[Proj] Motion: add Kristian Evers and Thomas Knudsen to the Proj.4 team

Howard Butler howard at hobu.co
Fri May 20 09:56:45 EST 2016


> On May 20, 2016, at 9:19 AM, support at mnspoint.com wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Please! "if it works .. don't touch it" 

Janne,

I'll let them discuss the rationale for their efforts, but I would point out that the converse of your statement is also probably true. "If you don't touch it, it will rot". The two+ years of no Proj.4 releases and backlog of unattended tickets exemplify that. The large ticket backlog is due in part to few people feeling confident enough to make fixes or improvements to the code beyond small tweaks. More confidence is achieved by more automated testing and code pathways that are easier to follow - precisely the types of contributions Thomas and Kristian have been making.

Their improvements will make it much easier for people to come in and work in the codebase. They added a large mass of tests to back up changes and protect against future rot. It is also very likely they have lessened the security venerability surface that Proj.4 was providing, though I have no specific proof of that claim other than to say that less complex code generally means fewer pathways to break into.

> label the whole product something ELSE than Proj.4. and don't mix it with the stable version!


Proj.4 is already a fork, if you'll remember. 

> We don't want to have random rewriters for the code since it does not add anything but more work for us! (... and lot of random errors and 
> problems)

Do you not have rigorous automated testing to confirm whether or not a new version of a given open source library you are using will cause regressions in your platform? Certainly you use other software beyond Proj.4 that moves much faster than it does, right? There's nothing preventing you from staying with your old(er) version of Proj.4.

Howard




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