Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Does rasdaman CE solve an open source geospatial problem?

[Dave McIlhagga]

I think OSGeo should stay out of the business of weighing in on how companies 
decide to commercialize technologies, so long as they respect the licensing 
terms.

We and many companies use MapServer for instance at the heart of our 
proprietary stacks, which is simply another flavor of the open core model.

The more important issue here is whether the structure of a project's licensing 
and PSC provides a commercial advantage to one company over any other.

The concern I have with the benevolent dictator model in discussion here is 
that reasonable advancements members of the PSC may want to pursue for the 
project that may erode from the commercial interests of the benevolent dictator 
could be denied, and that doesn't feel like a fair playing field for the PSC to 
operate in, or a scenario OSGeo should endorse.

Dave






Sent from mobile
dmcilha...@mapsherpa.com

> On May 21, 2016, at 8:06 AM, Cameron Shorter  
> wrote:
> 
> Hi Edzer,
> Thank you for raising this topic questioning the value of radsaman community 
> edition. It is pertinent considering recent discussions about Rasdaman 
> incubation.
> 
> Peter, your comments about programmers wanting to get paid for their work is 
> valid, but does not provide justification for OSGeo promoting a 
> proprietary business model. OSGeo is in the business of promoting open source 
> software, and helping people who create open source software.
> 
> Rasdaman's business model is in a grey zone. It provides a community edition 
> and a proprietary edition. This is often referred to as an "open core" 
> business model, or sometimes less favorably called "crippleware".
> I think Rasdaman is the only OSGeo (proposed) project which provides an open 
> core model. All prior projects have been pure open source.
> 
> Although a an open core model deviates from OSGeo's original principles, one 
> could argue that Rasdaman community edition stands on its own as a valuable, 
> quality open source geospatial application by itself, worthy of OSGeo 
> promotion.
> 
> Edzer's comments appear to counter this argument. Edzer, I understand you 
> suggest Rasdaman community edition is of little value for real world problems?
> Extending from this, OSGeo endorsement of Rasdaman should be questioned and 
> potentially withdrawn. 
> 
> I'd be interested to hear opinions of others in the field as to whether 
> Rasdaman community version is of value for real-world production systems 
> by itself.
> 
> A deeper question for the greater OSGeo community is should OSGeo endorse 
> Open Core business models?
> 
> Warm regards, Cameron
> 
>> On 21/05/2016 6:07 pm, Peter Baumann wrote:
>> oh, just looking at the subject again:
>> 
>> several service providers believe indeed rasdaman community does offer a 
>> significant advantage:
>> - see the download figures on www.rasdaman.org
>> - concretely, see www.planetserver.eu which is running rasdaman community on 
>> - I believe - about 20 TB of Planetary Science data.
>> 
>> -Peter
>> 
>> 
>>> On 05/21/2016 09:56 AM, Peter Baumann wrote:
>>> Hm, first of all: this is opening a different thread, talking about 
>>> functionality of rasdaman community. Next, it is based on assumptions - 
>>> without details (because off topic): conclusions are wrong.
>>> 
>>> But to respond to the core message emphasized in the first paragraph: I 
>>> respectfully disagree. In particular, such a position does not benefit the 
>>> open source community very much as I am trying to explain below. 
>>> 
>>> TL;DR:
>>> 
>>> You have a strong expertise in Geoinformatics, I know something about 
>>> Computer Science. This is where we can talk as professors and scientists. 
>>> Your statement is about economics, industry etc. Having an opinion there 
>>> (and articulate it) is fair, but in these fields our opinion weighs not 
>>> more than anyone else's in the street. We should not attempt to attain 
>>> importance through inapplicable roles.
>>> 
>>> Let us look at a professor. They have a conveniently high salary which is 
>>> paid by society, that is: tax payers. Nobody can influence what a professor 
>>> does and how much return s/he generates for society.
>>> 
>>> A single open source developer (or a small group, whatever) do not 
>>> experience this convenience. They have a dream where they invest, they try 
>>> to not make money for getting richer than a professor ;-) but merely for 
>>> their economic survival. Some (in particular scientists) enjoy the money 
>>> rain coming from publicly funded projects (again: the tax payer 
>>> subsidizes), but most in the community have to struggle hard. They face 
>>> reluctant customers, competition by the giants in the market, and many more 
>>> obstacles.
>>> 
>>> From the cosy place of a lifelong position with a secured salary and decent 
>>> retirement funds it is easy to say that all software should be free like 
>>> free beer (quote from below: "can be reproduced by other 

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Board] How big is the Open Source Geo developer and consultancy community?

