Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
Paolo Cavallini wrote: What I really miss on Terra* is the community: I tried several times to contact it, especially to help having updated debian packages, but never get a repy, something unusual for open projects. All the best. pc There is a message forum at http://phorum.dpi.inpe.br/index.php?49, however it looks fairly unused. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
Paolo, I just got the latest issue of Dr. Dobbs Magazine with this cover-page article South American Software Development: http://www.ddj.com/architect/205600791;jsessionid=AXESE4MZSIY54QSNDLPCKHSCJUNN2JVN This article is more focused on Brazil than anywhere else in South America. It give a little light on the cultural differences that could lead to misunderstanding from outsiders. The article does mention Forum participation and language barriers as an issue. Ciao, Ivan Paolo Cavallini wrote: Lucena, Ivan ha scritto: I believe that TerraLib would deserve a better technical look than what I did but my initial impression was very favorable. What impress me the most was the raster-on-rdbms support. ... Talking about integration with other OSGeo projects I believe that the current TerraLib RC uses GDAL. What I really miss on Terra* is the community: I tried several times to contact it, especially to help having updated debian packages, but never get a repy, something unusual for open projects. All the best. pc ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
IMO. Gilberto, In 2003, I did a F00S4G market survey and published the results as a chapter of a US National Academy of Sciences book: Open Source GIS Software: Myths and Realities www.dpi.inpe.br/gilberto/papers/camara_open_source_myths.pdf. We analysed 70 FOSS4G software projects taken from the FreeGIS list, and divided them into three categories: networked products (e.g. GRASS), corporate products (e.g., PostGIS) and individual products (e.g., CAVOR). From each product, we assessed its maturity, level of support and functionality. This is an interesting read. Are you aware of any follow up work? I'm particularly interested in perceptions of the impact that OSGeo may be having as an umbrella organisation. wrt Government involvement: - as Frank suggests, I suspect that governments would have more impact supporting a central group of applications rather than each one rolling their own. The problem is assessing and picking the appropriate applications and projects to support. - governments often have a tender process that they need to follow when implementing new systems. If OS products aren't proposed or well supported, they often don't get looked at. - many governments also have a large investment (in time, training, money, processes and data) in existing proprietary products and can't easily switch arbitrarily to a new product. - Having said this, I'm aware of many organisations that are disatisfied with the status quo and looking to the longer term to reduce vendor lock-in. One way that people are looking to do this is to specify support for Open Standards (e.g. ISO 19100 series and OGC) as a key requirement. Currently OSGeo projects offer some of the better support for these standards. I hope that this continues (though I have noticed some derisive comments about standards w). wrt the Brazillian TerraLib toolkit mentioned in your paper: - I've had a quick look at the web site. The product appears to be quite mature and functional. - Has anyone from this list had a technical look at the products and like to share their observations? Can they be integrated with OSGeo apps? Do they support OGC standards etc? Bruce Bannerman Notice: This email and any attachments may contain information that is personal, confidential, legally privileged and/or copyright.No part of it should be reproduced, adapted or communicated without the prior written consent of the copyright owner. It is the responsibility of the recipient to check for and remove viruses. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender by return email, delete it from your system and destroy any copies. You are not authorised to use, communicate or rely on the information contained in this email. Please consider the environment before printing this email. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
Dear Markus, Frank, and all I will try to dwell a bit further on some issues raised by Frank and Markus. Sorry for the long message. Certain issues deserve it... Message from Frank Warmerdam Comments from Gilberto (Frank) (...) But, I am left with the impression that the same model applied widely by many national or state governments would result in a lot of duplication. I'd like to explore models where governments at different levels cooperate and contribute to joint development. Good point. Governments have a propensity to fund local development, since they are creating jobs. The risk, as you point out, is duplication. To avoid this trend, we need a coordination board at the international level, that can assure national governments that their interests are taken into account. The ideal would be a UN-supported effort. However, developed nations have blocked attempts for United Nations agencies to coordinate widespread adoption of FOSS (e.g., at the World Summit on the Information Society). Currently, OSGEO and OSC play an important international role. OSGEO allows us to connect (as we´re doing right