Working Group Minutes/EWG 2017-03-14

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

A meeting of the Engineering Working Group on 14th March 2017 via Mumble.

Attendees

  • Paul Norman
  • Peter Barth
  • Ilya Zverev
  • Tobias Knerr

Topics

In just a week the GSoC student application period opens. We have 23 ideas: a great improvement over the last year's 13. Nobody has written Peter about GSoC, but it'd be sensible to remind people that they really need to go and put their project ideas on that page. Also every possible mentor should contact Peter so they are added to the GSoC mentors system. Even if they are not chosen, they could help backing up other mentors.

Last year Peter ran his own mailing server for the conversation between mentors. Can we do it on OSMF servers this year? Also, there actually is a mailing list for EWG. Nobody has written there for at least a year. We need to make use of it, but first we would need to have a bigger meeting, so everyone is okay with it being transferred to the new team.

Most suitable project for EWG is the Top Ten Tasks list. The current version was built in November 2011. Five of the tasks were done, one is half-done, two are obsolete. To refresh it, we are starting with an internal bigger list, which we would later discuss.

Scanning github issues for tasks is not a great idea: there are a lot of these. Bug fixes and updates are not suited for the top ten, it should be a new functionality. No JOSM, only core software, like the website. Nominatim is probably okay. No API 0.7, because the target audience are new developers. The moderation queue would be a good candidate.

To get more ideas and to finally officially transition to the new EWG we should have more attendees next time. For that we will announce the meeting early and invite everyone.

Action Items

No outstanding action items from the previous meetings.

  • Peter: send a mail to dev@ mailing list reminding developers to post their ideas to the GSoC page.
  • Paul: ask OWG regarding the mailing list for GSoC 2017 mentors.
  • Ilya: in a week post an announcement for the next EWG meeting.
  • Everyone: collect their thoughts for the top ten tasks on the etherpad.

Next Meeting

Exactly two weeks from this one, with no regard to DST: 28th of March, 20:00 UTC.