[Dave McIlhagga]

Hi Steven,

Re. The Supply side - I'd suggest you include anyone who actively contributes 
effort to the development of OS software regardless of how they monetize the 
activity.

For instance, if you don't include companies working on the software that then 
gets monetized via proprietary solutions and commercial packaging, you would be 
missing what I expect are the silent majority of OS software contributors. It 
would also make your survey more black and white in terms of whether one 
qualifies as being part of the open source economics. Essentially if you 
contribute you're in.

Dave

Sent from mobile
dmcilha...@mapsherpa.com

> On May 7, 2016, at 2:53 AM, Steven Feldman  wrote:
> 
> Apologies, the link to my explanatory blog post was wrong. Should be 
> http://knowwhereconsulting.co.uk/blog/size-matters/
> 
> Steven 
> 
>> On 6 May 2016, at 19:09, Steven Feldman  wrote:
>> 
>> I have wanted to try to pull together some very basic economic numbers about 
>> open source geo for a while now. Then when I got the good news that my talk 
>> on “There is no such thing as a free lunch” had been accepted for FOSS4G 
>> 2016, I decided to have a crack at crowdsourcing some numbers which I hope 
>> to include in my talk in August. There are two elements to this exercise
>> Supply – How big is the business of Open Source Geo? i.e the companies and 
>> full time or near to fully time consultants working in  this space
>> Usage – How much Open Source Geo software is deployed and what value does it 
>> create or displace?
>> At the moment I am focussing on the supply side because it feels like a more 
>> manageable task, perhaps some others will step up and offer to help estimate 
>> the usage side.
>> 
>> This survey aims to gather some basic stats on companies (from one man bands 
>> to very large companies) whose activities are based on the provision of 
>> development and services in Open Source Geo (either wholly or a significant 
>> part). Even though revenue and employee numbers will often be available from 
>> public sources, I will only present the results in aggregated formats to 
>> ensure that individual company info cannot be derived from my presentation. 
>> If you are uncertain about providing information to this survey please check 
>> with a senior manager within your organisation before responding.
>> 
>> So why should you help me to make an estimate of the size of the Open Source 
>> Geo business? I think that size does matter when you are in the software 
>> business, potential users often gain confidence from larger numbers – more 
>> users, a larger industry with more employees and more revenues – why would 
>> this not be the case for Open Source Geo when we are  frequently facing FUD 
>> merchants. I believe that collating some economic data on the Open Source 
>> Geo business can help all of us to respond better when confronted with 
>> questions about the commercial sustainability of our community.
>> 
>> There is a bit more info about the survey at 
>> http://knowwhereconsulting.co.uk/size-matters
>> 
>> The survey is at 
>> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1xZaq6Z4NMOuXm6jOEifScBS6qW0FSMt47AKb3Fm6JmA/edit?usp=sharing
>> 
>> Thanks for any help you can offer to further publicise this survey
>> 
>> Cheers
>> __
>> Steven
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] 2011 Charter Member Election Results

[Dave McIlhagga]

I would suggest that on the contrary, being a Charter Member does come with 
responsibility -- it may be minimal but is critically important. All that is 
required is voting for new Charter Members and voting for the Board.

Assuming, reasonable efforts have been made to be in touch with Charter 
Members, I think it's actually important to purge those who don't take this 
responsibility seriously. I would suggest it's a necessary part of preserving 
the integrity of the organization.

Keep in mind, for many OSGeo is not just a past-time - it's a vested part of 
our institutions, businesses, and people.

Dave


On 2011-12-02, at 11:23 AM, Landon Blake wrote:

 I would think it appropriate to send an e-mail to people that will be
 retired as a charter member before they are removed. To be fair, they
 should've been warned they were on the list to be axed before the
 vote. (Maybe they already were?)
 