now). OSC gives users hope of avoiding the lock-in effect and thus reduces some of the FUD effect. But we should recognize that national government institutions are not present at either OSGEO or OSC. Thus, I´m hoping that GSDI might be able to increase its role as a place where FOSS can be promoted and presented to an international audience. GSDI´s president, Harlan Onsrud, is extremely serious, open-minded and supportive of FOSS. I will be at GSDI 2008 at Trindad and promise to give you a report from the trenches. (Frank) ...Perhaps due to the relentless propaganda of the anti government right in North America, I have some concerns about governments throwing large amounts of money into FOSS development without clear thinking about how to make that money work efficiently. It is easy to imagine boondoggles that could suck up lots of money with little in the way of useful products. Relax... Lord Keynes, Roosevelt´s New Deal, the Marshall Plan, NASA´s Apollo Program and other examples show that efficiency is not a prerequisite for successful use of public money. Efficient use of public money is not about achieving feasible products in the most cost-effective way. It is about achieving goals that would be impossible for the private sector. Putting a man on the moon, developing health care solutions for the poor, and saving the planet from disastrous climate change are tasks for governments. They cannot be measured by how much money you put into them, but by their results. Message from Markus Lupp Responses by Gilberto (Markus) I would like to give some comments on this from the perspective of a GIS company with an Open Source business model. (...) Now to the question of government intervention. After reading Gilberto's mail I asked myself what is meant by this term? (...) In Germany (...)there is a growing support from people in governmental agencies who decided by themselves that they want to use more open source software (Gilberto - is this what you mean by indirect support?). Government intervention can be direct or indirect. In the first case, public funds directly support FOSS4G projects (as in the case of gvSIG). In the second, there is a consensus that it is in the public interest to consider FOSS as a serious alternative to proprietary software and thus public managers are not afraid of FUD tactics (as it happens in Europe currently). Europe is taking FOSS very seriously. For those who haven´t seen it yet, take a look at the EC´s Open Source Observatory (http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/chapter/452). This is a very good example of indirect support for FOSS. (Markus) So from my point of view it is possible to compete in the GIS market using an open source business model without any high-level government intervention (although it surely helps) I respectfully disagree. I doubt you could achieve the same success in the USA, where there is no active public policy in support of FOSS. I stand by my earlier assessment that successful long-term FOSS needs government support (direct or indirect). Best Gilberto -- === Dr.Gilberto Camara Director General National Institute for Space Research (INPE) Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil voice: +55-12-3945-6035 fax: +55-12-3921-6455 web: http://www.dpi.inpe.br/gilberto blog: http://techne-episteme.blogspot.com/ ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
Hi Gilberto, Gilberto Camara schrieb: (Markus) So from my point of view it is possible to compete in the GIS market using an open source business model without any high-level government intervention (although it surely helps) I respectfully disagree. I doubt you could achieve the same success in the USA, where there is no active public policy in support of FOSS. I stand by my earlier assessment that successful long-term FOSS needs government support (direct or indirect). Well, this is interesting and I now understand your point of view better. I was really not aware that the indirect support that I can see and feel in Europe already is so much stronger than it is in the US. BTW, in South-East Asia (where I currently live and work) many countries have an official initiative that calls for support and usage of Open Source software, e.g. http://www.igos.web.id/ in Indonesia and http://opensource.mampu.gov.my/ in Malaysia. Best regards, Markus -- Dr. Markus Lupp l a t / l o n GmbH Kupang-NTT Indonesia phone +62 (0)81 339 431666 http://www.lat-lon.de http://www.deegree.org -- ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
Hi Bruce, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: wrt the Brazillian TerraLib toolkit mentioned in your paper: - I've had a quick look at the web site. The product appears to be quite mature and functional. - Has anyone from this list had a technical look at the products and like to share their observations? Can they be integrated with OSGeo apps? Do they support OGC standards etc? Bruce Bannerman I believe that TerraLib would deserve a better technical look than what I did but my initial impression was very favorable. What impress me the most was the raster-on-rdbms support. I download and installed the TerraView application and imported some raster data files to PostgreSQL and it works like a charm, but again, that would deserve a performance evaluation. The source code repository is not as open as GDAL (for example) but I believe that out-side contributors should be able to suggest modification by sending CVS patches at least. There are very good (normally expensive) image processing algorithms implemented on the library, e.g. segmentation, Wavelets. There is a rich set of vectors algorithms too. Talking about integration with other OSGeo projects I believe that the current TerraLib RC uses GDAL. Best regards, Ivan ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
