One thing I've noticed that has even got me into rather heated
discussions about F/OSS geo software is .. how to put this delicately?
Basically, most technical people are lousy at communicating
requirements and demonstrating capabilities to end-users & decision
makers.
The F/OSS geo community is no different overall in this. Many (I'd say
most) developers focus overwhelmingly on technical details - and do
not appreciate the need to "sell" the application, and tweak their
presentation to the organizational/cultural issues that differ between
the two worlds, as it were. The notion that a company or agency might
spend $2k on a simple web calendar app seems incredibly stupid and
bizarre to them (and well.. it probably is) - but if said company
doesn't KNOW of a good alternative - and they need a calendar NOW -
then it's logical from there perspective to pay someone to do it.
This isn't the developer's fault - it's just that quite often there's
nobody else to pitch the product for them. And further since it's free
they may not understand WHY it should need a pitch. Their attitude
is.. It's free, It's open source.. It can do what you want.. why
aren't you using it?
Don't get me wrong, by no means am I picking on everyone. I'll pick on
Dane Springmeyer of Mapnik and point out what a great job he does
bridging the gap between development and actually talking to people
and understanding what they want to do in an enthusiastic way - but
not all projects have someone like this, which is why you see some
incredibly good code simply rot because the developer built it, tossed
it up somewhere, but didn't get a lot of people using it and didn't
communicate their idea well to the relevant decisionmakers/users in a
manner they understand. In other words - many F/OSS people suck at
marketing. No different from a lot of devs in the commercial world;
but the difference is that most companies hire sales and marketing
teams.
I can tell you right now that I'll probably end up deploying some
collaborative map tools using BlazeDS (or one of its similar cousins)
- Why? Because one of adobe's evangelists showed how it could be done
via a blog. Could I do it via.. virtually anything else? Sure but this
works now.. and well basically there's no reason to investigate other
options further. In this case BlazeDS is open source now so no big
deal - but a lot of decisions are made just like this - based off
limited hours/day to do research and so if you find something that
does what you want you go with it.
- bri
On Apr 9, 2009, at 2:55 PM, Arnie Shore wrote:
Boy, have you hit a hot button of mine!
But I think the research could profitably veer off a bit. Like
there's only one federal Department of X, but shift the focus to
local government agencies and things chang radically. Like there's
like 4500 counties - not to mention towns - and they're ALL DOING
THE SAME KIND OF APPLICATIONS. And they're ALL HURTING FOR $$$.
That shd be a prime target, but I've seen virtually zero interest in
FOSS stuff so far in that world, and, in truth, there really is a
support problem.
Case in point is our work in developing a F/OSS Computer-Assisted
Dispatch application: ( See http://groups.google.com/group/open-source-cad
as well as http://sourceforge.net/projects/openises/ )
The bulk of interest in our CAD package has come largely from the
HAM world, those folks oriented to supporting emergency comm's
during crisis conditions. Surprisingly (to me, anyway) little from
the career response shops like EMS.
But wait, there's more ... !
AS
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 5:51 PM, Tyler Mitchell
<tylermitch...@shaw.ca> wrote:
FYI - a FOSS-related survey for a research project.
Begin forwarded message:
-----original message------
From: Felicia Sullivan <feli...@oc-tech.org>
Date: Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 3:00 PM
Subject: Can you help spread work to any FOSS developers you know
Perhaps some of you can help spread the word:
For wide distribution
I'm a PhD student in public policy at UMass Boston doing research on
what motivates members of free and open source software communities.
I'm looking at ways that public policy could increase the quantity and
quality of contributions to free software and open source software
(defined as projects with an approved open source license -
http://opensource.org/).
I have a professor that says if I can provide some convincing data on
how to best support free and open source software, he thinks he can
get the ideas on President Obama's desk. I am conducting a survey -
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=SA1BorCQ_2b9E6NSE_2bNCKavw_3d_3d
and I need over 500 responses by May 1st in order to answer my key
research questions.
One lucky respondent will have $100 donated to the FOSS project of
their choice.
Questions about this survey can be directed to me at
felicia.sulli...@umb.edu. Thanks for your input.
Acknowledgement
I want to thank my FOSS developer go-to-guys -- Dan MacNeil, Peter
Bull, Stéphane Alnet, and Bill de la Vega -- for providing critical
feedback on this survey.
--
_______________
| Technology and training to advance and sustain social change |
Felicia M. Sullivan
Organizers’ Collaborative
feli...@oc-tech.org
http://organizerscollaborative.org
617.848.9513 [ voice / fax ]
Gtalk/Jabber: felicia...@gmail.com
AIM: forge66
Skype; forge66
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/feliciasullivan
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