 I'm not trying to excuse anyone's lack of involvement, but I think it
 is important to remember that we are all busy and we don't want to
 take ourselves to seriously.
 
 Landon
 
 On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 4:33 AM, George R. C. Silva
 georger.si...@gmail.com wrote:
 Em quarta-feira, 30 de novembro de 2011 04:19:55, Venkatesh Raghavan
 escreveu:
 
 Daniel and All,
 
 Thanks for you hard work as CRO, Daniel.
 Could you also let us know what was the
 percentage of voting.
 
 My congratulations to all the new Charter Members
 and many thanks for all nominees for their
 participation.
 
 May be time to find out charter members who have abstained
 for Charter Member elections over the last two elections
 and consider a retirement policy for Charter Members.
 
 Best
 
 Venka
 
 On 2011/11/30 14:17, Daniel Morissette wrote:
 
 OSGeo Community,
 
 I am ready to announce the results of the 2011 Charter Member Election.
 
 • Note that we had a tie for the 20th slot, so I decided to welcome 21
 new charter members for this year instead of 20 since that still fits 
 within
 the limits of 20% new charter members set by the board at the 2011-09-17
 board meeting (i.e. 20% of 104 = 20.8)
 
 • The new charter members for 2011 are (in alphabetical order):
 • Bob Basques
 • Brian Case
 • Eric Lemoine
 • Even Rouault
 • G.Hanumantha Rao
 • Gabriel Roldán
 • Jachym Cepicky
 • Lluís Vicens
 • Luca Delucchi
 • Maning Sambale
 • Margherita Di Leo
 • Martin Daly
 • Martin Landa
 • Massimo Di Stefano
 • Nicolas Bozon
 • Sanghee Shin
 • Stephen Woodbridge
 • Suchith Anand
 • Tim Sutton
 • Xianfeng Song
 • Yoicihi Kayama
 
 Those results are published in the wiki at
 http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Election_2011#Final_Status:_2011-11-29
 
 I will leave it up to our board secretary to update the official members
 database and we the official list on the website should also be updated 
 soon
 (http://www.osgeo.org/charter_members)
 
 A warm welcome to our new charter members, and thank you to all
 candidates who didn't make it… it was a matter of only a few votes, so 
 maybe
 next year?
 
 Daniel Morissette (OSGeo CRO, 2011)
 
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[OSGeo-Discuss] Board Nomination - Andrew Ross

[Dave McIlhagga]

I would like to nominate Andrew Ross for a position on the OSGeo Board.

Andrew brings a balanced mix of valuable technical and business skills which 
make him a great choice to become an OSGeo board member. His experience spans 
private, public, and academic organizations. He has been involved with OSGeo 
for five years, and has been a charter member of OSGeo for the past 3 years. In 
this time he has demonstrated considerable commitment to OSGeo, its projects, 
and organizations in the OSGeo ecosystem.

This list represents some of Andrew's experience and qualifications and 
experience relevant to his nomination:

- Founder of FOSSLC (http://fosslc.org) - a non-profit organization dedicated 
to education and business development with open source technologies
- Director of Ecosystems at the Eclipse Foundation
- Ingres' Director of Engineering ( Geospatial Technology)
  - The development team at Ingres under his leadership contributed to OSGeo 
projects including GEOS, GDAL/OGR, Proj.4, and others.
  - He arranged considerable financial support for OSGeo from Ingres, both 
direct (cash  code contributions) and indirect (contracting people to make 
contributions to OSGeo projects).
- Project founder, committer/architect for the open source video recording  
streaming suite called Freeseer
- Organized multiple OSGeo related events including Geocamp 2008, Summercamp 
2009, and a number of bootcamps.
- Organized teams to record videos for past OSGeo events including FOSS4G2009, 
Rendez-Vous OSGeo Quebec, and more.
- Mentor for dozens of programming interns as part of the Google Summer of 
Code, Talent First Network, UCOSP, and other student programs.
- Teaching Programming using open source technologies at Carleton University 
since 2006
- 7 years experience as an architect and software developer at Nortel creating 
carrier grade products and services based on open source code
- Very active member of the Ottawa OSGeo Chapter

In addition to his considerable personal experience, Andrew's work with the 
Eclipse Foundation, FOSSLC, and other organizations provides access to an 
enormous amount of experience, specialized skills, and a wealth of contacts. 
His addition to the board would create even more opportunities for technology 
sharing/development and valuable business development.

