<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hi Ravi,<DIV>As a UN employee I guess I have to react on your statement :-)</DIV><DIV>As UN we are trying to provide and use quite a bit of open source technologies. The OSGeo GeoNetwork opensource that I work on is an example of that and there are a number of other activities existing or starting up. take a look at the UN produced DVD "GeoNetwork opensource" that contains nothing but geospatial open source software and is distributed for free to many people all over the world.</DIV><DIV>It remains a fact that many applications are (still?) build on proprietary applications and there is not much wrong with that happening also. At present I bet there are more developers that work on proprietary systems and have no interest or knowledge to develop using open source software and sometimes applications are simply not there yet in open source. Mind you, I'm saying this as a profound open source advocate :-) </DIV><DIV>As said, there are multiple initiatives that support open source, but the world does not change in a day while many existing problems need to be addressed immediately.</DIV><DIV>Ciao,</DIV><DIV>Jeroen</DIV><DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>On Sep 25, 2007, at 3:00 PM, RAVI KUMAR wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BLOCKQUOTE class="replbq" style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid"> <DIV>Hi all,</DIV> <DIV>It is unfortunate that United Nations nearly advocates Proprietory GIS.</DIV> <DIV>Time we react to this. The developing world is already throwing billions into</DIV> <DIV>un-sustainable Proprietory GIS for various GIS jobs.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Fope the FOSS4G will discuss this and send a memorandum to UN..</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><A onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://ww2.unhabitat.org/guonet/gis.asp" target="_blank">ww2.un</A><A onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://ww2.unhabitat.org/guonet/gis.asp" target="_blank">http://</A><A onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://ww2.unhabitat.org/guonet/gis.asp" target="_blank">habitat.org/guonet/gis.asp </A><BR clear="all"><SPAN class="sg"></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class="sg">Cheers</SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class="sg">Ravi Kumar<BR></SPAN></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV> <BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><HR size="1">Got a little couch potato? <BR> Check out fun <A href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=48248/*http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=summer+activities+for+kids&cs=bz">summer activities for kids.</A><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">_______________________________________________</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Discuss mailing list</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="mailto:Discuss@lists.osgeo.org">Discuss@lists.osgeo.org</A></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss">http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss</A></DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>