Hi Gilberto (and list), only a couple of notes Gilberto Camara wrote: Dear OSGEO Discussion List members: Paul Ramsey´s remarks are right on target. First, GIS is a large arena and there are different motivations for developers, that prevent them from joining a single project such as uDIG. Second, it is very difficult for a private company to develop a world-class FOSS4G product and survive based only on consulting fees for the commercial sector. Third, to overcome these limitations there is a need for governmental intervention, which may be direct, as in the case of Catalonian government´s Sorry, but is Valencian government (region south to Catalonia) support for gvSIG, or indirect, as in the decision of Germany to support open source software. Also Extremadura in Spain has this support. 100% of school software it's linux based, and now every classroom has 1 for every two boys with the money they dont waste on licenses. In Brazil, the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has been supporting local GIS development for 25 years, with a lot of success in our national user community. Without official support, there would be no local FOOS4G development in Brazil. In 2003, I did a F00S4G market survey and published the results as a chapter of a US National Academy of Sciences book: Open Source GIS Software: Myths and Realities www.dpi.inpe.br/gilberto/papers/camara_open_source_myths.pdf. We analysed 70 FOSS4G software projects taken from the FreeGIS list, and divided them into three categories: networked products (e.g. GRASS), corporate products (e.g., PostGIS) and individual products (e.g., CAVOR). From each product, we assessed its maturity, level of support and functionality. Our main conclusions at the time were: (a) Only 6% of the products were developed by networked teams. Thus, the “Linux paradigm” is the exception rather than the rule. (b) Corporations (private or public) are the main developers of successful open source products. Corporations account for 41% of all products. (e) Individual-led software (a small team of 1-3 people) have less quality and more mortality than the above. These results show that the impetus behind successful open source software was not coming from altruistic individuals working in the midnight hour, but from professional programmers. I consider that a similar result would be obtained today, should the assessment be repeated. This analysis was further elaborated in a JASIST paper: Information Policies and Open Source Software in Developing Countries www.dpi.inpe.br/gilberto/papers/camara_fonseca_jasist.pdf. For the FOSS4G effort to be fruitful and sustainable, we need a very informed and candid assessment of our business model. My personal view, based on 25 years of experience, is that government intervention is essential for the open source model to survive beyond a handful of examples. Best regards Gilberto ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
Hi all, I am *not* going to disagree with Andrea, Gilberto, Paul, Howard or anybody else. I just want to point out a interesting open source business model that is making a big impact this days. I am talking about Xen [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen]. I keep reading news and more news about new commercial products from big software companies based on Xen. Is that possible on the GIS world? Best regards, Ivan Gilberto Camara wrote: Dear OSGEO Discussion List members: Paul Ramsey´s remarks are right on target. First, GIS is a large arena and there are different motivations for developers, that prevent them from joining a single project such as uDIG. Second, it is very difficult for a private company to develop a world-class FOSS4G product and survive based only on consulting fees for the commercial sector. Third, to overcome these limitations there is a need for governmental intervention, which may be direct, as in the case of Catalonian government´s support for gvSIG, or indirect, as in the decision of Germany to support open source software. In Brazil, the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has been supporting local GIS development for 25 years, with a lot of success in our national user community. Without official support, there would be no local FOOS4G development in Brazil. In 2003, I did a F00S4G market survey and published the results as a chapter of a US National Academy of Sciences book: Open Source GIS Software: Myths and Realities www.dpi.inpe.br/gilberto/papers/camara_open_source_myths.pdf. We analysed 70 FOSS4G software projects taken from the FreeGIS list, and divided them into three categories: networked products (e.g. GRASS), corporate products (e.g., PostGIS) and individual products (e.g., CAVOR). From each product, we assessed its maturity, level of support and functionality. Our main conclusions at the time were: (a) Only 6% of the products were developed by networked teams. Thus, the “Linux paradigm” is the exception rather than the rule. (b) Corporations (private or public) are the main developers of successful