Thanks,
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies

[Dave McIlhagga]

Congratulations Suchith,

Would you be able to explain what types of activities the Commission would be 
expected to take on in this capacity?

Dave

Dave McIlhagga
dmcilha...@dmsolutions.ca
p: 613-565-5056 x15
www.dmsolutions.ca



On 2011-07-09, at 10:50 AM, Suchith Anand wrote:

 Dear All
 
 I am happy to inform that at the ICA General Assembly on Friday, the proposed 
 Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies was approved for 2011-2015.
 Details at 
 http://icaci.org/documents/generalassembly2011/Agenda_15th_GA_Paris_English.pdf
 
 We are pleased with this development which will help us in scaling up our 
 activities for the future.If you are interested to be involved in the 
 Commission activities please contact me or Thierry Badard. We look forward to 
 working with you all in our mission.
 
 Best Wishes,
 
 Suchith
 
 Dr Suchith Anand
 Centre for Geospatial Science
 The Nottingham Geospatial Building
 University of Nottingham  NG7 2 TU
 Tel: (0)115 82 32750
 http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~lgzwww/contacts/staffPages/SuchithAnand/Suchith%20Anand.htm
 http://www.opensourcegis.org.uk/
 http://ica-opensource.scg.ulaval.ca/
 
 
 Mission - Building up Open Source, Open Standards, Open Data research for 
 bridging the digital divide
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Whitebox GAT (Chris Puttick)

[Dave McIlhagga]

Nice post :D

Sent from my iPhone

On 2010-03-27, at 11:01 AM, Zak James zja...@dmsolutions.ca wrote:




--
Zak James
Applications and Software Development
DM Solutions Group Inc.
http://www.dmsolutions.ca
http://research.dmsolutions.ca

-Original Message-
From: Chris Puttick
Sent:  26.03.2010 17:54:39
To: OSGeo Discussions
Subject:  Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: Whitebox GAT (Chris Puttick)

Terribly off-topic now, so feel free to stop reading...

- Brian Russo br...@beruna.org wrote:


It wasn't directed at you Chris, nor specifically at anyone.

I just think the general tone of this conversation is pretty
unproductive. Sure people have reasons about being strategic
everything but maybe it's just how I'm reading it but I just see the
old, familiar tones of the Free Software Movement which is do it
my
way (100% free) or the highway. I don't think that helps anyone..


You can take it on faith or a Google that I'm pragmatic on the  
issue. I've explained why I think .net is a poor strategic choice,  
and that my motivations are strategic. I am all too well aware that  
many IT decisions are based on convenience and short term outlook,  
and pretty sure that's a major factor in...




It's all well and good if you're in a small organisation with 300 pcs
or whatever like Chris P and you have that sort of latitude.. but
people forget that most organisations aren't driven by cost or
ideology - they're driven by business value. Openness is no different
than being Green/Sustainable. It has to make good business sense in
order to be the right decision. I can't go to my bosses and say we
have to do this because it's open source. They won't care and I
don't
blame them.


...not realising high or often any business value. Business value is  
where what you expend money and get more in return than you spent.  
Incredibly easy to measure in small businesses with few employees  
and a simple business model, harder the larger the business or the  
more complex the concept of value becomes e.g. in a charity or  
government organisation. There is good evidence that collectively  
western economies have spent more on IT than they have realised in  
value.


The business case is not simple, any more than it is in marketing;  
but here's my base position in simple terms. I select solutions that  
maximise our future choices and reduce our costs; a further benefit  
is derived if I can move any remaining costs from fixed annual  
overhead to per employee or pure capital; while there may be short  
term pain as people get used to the changes, any increase in costs  
for that short period will be more than offset by the long term  
decrease in costs and increases in flexibility for the organisation.


Luckily for me I don't have to justify to others other than in my  
long term results. I'm aware that this continues to be a rare  
privilege for the top of the information systems tree and that many  
organisations continue to not have technical expertise at the  
highest level, resulting in many decisions in that area being taken  
with the wrong information and wrong motivations. I'm working on  
that too.


