powerfull that they actually can be used to do most of I was doing in ArcGIS previously (namely fine cartography and labeling).

Also it's not all about the technological solution (and what it can do) but about information about the solution, about spreading the word, and the process that this information finally arrives (trickles through ) at decision makers desks (long way) - that is in other words (due successful foss4g) 'marketing' (yuk ?).

On the foss4g web site I see this quote also as a perception described and I don't see anything wrong with that. I think the home page is also largely about spreading the word to non - typical OS GIS users (yes not only geeky OS developer types that come to foss4g anyway thanks god!) to get them and come to the FOSS4G. Personally I would love to see more regular GIS users (vs developer types) to attend foss4g and especially lots of newcomers (yes ESRI type GIS users) to join this event !

Note: I am not involved in creation of the home page at all ;)

Re: Copywriting run amuck?

Author: Sean

Karsten, I am not disputing the undeniable "growth in maturity and adoption". I'm disputing the characterization of early adopters -- the people who put PostGIS (for example) into production long before it hit 1.0, who found and saw closed all the early show-stopping bugs, who supported each other before there were books or adequate documentation, who raised the damn FOSS4G barn -- as unpragmatic has-beens. The mainstream owes the early adopters respect, if not thanks.

Re: Copywriting run amuck?

Author: bk

Tuff in the corners, sweet hands in front of the net.

Gillies is the Chardonnay of Men..

Re: Copywriting run amuck?

Author: Sean

Sadly, I am not, to my knowledge, related to Clark Gillies.

Re: Copywriting run amuck?

Author: Paul Ramsey

Agreed. Unless "unafraid of change" or "open to new approaches" count as "philosophical" reasons. Sure, it takes a different mindset than your bog standard IT manager might have, but ideology doesn't enter into it.

Re: Copywriting run amuck?

Author: Daniel Morissette

This sentence on the FOSS4G 2011 page also hurt my eye. I consider myself one of those early adopters but as a consultant my motivations have always been and still are mostly pragmatic and not philosophical.

I don't think this descriptions matches many FOSS4G user organizations either (not our own clients anyway, not even those from the early days). All our clients care about is that the tool gets the job done. Very few care about the "philosophical" reasons and it's actually the contrary: if you want to scare a potential client away then start giving them a "philosophical" lecture.

An afternoon of hacking before WhereCamp5280

Sean Gillies — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Geospatial programmers inclined toward interpreted languages and open source don't get together enough on the Front Range. Please help Chris Helms, Tyler Erickson, and I correct this unfortunate state of affairs on November 18 at the once Colorado Brewery, now Nationally Registered Historical Place known as CU Denver's Tivoli Student Center. WhereCamp once piggybacked on Where 2.0 and now we're hooky bobbing on WhereCamp5280. See the announcement by Chris on the FRUGOS list for details and spread the word.

Update (2010-10-26): Please sign up on the wiki if you're planning to attend.