open source products. Corporations account for 41% of all products. (e) Individual-led software (a small team of 1-3 people) have less quality and more mortality than the above. These results show that the impetus behind successful open source software was not coming from altruistic individuals working in the midnight hour, but from professional programmers. I consider that a similar result would be obtained today, should the assessment be repeated. This analysis was further elaborated in a JASIST paper: Information Policies and Open Source Software in Developing Countries www.dpi.inpe.br/gilberto/papers/camara_fonseca_jasist.pdf. For the FOSS4G effort to be fruitful and sustainable, we need a very informed and candid assessment of our business model. My personal view, based on 25 years of experience, is that government intervention is essential for the open source model to survive beyond a handful of examples. Best regards Gilberto ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 10:26:51AM -0500, Lucena, Ivan wrote: Hi all, I am *not* going to disagree with Andrea, Gilberto, Paul, Howard or anybody else. I just want to point out a interesting open source business model that is making a big impact this days. I am talking about Xen [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen]. I keep reading news and more news about new commercial products from big software companies based on Xen. Is that possible on the GIS world? Depending on what you're reading (I can't tell from a quick Google which types of stories you're talking about), I'm not sure how Xen really plays a part in the commercialization. Xen can be used to host products in a virtual environment, and if that is the case, there's no money being made off *Xen*, money is being made off the other software. I could be wrong. I just didn't find anything to back up either way in the Wikipedia and related links. Regards, -- Christopher Schmidt Web Developer ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
Xen is one of those things where the market is SO DAMN HUGE that even the very SMALL proportion of money that an open source company can wring from the marketplace is actually non-trivial in an absolute sense. If Red Hat is only monetizing 0.01% of the Linux marketplace, that's still fine, because they are making millions. The best market places seem to be enterprise software with large new markets. Examples of success stories are JBoss, Red Hat, Sleepycat, MySQL, and note that the last two are actually sort of open source companies, in that they still fall back on the software-for-sale model for revenues. The trouble with the geospatial marketplace is that it is relatively small, so the small proportion an open source company can monetize is smaller still. The problem with service-oriented FOSS businesses is that they don't make money from software, so the easiest thing to cut in budgeting is core software development. Let the product languish for a while, it doesn't cost you anything as long as service business keeps flowing in. Or, in the case of pure consultancies, don't do any core development at all, just use the software. The service- oriented FOSS business I think has serious structural problems, not around providing good service, but around strong incentives to nourish the underlying software. P. On 3-Jan-08, at 8:58 AM, Christopher Schmidt wrote: On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 10:26:51AM -0500, Lucena, Ivan wrote: Hi all, I am *not* going to disagree with Andrea, Gilberto, Paul, Howard or anybody else. I just want to point out a interesting open source business model that is making a big impact this days. I am talking about Xen [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen]. I keep reading news and more news about new commercial products from big software companies based on Xen. Is that possible on the GIS world? Depending on what you're reading (I can't tell from a quick Google which types of stories you're talking about), I'm not sure how Xen really plays a part in the commercialization. Xen can be used to host products in a virtual environment, and if that is the case, there's no money being made off *Xen*, money is being made off the other software. I could be wrong. I just didn't find anything to back up either way in the Wikipedia and related links. Regards, -- Christopher Schmidt Web Developer ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
Gilberto Camara wrote: For the FOSS4G effort to be fruitful and sustainable, we need a very informed and candid assessment of our business model. My personal view, based on 25 years of experience, is that government intervention is essential for the open source model to survive beyond a handful of examples. Gilberto, It is my personal opinion that sustainable success in the FOSSGIS arena does and will depend on sustaining support from the user community. In practice, government directly and indirectly represents a huge user community, and one with the capacity and organization to provide meaningful support for FOSSGIS development. When I speak of organization, I mean that government's can provide aggregate support based on a recognision of the broad benefits of investment rather than needing to justify all expenditures on a strict cost/benefit basis for individual projects. What is less clear to me is how we as a community can help governments put resources to work in a most constructive way. I