Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas wrote:
Hi All, I resend this mail to OSGeo discuss because I think is a
serious incident that cannot be obviated and shows how things are
getting at least in Spanish market.
I write this mail on behalf of Álvaro Anguix one of the leaders of
gvSIG Project (it seems he is more confident with my English than me
:P). I've posted his letter in Spanish on my personal weblog[1], and I
write down here more or less his thoughts.
As you may know, he works for IVER, the most prominent company that
supports gvSIG (aside note, I work for Prodevelop, another gvSIG
supporting company). Ok, some coworkers of him went to Madrid few days
ago to attend the Annual ESRI Users Conference. Because IVER has
customers that use ESRI technology they, as every year, wanted to know
the latest "arc-news". Obviously they registered previously and they
were confirmed by the organization.
Well, when they tried to register at the beginning of the conference,
the Marketing Director invited them to abandon the conference. Even
more, the Managing Director of ESRI Spain insisted one of the IVER
people that "to talk with customers, better she should go to a café or
on the street". Quite annoying and bizarre!
As Alvaro says, why they have this behavior with his colleagues? Maybe
they fear FOSS companies?
Does sound rather annoying, and I assume that in addition to the time taken to
get to the conference, money was also involved? I've had similar treatment in
anther software area, but at least they had the courtesy to send an email
after accepting the booking. Had I taken the time and expense to travel into
London I think I would have been requesting that they gave me a refund of
expenses at least!
In many areas where open source cooperation is now better established
everybody has learnt what it is all about - COOPERATION - and we all help one
another! I think that the likes of OSM and other open source developments in
mapping are scaring a lot of companies that have been on a 'nice little
earner' and they are going to have to adapt!
The open source data sets are by no means complete, but in some areas - such
as China - they may be the only available source so companies trying to sell
data certainly need to adapt fast to make their money in the overlaps :)
--
Lester Caine - G8HFL
-----------------------------
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/lsces/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk//
Firebird - http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php
_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
Discuss@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
