Lester,
On 18-Dec-05, at 3:05 AM, Lester Caine wrote:
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.
sure they do, but I don't think the Foundation is key to them making
money. Co-branding was perhaps a bigger part of it I think, since it
provided instant brand power but I also think that most of the folks
in the ADSK universe would probably never have heard of MapServer ...
which means that for the MapServer community, we now have a whole
bunch of visibility in places we've never been considered or even
heard of before, a major benefit to those that use and maintain
MapServer I think.
I don't think that ADSK would deny that they have made the move to
open source in order to strengthen their business. But that isn't
necessarily evil (and I guess only time will tell if you are not
already convinced of their good intentions).
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.
Perhaps this is a difference between user groups. I have the luxury
of choosing either depending on what a client might need because I
build custom solutions whereas I suppose others have built a single
product that they then sell ... and re-crafting a product to move
from MapServer to Tux would be a lot of work.
On the other hand, if moving to Tux provides tangible business
benefits, then I suppose one would make the jump regardless of
Foundation or naming ...
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?
I believe that Gary Lang stated his intention on this quite clearly.
I personally feel it is sad that we may be losing the opportunity to
co-brand (I also think Cheetah and Enterprise are the wrong suffixes
to use if the products would have been co-branded) without really
thinking through what the benefits to MapServer (ours) could be - not
to the developers but to the folks like you and I who are building
solutions on top of it. I think it is really shortsighted and based
on an emotional response (I think of the responses that I saw, most
were emotional and didn't have a lot of persuasive logic either
way) ... but perhaps I am wrong :)
Even just drafting this letter is a distraction that I could do
without :(
I hear ya :) ... which is why I think a lot of people will come down
on the "just get it done" camp.
--
Lester Caine
-----------------------------
L.S.Caine Electronic Services
Treasurer - Firebird Foundation Inc.
Cheers
Paul
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