think INPE has done great things, as have the gvSIG team. But, I am left with the impression that the same model applied widely by many national or state governments would result in a lot of duplication. I'd like to explore models where governments at different levels cooperate and contribute to joint development. In fact, perhaps the gvSIG model, with some (much?) of the support now coming from the EU level, and increased efforts to promote it's broad use is a good model for this. The other approach which has worked, in at least a trickle down way, is governments showing a preference for foss solutions where practical, and the consulting and integration companies that provide them based on existing project turning some of the contract funding into improvements back to the core projects. This model has been responsible for quite a bit of the work on and around MapServer for instance. Perhaps due to the relentless propaganda of the anti government right in North America, I have some concerns about governments throwing large amounts of money into FOSS development without clear thinking about how to make that money work efficiently. It is easy to imagine boondoggles that could suck up lots of money with little in the way of useful products. Best regards, -- ---+-- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [EMAIL PROTECTED] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush| President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
Paul wrote: The trouble with the geospatial marketplace is that it is relatively small, so the small proportion an open source company can monetize is smaller still. I wonder how this will change as the ability to obtain spatial information improves and becomes more affordable? A few decades ago you needed 3 or 4 men, expensive optical equipment, and a trained eye to produce maps. Now all you need is a teenager, a motorcycle, and a GPS receiver. I think you will find more opportunities for companies with a business model built around FOSS as this trend plays out. Here are a couple of examples from my own personal experience: On entry barrier to GIS is initial data production costs. I have been impressed at the difference the availability of USDA Aerial Photography has made in the last few years. (The USDA provides 1 meter color orthophotgraphy to most counties in California and other parts of the United States on a yearly basis. This data can be accessed for free or next-to-nothing.) This has allowed us to do things in my own office that we couldn't have considered before. The cost of that type of imagery on that large of a scale was just too prohibitive. As geospatial data becomes cheaper, more up-to-date, and more precise, I believe you will see the entry-level cost of GIS implementation at different organizations drop. This is especially true of remotely sensed data. Still, it applies to vector data as well. You can't find very many California counties that don't have vector data available, although licensing is still an issue in some places. I believe there are a lot of markets for GIS that haven't been cracked open yet. Land surveying is one of these. ESRI has thrown some darts in this direction, but if you ask your typical land surveyor what GIS is you would probably get some off-the-wall answers. I doubt even 5% would understand how they could use GIS technology to improve the efficiency of there own operations. Another example is an experience I had recently when I volunteered for a local Ranger District of the US Forest Service. I assumed the Ranger District would have a GIS person on staff, or at least have some GIS software and have people that could use it. This was not the case. Most of the Forest Service staff at the Ranger Station didn't know what GIS was, and they certainly weren't using it at a local level for forest management. Thinking about this makes me wish I had about a couple million dollars in capital to spend. :] I still think there is great potential for a company to educate potential clients on the benefits of GIS to their particular organization, after which the company could then make an honest profit assisting with the organization with a low cost FOSS GIS implementations. It's too bad I have so much fun as a land surveyor, or I'd have to put more time into getting this type of business off the ground. With the US housing market in the toilet you never know what might happen... :] There will be lots of opportunities for FOSS GIS in the future. (It almost makes me want to buy stock in Refractions Research.) :] I think the key will be making more of an effort to find customers, instead of waiting for them to find us. I'm not talking about existing ESRI users, but rather people that have had little exposure to GIS to begin with, but who could easily be GIS users if someone showed them how. Landon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul Ramsey Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 9:09 AM To: OSGeo Discussions Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models Xen is one of those things where the market is SO DAMN HUGE that even the very SMALL proportion of money that an open source company can wring from the marketplace is actually non-trivial in an absolute sense. If Red Hat is only monetizing 0.01% of the Linux marketplace, that's still fine, because they are making millions. The best market places seem to be enterprise software with large new