Hi Jeremiah,
Welcome to you from the MapServer community. I'm sure that you'll find
this community very responsive to your questions, and you'll fall in
love with MapServer like the rest of us :) Also, be sure to search the
mailing list archives as you travel down this path, as some of your
questions that you have could have been answered before:
http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/MapServer-f4226623.html
My thoughts on your questions are inline below:
1. What is the licensing policy followed by MapServer ? Can I use it
inside my application ?
MapServer has a very open license, often referred to as an "MIT"
license, which means that you can do whatever you need to with the
software (modify, add, re-sell, etc.). Basically there are no
limitations on your use. The full license text lives at
http://mapserver.org/copyright.html#license
2. What are the applications that are using Mapserver currently ? Can I
get some list of these applications ?
This is difficult to answer, as MapServer has been around for so long
(Open Sourced around 1999). It would be great to point you to an
accurate list of applications, we've sure tried to start that list over
the years, but the community didn't really caught on to that. Here are
some old attempts anyway:
- site gallery, on Github:
https://github.com/mapserver/mapserver/wiki/MapServer-Site-Gallery
- old site gallery on Trac:
https://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/wiki/MapServerSites
Maybe your question will spawn some readers to add their own sites onto
the Github page, I hope so.
I think I can answer your question a different way. We develop and
maintain MapServer for Windows "MS4W" (http://www.ms4w.com), and I
myself track downloads and installations as close as possible. The
numbers are huge, and increasing: averaging over 5,000 downloads a
month, and over 10,000 visitors a month to its pages. So when you
realize that each of those downloads has a license, and then realize
this is only one platform (Windows), you get a sense of how many
MapServer deployments are out there.
3. Are there any performance numbers on mapserver interms of how many
users it can support and the recommended hardware requirements for
certain type of deployment ?
In terms of performance, MapServer participated in many benchmarking
exercises as part of past FOSS4G events, where development teams from
GeoServer, MapServer, QGIS Server, Esri, etc. compared performance on a
common architecture. Do some googling for "WMS Benchmarking" and you
will find access to the raw numbers. You can also find the presentation
online, here is an example from 2011:
http://www.slideshare.net/gatewaygeomatics.com/wms-performance-shootout-2011
There you will discover why MapServer is often referred to as the
"cheetah" of the mapping world: extremely fast, and fully customizable.
Also, just for your own information, in case you are wondering how the
MapServer project is managed: MapServer has a Project Steering Committee
(PSC) that manages changes to the software. Read more about how that
works here: http://mapserver.org/development/rfc/ms-rfc-23.html
Again, welcome to you from the big and fun MapServer community! :)
-jeff
--
Jeff McKenna
MapServer Consulting and Training Services
http://www.gatewaygeomatics.com/
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