In the November issue of the GeoConnexion magazine, ("Geo:
International"), an article I wrote was published in OSGeo's
Monthly Column, "Open Sources". The article talks a bit about
the history of OpenLayers, and how it came to be developed the way it
did:
OpenLayers was the first mapping framework to make an explicit
statement that it was not an application at all, but a toolkit for
building mapping applications. This different approach resulted in a
somewhat long curve to acceptance. In its infancy, the project was
used only by developers: people who had a strong knowledge of what
they wanted to do, and needed to have more control over their tools
in order to do it. This early audience helped to build a rapid
development environment where many of the users of the code were
also able to contribute fixes and improvements based on their needs.
This developer-friendly environment may be one of the key
differences that has allowed OpenLayers development to continue to
grow.
More is included in the full article, available as a PDF from the
GeoConnexion website:
http://www.geoconnexion.com/uploads/opensource_15_intv7i10.pdf
I pounded the article out in a couple hours, so it may have some pretty
serious flaws, but I tried to accurately represent everyone involved :)
Regards,
--
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta
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