markets. Examples of success stories are JBoss, Red Hat, Sleepycat, MySQL, and note that the last two are actually sort of open source companies, in that they still fall back on the software-for-sale model for revenues. The trouble with the geospatial marketplace is that it is relatively small, so the small proportion an open source company can monetize is smaller still. The problem with service-oriented FOSS businesses is that they don't make money from software, so the easiest thing to cut in budgeting is core software development. Let the product languish for a while, it doesn't cost you anything as long as service business keeps flowing in. Or, in the case of pure consultancies, don't do any core development at all, just use the software. The service- oriented FOSS business I think has serious structural problems, not around providing good service, but around strong incentives to nourish the underlying software
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
Gilberto and all, I would like to give some comments on this from the perspective of a GIS company with an Open Source business model, I hope you will find them of interest. lat/lon was founded in the year 2000 as a private company (in Germany) and had from its beginning an open source business model. We do consulting and software development for GIS projects, mainly in the context of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). Most of the project solutions we develop are based on deegree, a library tailored for interoperable SDIs that was originally developed together with Bonn University. We compete with other vendors, proprietary and open source based alike, on the same grounds (software quality, price, quality of support and so on). With each project we do, we develop deegree a step further, we have no source of funding that does not come out of projects we have to apply for first. I do not want to go into too much detail, but we do pretty good, which means we can pay our bills and have continuous growth year by year. Also there is a number of other companies by now that are developing solutions based on deegree, some of these companies are based in neighbouring countries. Now to the question of government intervention. After reading Gilberto's mail I asked myself what is meant by this term? In Germany (where lat/lon so far is mainly active) there is no official policy supporting open source software. There is a number of guidelines that suggest so, but all public bodies are free to do how they like. But there is a growing support from people in governmental agencies who decided by themselves that they want to use more open source software (Gilberto - is this what you mean by indirect support?). Still - as I said - there is not any kind of protectionism for Free Software. We (and other companies doing the same job) have to convience our clients that what we offer is good value for money. So from my point of view it is possible to compete in the GIS market using an open source business model without any high-level government intervention (although it surely helps). Perhaps Germany is special in this regard, but I doubt so - we are getting more and more projects in neighbouring countries as well. I guess that there are other companies having similar experiences. I have to say that I am a bit surprised that I got the impression (from the remarks by Paul and others) that the same is not possible in Northern America!? Best regards, Markus Gilberto Camara schrieb: Dear OSGEO Discussion List members: Paul Ramsey´s remarks are right on target. First, GIS is a large arena and there are different motivations for developers, that prevent them from joining a single project such as uDIG. Second, it is very difficult for a private company to develop a world-class FOSS4G product and survive based only on consulting fees for the commercial sector. Third, to overcome these limitations there is a need for governmental intervention, which may be direct, as in the case of Catalonian government´s support for gvSIG, or indirect, as in the decision of Germany to support open source software. In Brazil, the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has been supporting local GIS development for 25 years, with a lot of success in our national user community. Without official support, there would be no local FOOS4G development in Brazil. In 2003, I did a F00S4G market survey and published the results as a chapter of a US National Academy of Sciences book: Open Source GIS Software: Myths and Realities www.dpi.inpe.br/gilberto/papers/camara_open_source_myths.pdf. We analysed 70 FOSS4G software projects taken from the FreeGIS list, and divided them into three categories: networked products (e.g. GRASS), corporate products (e.g., PostGIS) and individual products (e.g., CAVOR). From each product, we assessed its maturity, level of support and functionality. Our main conclusions at the time were: (a) Only 6% of the products were developed by networked teams. Thus, the “Linux paradigm” is the exception rather than the rule. (b) Corporations (private or public) are the main developers of successful open source products. Corporations account for 41% of all products. (e) Individual-led software (a small team of 1-3 people) have less quality and more mortality than the above. These results show that the impetus behind successful open source software was not coming from altruistic individuals working in the midnight hour, but from professional programmers. I consider that a similar result would be obtained today, should the assessment be repeated. This analysis was further elaborated in a JASIST paper: Information Policies and Open Source Software in Developing Countries www.dpi.inpe.br/gilberto/papers/camara_fonseca_jasist.pdf. For the FOSS4G effort to be fruitful and sustainable, we need a very informed and candid assessment of our business model. My personal view,
RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models
Markus wrote: I have to say that I am a bit surprised that I got the impression (from the remarks by Paul and others) that the same is not possible in Northern America!? I'm no expert, but I think most people involved in FOSS development in America would agree that the political climate for FOSS in this nation can be very hostile. Microsoft is a very powerful lobby, and ESRI is fairly entrenched in the government world. (This may not be the case in some universities and far flung government offices, but it is definitely the rule.) From my own experience with other developers from OpenJUMP, which are mostly outside of the United States, support of FOSS by European governments is much stronger than here in America. I find this somewhat ironic, since it seems our publicly funded geospatial data is much more accessible than in Europe. Landon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dr. Markus Lupp Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 4:03 PM To: OSGeo Discussions Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Re: FOSS4GIS business models Gilberto and all, I would like to give some comments on this from the perspective of a GIS company with an Open Source business model, I hope you will find them of interest. lat/lon was founded in the year 2000 as a private company (in Germany) and had from its beginning an open source business model. We do consulting and software development for GIS projects, mainly in the context of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI). Most of the project solutions we develop are based on deegree, a library tailored for interoperable SDIs that was originally developed together with Bonn University. We compete with other vendors, proprietary and open source based alike, on the same grounds (software quality, price, quality of support and so on). With each project we do, we develop deegree a step further, we have no source of funding that does not come out of projects we have to apply for first. I do not want to go into too much detail, but we do pretty good, which means we can pay our bills and have continuous growth year by year. Also there is a number of other companies by now that are developing solutions based on deegree, some of these companies are based in neighbouring countries. Now to the question of government intervention. After reading Gilberto's mail I asked myself what is meant by this term? In Germany (where lat/lon so far is mainly active) there is no official policy supporting open source software. There is a number of guidelines that suggest so, but all public bodies are free to do how they like. But there is a growing support from people in governmental agencies who decided by themselves that they want to use more open source software (Gilberto - is this what you mean by indirect support?). Still - as I said - there is not any kind of protectionism for Free Software. We (and other companies doing the same job) have to convience our clients that what we offer is good value for money. So from my point of view it is possible to compete in the GIS market using an open source business model without any high-level government intervention (although it surely helps). Perhaps Germany is special in this regard, but I doubt so - we are getting more and more projects in neighbouring countries as well. I guess that there are other companies having similar experiences. I have to say that I am a bit surprised that I got the impression (from the remarks by Paul and others) that the same is not possible in Northern America!? Best regards, Markus Gilberto Camara schrieb: Dear OSGEO Discussion List members: Paul Ramsey´s remarks are right on target. First, GIS is a large arena and there are different motivations for developers, that prevent them from joining a single project such as uDIG. Second, it is very difficult for a private company to develop a world-class FOSS4G product and survive based only on consulting fees for the commercial sector. Third, to overcome these limitations there is a need for governmental intervention, which may be direct, as in the case of Catalonian government´s support for gvSIG, or indirect, as in the decision of Germany to support open source software. In Brazil, the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has been supporting local GIS development for 25 years, with a lot of success in our national user community. Without official support, there would be no local FOOS4G development in Brazil. In 2003, I did a F00S4G market survey and published the results as a chapter of a US National Academy of Sciences book: Open Source GIS Software: Myths and Realities www.dpi.inpe.br/gilberto/papers/camara_open_source_myths.pdf. We analysed 70 FOSS4G software projects taken from the FreeGIS list, and divided them into three categories: networked products (e.g. GRASS), corporate products (e.g., PostGIS) and individual products (e.g., CAVOR). From each