There are other aspects to openness that may derive negative value  
for some organisations e.g. opening data - great for archaeology,  
bankruptcy for marketing companies, a matter for the courts for  
financial companies. But open source solutions for your  
organisation's IT has no downsides. Unless there are no open source  
solutions that can be made to do the job.


Sorry this thread has deteriorated into a management philosophy  
discussion. I'm here mostly for the open, I'm not so strong on the  
geospatial...


Cheers

Chris


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[OSGeo-Discuss] Nomination of Andrew Ross

[Dave McIlhagga]

I would like to nominate Andrew Ross for a position on the OSGeo Board.

Andrew has been involved with the open source geospatial community for  
the past three years, and in this time has demonstrated extensive  
commitment and leadership in his involvement with OSGeo and its  
projects.


As the director of the geospatial development project within the open  
source Ingres database, Andrew has become heavily engaged in the open  
source community both through his work and his volunteer time after  
hours. A few of Andrew's key accomplishments in the past few years:


- Founder of FOSSLC - (Free and Open Source Software Learning Centre)  
- a non-profit organization dedicated to education about open source  
principles and skills to people around the world.
- Engagement and contributions from his team to multiple OSGeo  
projects including GEOS, GDAL/OGR, Proj.4, and others.
- Organized multiple events presenting geospatial and OSGeo material  
including Geocamp 2008, Summercamp 2009, and a number of bootcamps.
- Mentor for a large number of interns involved with the Talent First  
Network, Google Summer of Code, and other student programs.

- Encouraging Ingres to become a Supporting Sponsor of OSGeo
- Active member of the Ottawa Local Chapter

In particular - given education is a key priority for OSGeo, Andrew as  
a board member of FOSSLC and of OSGeo would establish a strong  
opportunity for educational collaboration. The organizations FOSSLC  
works with include a number of Universities, open source companies,

and open source foundations.

Andrew would bring a valuable and balanced mix of technical, business,  
teaching, and organizational skills backed by energy and enthusiasm.



Thanks,

Dave McIlhagga

www.mapsherpa.com
www.dmsolutions.ca
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Please feed the OSGeo Gallery

[Dave McIlhagga]

Hi Markus,

It seems to be down right now?


Dave McIlhagga

http://www.mapsherpa.com
http://www.dmsolutions.ca




On 2-Aug-09, at 12:44 PM, Markus Neteler wrote:


Hi,

(reminder)
if you have nice examples with screenshots and a short description of
applications of OSGeo software, please post them here:

http://gallery.osgeo.org/

thanks
Markus
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[OSGeo-Discuss] Fwd: March Issue of OSBR Available

[Dave McIlhagga]

Hi,

Thought this might be of interest to many of you. I was asked to be  
guest editor for the geospatial edition of the Open Source Business  
Resource monthly journal.


A big thank you to Paul Ramsey, Tyler Mitchell, Mark Lucas, Scott  
Bortman, Andrew Ross, Haris Kurtagic and Geoff Zeiss for their  
contributions to this effort. Some excellent papers that provide a  
great perspective on the OSGeo world.


You can follow the links in the announcement to go to the website, or  
you can get the PDF directly here:


http://www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/article/view/848/817

Dave

Dave McIlhagga
www.dmsolutions.ca




Begin forwarded message:


From: Dru Lavigne d...@osbr.ca
Date: March 2, 2009 1:31:49 PM GMT-05:00
To: Dru Lavigne d...@osbr.ca
Subject: March Issue of OSBR Available

Readers:

The March issue of the Open Source Business Resource is now  
available in
HTML and PDF formats at http://www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/issue/view/83 
.
The theme this month is Geospatial and the articles and authors  
include:


Paul Ramsay, a Senior Consultant with OpenGeo, examines how  
geospatial open
source provides an example of the market challenges of a mid-sized  
vertical

market.

Tyler Mitchell, Executive Director of the Open Source Geospatial
Foundation, discusses the factors needed to get open source geospatial
products into the hands of users, the value of marketing open source
projects, and the advantages provided by an open source ecoystem.

