[OSGeo-Discuss] Did anyone else see this article on OSGeo?

[Anne Ghisla]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:
> Il 09/07/2012 23:19, Landon Blake ha scritto:
>> It was in GPS World:
>>
>> http://www.gpsworld.com/gis/gss-weekly/open-source-gis-12997?utm_source=GSS&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Geospatial-Weekly_05_17_2012&utm_content=open-source-gis-12997
>
> pity for the usual FUD about lack of support.
> thanks for letting us know.

Yes, once more the reader is told that there is no valid support.
Maybe because the writer actually means "people you can phone at night
and simply tell that the software is broken". It seems to me that this
kind of support assumes that the user doesn't know how the system
works, or worse, that it is normal that the user doesn't want to know.
I think that there are many issues with open source software that
require only few time of googling and a couple of emails to get to a
solution, and that in many cases the software is not so critical for a
person/company. If so, there are companies providing support So in the
end I think the article looks unnecessarily frightening at a
superficial read, and continues with the "open source is for hackers"
stereotype.

This readings urges me to continue spreading the word about FOSS[GIS]
and help users to become more conscious and informed wrt software
choice.

Best,
Anne