Tyler Mitchell wrote:
So, I'm partly ambivalent about where the project lives, but partly focused on
ensuring that it lives in a place that helps the community grow as much as
possible.
That is perhaps why a tie up with Autodesk raises alarm bells?
Autodesk's intentions HAVE to be in their interest, so they want a
community that they HAVE to make money out of at some point. We as users
have invested time in building a system - round Mapserver - that does
what we want and, while it would benefit from some of the functionality
provided by Autodesk, the risk is that it will only achieve that by our
having to use commercial tools at some point. We are presented currently
with either using MapServer or the new Autodesk offering and we should I
suppose have a look at that offering, but that is a distraction that I
personally do not have time to indulge in. If I have any spare time it
would be better spent improving my own understanding of MapServer, but
am I wasting my time on that path and should I just jump ship now to a
new MapServer that I have to start all over again with. Even if it has
nice new tools, I already have an 'Enterprise' interface into MapServer
and don't need the distractions that an alternative it is creating :(
*ARE* Autodesk seriously addressing the dropping of the hijack of the
MapServer name from their 'non'MapServer offering?
Even just drafting this letter is a distraction that I could do without :(
--
Lester Caine
-----------------------------
L.S.Caine Electronic Services
Treasurer - Firebird Foundation Inc.
