What's the Planet gvSIG?

One of the most important elements of any free software project is its community, that is the companies, entities, users and developers working and using gvSIG products and technologies. Planets [1] are a great way to aggregate all the blogging activity around a common project.

You can access the planet at http://planet.gvsig.org and you have feeds in RSS and Atom formats to add it to your feed reader of choice.

Who maintains the Planet gvSIG?

Planet gvSIG is maintained by the gvSIG Team, mainly by Jorge Sanz and Victoria Agazzi.

How can I contact the maintainers?

If you want to be part of the planet you only have to contact us posting here a comment or using the gvsig.org contact form [2]. If they don't reply you in a few days, feel free to ask on the mailing lists.

Who created Planet gvSIG?

Planet gvSIG is an initiative of the gvSIG team from January 2011, following that common practice from other free software projects with a huge community.

Is it possible to track the requests related to Planet gvSIG?

Not at this moment, as there are just a few requests per month so they are handled by mail.

Are there rules to decide who should be on Planet gvSIG?

Strictly speaking, there is only one rule: the decision belongs to the editors. However, this FAQ highlights a set of guidelines that should help you understand how the editors work.

What are the basic requirements?

You obviously first need to have a blog. Seriously. The editors are helpful, but without a blog, they can't add you. It is better to have a blog with already at least a few posts so that the editors can evaluate the quality of your blog.

You should also make sure that the feed of your blog, or to a gvSIG posts category, is valid thanks to services like Feed Validator [3] or the W3C Feed Validation Service [4]. We only accept feeds containing full posts as we don't want to force our readers to click in each aggregated blog post to read the full content.

We also need a photo or logo to be added to your posts on the planet. Maybe you feel geek enough to create a hackergotchi [5]!! (probably we won’t reach the gnome planet level [6], anyway).

Finally, unless you really don't want to have a photograph of yourself or a logo of your blog/entity/organization/company the planet will show a plain gvSIG logo.

What is a good blog for Planet gvSIG?

While there is no clear-cut definition of what is a good blog for Planet gvSIG, it certainly helps to keep in mind that we want Planet gvSIG to be most interesting to the readers. This is why we have editors. However, there are a few things that you can easily check to make sure that your blog would make a good addition:

• the target audience of your posts is not restricted to your family or close friends only. We want readers of Planet gvSIG to read and care about most of your posts.
• some posts should be relevant to the gvSIG community, either because they're related to gvSIG projects, case studies, training, etc. or because it's a topic most people in our community care about, like freedom, open geodata, etc.
• we don't restrict by language so if you want to post in Russian, Chinesse or any other language is OK for us. Just take in account if there is a strong or growing community in your language so your posts will be interesting for them rather than writing in English for example.
• it’s not important if you just post from time to time about gvSIG, the more sources we get, the more activity will the planet have and more diversity will show.

What should I do to get added to Planet gvSIG?

Use the gvsig.org contact form [2] to tell us about you and your blog and we will contact you to request the photograph and feed to your blog or category if needed.

My request to be added got denied. What can I do?

The answer from the editors also contained an explanation of why your request got denied. If you disagree with this explanation, talk around you with other people. If those other people are all on your side, have them talk to the editors. If there's still no resolution, please use the contact form and your request will be addressed to the gvSIG comunication chair (Mario Carrera).

I just opened my blog and I want it to be on Planet gvSIG.

We generally try to avoid this. Please use your blog a bit first -- no need to write 10 posts in a week either. Just use it normally. It's important that you show the quality of your blog. Of course, you can also try to bribe the editors. It might work...

But I created my blog for this specific post I'm writing right now and I really want this to appear on Planet gvSIG

Just ask other people on Planet gvSIG to relay your post. There's no doubt that if the topic is interesting, it will attract people. It's also a good test to demonstrate to the editors that you should really be on Planet gvSIG.

Do I have to only blog about gvSIG things?

No, but we need a feed about your gvSIG posts. Most blogging plattforms offer a way to get a feed for a tag or category, if you don't know how to do that as the editors and they will help you.

Is there any restriction on what I can say on Planet gvSIG?

As long as you show a sensible behavior (see for example the GNOME Code of Conduct [7]), there's no restriction: we don't want to see censorship. Generally speaking, we believe that common sense will prevail.

Is there any restriction on my presence on Planet gvSIG?

There's no restriction, but just keep in mind that readers probably don't want to read five posts from you in a row. Or well, they'd better be really really interesting

Are there cases where my blog could be removed by the editors?

The only case we can think of at the moment is if you stopped being involved in gvSIG and you only blog about topics that are not relevant to gvSIG or free software. We will contact you first to let you know and discuss this.

Oh, another case is you not respecting a proper conduct repetitively. But we're confident this will not happen.

My posts don't appear correctly on Planet gvSIG. The time for my posts is wrong on Planet gvSIG.

Please first check that your feed is valid and has no error with services like Feed Validator [3] or the W3C Feed Validation Service [4]. If everything looks fine there, contact us.

I want to change my feed URL

Make sure your feed validates by using services like Feed Validator or the W3C Feed Validation Service. If this is the case, then just send a mail to the editors.

I want to update my photograph

That can be a good idea, especially if you want people to recognize you at conferences, just send a mail to the editors.

I want to be removed from Planet gvSIG

We won't force you to stay on Planet gvSIG But it's always a bit sad to see people leave... Just send a mail.