Hi Ken,
I hope everything is well in Vancouver these days .. I'll be there
myself in about 24 hours for Christmas.
I felt compelled to write back about this issue -- because I still feel
very strongly that there are many very good reasons for having a shared
'MapServer' name with this new web mapping technology.
First of all -- there is a perception that this is simply 'Autodesk
technology' but it's important to remember that as soon as the
technology is in an arm's length body, under LGPL and with copyright
assigned, it becomes as much yours, mine, Autodesk's or anyone elses
technology. In fact, even less aligned with any one company than
MapServer is today!
Autodesk then becomes a participant & contributor to open source as much
as our company, private consultants or any other contributing
organization is today around MapServer. The Foundation becomes important
in this context to ensure fairness, and balance in how technology
continues to be developed for the sake of all stakeholders.
And I believe this is just the beginning -- there are sure to be many
other organizations discovering that open source web mapping is the
platform of choice for the future. We're all going to be working to
bring them into the fold.
The question you have to really ask is, do we want to grow the MapServer
community to be inclusive of a major new participant, and hopefully many
more in the future? This is a great way to send a message that MapServer
is truly open to everyone.
As many have pointed out, MapServer has built up a good reputation over
the years -- but the majority of this good reputation has been within
the converted .. I can tell you as someone who does a lot of outreach
work to the outside world that everyone knows about Google Maps, some
folks know about ESRI and MapInfo, and only the most knowledgeable about
MapServer. We still have a lot of work to do to reach those people
outside of our immediate world -- work I do every day, so working
together on a common message makes a lot more sense to me than working
apart.
well -- that's my pitch. I hope everyone has wonderful holidays and I'd
like to wish you a Happy New year.
Dave
Ken Lord wrote:
... And please do check out the comments.
So far I seem to be the most adamently against Autodesk taking the
MapServer name ... and I think I give some good reasons.
To restate what I said in my poll comment, I have already seen a few
potential clients confused over the MapServer / Autodesk issue that
could easily work to Autodesk's favour ... and I don't actually spend
much time building mapserver websites, I'm sure the hard core
developers have seen more of this than me.
I also don't appreciate the misleading messages I've seen in the media
regarding Autodesk open sourcing MapServer as if it were their's to
open source. My less open source aware friends have been giving
Autodesk a lot of undeserved credit because of this lately.
This may not be directly Autodesk's fault (unless they have let the
media go uncorrected with their misleading articles), but I can add to
this that a coworker attended the recent Autodesk conference in
Orlando where the big announcement was made and he came back with some
very different ideas on what the origins of MapServer actually was.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Autodesk, I spend most of my working
hours using Autodesk products, and without these products I'm not sure
what I would have been doing in the last 5 years.
But they need to be kept under control. Want another example on a
different topic?
... At that same conference, my coworker was shocked to find that
sensitive data from one of our clients was being used as lesson
material in a short-course, without our permission, without even
removing his name or our company's logo from the map. This was data
sent in confidence to Autodesk to help us overcome an issue with using
the software. The sad thing is that the solution they demonstrated
in the course never was sent to us to fix our problem. Hopefully no
one else recognized the data, it was for a very important client to us
whom we do not want to loose.
Don't let the Gorilla step on us ... It's welcome in the zoo, but not
in the same cage.
Happy Holidays,
Ken Lord
Vancouver BC
On 12/21/05, Tyler Mitchell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At Gary's request, I've posted another poll to the MapServer website to help
capture how the community feels about the naming of Autodesk's web mapping
product.
Please take the time to login and answer this poll:
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/community/polls/autodesk_name/
Tyler