Mark Lucas, a principal scientist at RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.,  
and

Scott Bortman, system architect and primary developer for the OMAR web
processing system, introduce the OMAR web based system for archival,
retrieval, processing, and distribution of geospatial assets.

Andrew Ross, a Director within the Engineering team at Ingres,  
provides a
primer on geospatial technology and discusses some of the lessons  
learned

from Ingres' geospatial open source project.

Haris Kurtagic, General Manager and Founder of SL-King, and Geoff  
Zeiss,
Director of Technology at Autodesk, introduce a standards-based  
framework

for providing geospatial web services.

The editorial theme for the upcoming April issue of the OSBR is  
Open APIs
and the guest editor will be Michael Weiss from Carleton University.  
Contact

me if you're interested in a submission.

Thanks for the continuing interest in our work,
Dru Lavigne
Editor, Open Source Business Resource
http://www.osbr.ca

Open Source Business Resource
http://www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr


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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Incubator Sponsor idea.

[Dave McIlhagga]

This is an interesting idea. I think it would have to be a case where  
an existing OSGeo project (I think what you're calling the Super  
project) expects this smaller project to have an important future as a  
viable OSGeo project. The PSC of the sponsoring project (say  
Mapserver, Mapguide or OpenLayers) would have to be willing to invest  
some time in nurturing this project towards the start of an incubation  
process.


I think we would want to make it clear however that these smaller  
projects are not OSGeo projects -- as this would dilute the value of  
projects that have graduated incubation and are recognized as strong  
healthy projects. This is one of the most important roles for OSGeo --  
to help provide legitimacy to projects for those outside looking into  
the OSGeo domain.


There have been a few projects that have already started down this  
path -- but there really isn't a lot of structure in place to define  
how this would be done. It might be interesting to have for the future  
though.


Dave




On 12-Sep-08, at 11:41 AM, Bob Basques wrote:


All,

I have a question about a possible way to get some smaller projects  
into the system without the requirements of going full bore (as I  
perceive it now)  I'm not really targeting any project per se at  
this point, but . . .


What about have a Super project that can act as a sponsor for a  
smaller project.  When I say smaller, I mean where there might only  
be one, two or three developers.  The end result being that the  
Super project basically vouches for the smaller project in some  
fashion for it to get some sort of OSGEO stamp applied to it.   This  
could possibly be a criteria where some of the established vetting  
is handled via a voucher system, where other Super projects can  
add their credentials to the mix over time.


Just a thought, still a little muddled too, but it seems like there  
might be something workable in the concept.  Any other thoughts?


bobb


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Re: [Proj] RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Brief history of GIS OSS (bit offtopic?)

[Dave McIlhagga]

someone might be interested in getting this historical info into the  
wikipedia entry for OSGeo - would also provide a good way for long  
term maintenance and updating.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osgeo

Dave



On 21-Aug-08, at 11:41 AM, Steven M. Ottens wrote:


Hi all,

In light of the EndOfLive announcement of Mapbuilder I have done  
some research on the history of mapbuilder:


29 september 2001 Mapbuilder-devel mailinglist created
28 july 2008 End Of Life announcement

Regards
Steven

On Aug 21, 2008, at 3:44 PM, Mateusz Loskot wrote:


Rafal Wawer wrote:

Thank you Markus,
I will teach FOSS4G upcoming days. The article appeared right on  
time  for me to include it in the references (-;
Hopefully it will develop to cover most of the existing FOSS4G  
projects. A roadmap of FOSS4G projects?


Rafal,

Recently, I've been writing a small article about FOSS in GIS with  
focus on Python applications and researched the history a bit. Here  
is a list of dates I've identified:


late 70's - begin of Map Overlay and Statistical System (MOSS)

late 80's - US Army starts Geographic Resources Analysis Support  
System (GRASS)


1998 - GDAL initial revision in CVS

2000 - GDAL gets Python support

2000 - Atlantis Scientific starts OpenEV

2000 - MapServer initial revision in CVS

2001 - OSSIM initial revision in CVS

2002 - Intevation starts Thuban projects

2002 - Quantum GIS initial revision in CVS

2002 - GEOS initial revision in CVS

2002 - MapServer gets Python support

2002 - AVPython for ArcView 3.x published as FOSS

2006 - MapBender gets first bits in CVS

Certainly, only a small part of FOSS4G projects are listed.

