Just had an interesting talk with an individual from Autodesk and I think that they are in the right ball park. Here are a few things that came out of the conversation.
1. The secrecy: Autodesk is public and traded on the stock market. If what was being discussed was released prematurely and misunderstood, it could drive the stocks through the floor and lose life savings for people. Not a good plan. Therefore, do it with a select few, resolve the issues, then do a press release. Could it be that Autodesk insisted that everyone participating in this process sign non-disclosure agreements with Autodesk to prevent premature release to the media? 2. The number of Autodesk players are relatively small. 3. The Foundation is already talking to several other commercial companies about joining but does not feel comfortable releasing who they are. Probably for the same reasons as give in #1 above. 4. The concept seems to be that commercial companies develop code or provide code, drivers, that make MapServer compatible with their data formats without conversion. That makes sense as the commercial company gains as does the open source group. 5. Autodesk does not seem to be fixated on the names of the end products and in fact the tentative names came from the open source group. Let the Foundation work on it with everyone's input. 6. Who can sit on the board, Maybe it should have a few seats from the commercial side, a few from the open source group, and few general seats. More to follow I am sure. p.s. When we did press releases with Autodesk, they were approved by both the State and Autodesk, Did you do the same? ______________________________________________________________ Gary L. Watry GIS Coordinator Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies FSU / COAPS Johnson Building, RM 215 2035 East Paul Dirac Drive Tallahassee, Florida 32306-2840 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