Best regards,
--
Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net
Charter Member of OSGeo, http://osgeo.org
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] idea for an OSGeo project -- a new, open data format

[Dave McIlhagga]

Puneet:

I believe you've just described the SDF format (open, based on SQL  
lite) that is currently in use by FDO / MapGuide.


Some info from a post from Jason Birch a while back:

To bring us back to the start of this post, the one item on this  
list that I think may get overlooked is support for the Spatial Data  
File (SDF) format. SDF is a single-user database format, similar to  
ESRI’s personal geodatabase. It is built on top of SQLite, is fully  
open, and is already supported by MapGuide Open Source and (yay!)  
Safe Software’s current FME betas.


http://www.jasonbirch.com/nodes/2006/03/04/8/closed-and-open-and- 
better-oh-my/


Dave



On 13-Nov-07, at 9:52 AM, P Kishor wrote:


So, I am thinking, Shapefile is the de facto data standard for GIS
data. That it is open (albeit not Free) along with the deep and wide
presence of ESRI's products from the beginning of the epoch, it has
been widely adopted. Existence of shapelib, various language bindings,
and ready use by products such as MapServer has continued to cement
Shapefile as the format to use. All this is in spite of Shapefile's
inherent drawbacks, particularly in the area of attribute data
management.

What if we came up with a new and improved data format -- call it
Open Shapefile (extension .osh) -- that would be completely Free,
single-file based (instead of the multiple .shp, .dbf, .shx, etc.),
and based on SQLite, giving the .osh format complete relational data
handling capabilities. We would require a new version of Shapelib,
improved language bindings, make it the default and preferred format
for MapServer, and provide seamless and painless import of regular
.shp data into .osh for native rendering. Its adoption would be quick
in the open source community. The non-opensource community would
either not give a rat's behind for it, but it wouldn't affect them...
they would still work with their preferred .shp until they learned
better. By having a completely open and Free single-file based, built
on SQLite, fully relational dbms capable spatial data format, it would
be positioned for continued improvement and development.

Is this too crazy?

--
Puneet Kishor
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Supporting new projects

[Dave McIlhagga]

On 1-Oct-07, at 5:32 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:


OSGeo priorities should be to USERS first, developers second.


Respectfully, I disagree -- 250,000,000 downloads of Google Earth is  
more than all the other geospatial software installations in the  
industry combined, and GDAL is at the heart of it. Not a bad user  
base I think?


Ok - I realize that's an extreme example -- but it is not isolated.  
MapServer has arguably the largest web mapping install base in the  
world. Our issues are not concerning lack of users.


Focus on giving a great environment for Developers to do their job  
better than ever, and get the word out to industry and users that we  
have our house in order that this technology is ready for prime time.


If you do those two things -- the 250,000,000 downloads of Google  
Earth will simply be a starting point.


Dave
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Open Sources column published

[Dave McIlhagga]

oops,

the auto-reply to OSGeo Discuss caught me there!

Sorry for the extra email.

dave



On 9-May-07, at 2:24 PM, Dave McIlhagga wrote:


Hi Jeff,

This is really great news. Congratulations and kudos to you for  
getting this into Geoconnexion magazine.


Would you be interested in a column from myself sometime this  
summer or fall? I was thinking of a column focusing on the  
commercialization of open source technologies, and how open source  
and commercial products and services are not necessarily at odds,  
and can in fact complement each other. Our own business model is a  
primary example of this.


Let me know if you think this would fit in with your plans for the  
column.


Dave


Dave McIlhagga
President  CEO
DM Solutions Group (DMSG)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
p: 613-565-5056 x15
f: 613-565-0925


On 8-May-07, at 2:23 PM, Jeff Thurston wrote:


Hi folks,
I am happy to report that the first 'Open Sources' column in  
Geoconnexion International Magazine has been published.
The initial column features Michael P. Gerlek and can be read or  
downloaded.

http://www.geoconnexion.com/geo.php

A second column has been submitted for the next issue.

All the best,
Jeff



Jeff Thurston, Editor
GEOconnexion International Magazine
Berlin, Germany
49.30.24.04.98.90
www.geoconnexion.com
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