<div dir="ltr">Suchith,<div>I am guessing that the 1 billion dollar number is for full commercial price with no volume or educational discounts for the ArcGIS Online services. If you want to make a similar claim for the OSGeo Academy simply multiply the full retail commercial cost ( plus maintenance) , without volume or educational discounts, of the different proprietary software packages with equivalent functionality to the tasks presented in the GeoAcademy MOOC , times 4000. </div><div><br></div><div>To add a bit more honesty, list the educational discount for the proprietary software packages , then the full commercial price. One could make the case that the software presented in GeoAcademy does not change in price when leaving academia for the "real world", presenting an economic benefit to geospatial professionals starting careers.</div><div><br></div><div>Do a 10 year analysis, based on ongoing licensing purchase and maintenance costs, between the software in GeoAcademy and the proprietary software. Multiply that times 4000.</div><div><br></div><div>Just a suggestion.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Doug </div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 7:58 AM, Suchith Anand <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Suchith.Anand@nottingham.ac.uk" target="_blank">Suchith.Anand@nottingham.ac.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hi all,<br>
<br>
Few years ago, myself and colleagues here did a study to help us understand the social history of collaborative activities within the OSGeo ecosystem. The results were published as a research paper on "Mapping Collaboration in Open Source Geospatial Ecosystem" in Transactions in GIS (Volume 16, Issue 4, pages 581–597, 2012).<br>
<br>
Last year after OSGIS 2014, following informal discussions with some colleagues, i decided to do a similar study to help understand the economic impact of OSGeo Software on the digital economy. To do this, we need to understand the metrics used for calculating this. Can anyone who has done similar studies in other domains help me point to any relevant articles for helping find a framework for this. We need to know the underlying metrics so we can use that same framework for this study.<br>
<br>
For example, reading through <a href="http://news.aag.org/2015/05/aag-seeks-proposal-authors-reviewers-for-new-ap-course-in-gist/" target="_blank">http://news.aag.org/2015/05/aag-seeks-proposal-authors-reviewers-for-new-ap-course-in-gist/</a> i understand that "In 2014, Esri announced a $1 billion gift of cloud-based ArcGIS Online software to support the Obama Administration’s ConnectEd initiative. This remarkable gift is providing free ArcGIS Online accounts to any public or private school upon request. " I am interested to understand how this $1 billion gift is calculated? Can anyone knowledgeable on this provide the details of these metrics use for this calculation?<br>
<br>
For example, The GeoAcademy MOOC program that our colleagues did ( i understand that for just the March 2015 cohert were 4000 students in thier program who all used QGIS), so if they all had to buy properitory software for thier study, how much will they have to pay? and will it be possible to even run a course like this ? It is important to quantify this as it will help us also appreciate the great donation of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation and the importance of Open Principles in Education.<br>
<br>
Once we can get details of the metrics used for the calculation of properitory software donation, we can use the same metric to understand the impact of OSGeo software donations over many years to the Global geospatial education, economy and business and help us with the new research paper that i am planning to work on "The Economic Impacts of Open Source Geospatial Software". I will acknowledge all contributions/inputs recieved from the wider community in this planned research paper. If you done similar kind of study, in other domains , it will be helpful to get your ideas. Thanks in advance.<br>
<br>
Best wishes,<br>
<br>
Suchith<br>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div>Doug Newcomb</div><div>USFWS</div><div>Raleigh, NC</div><div>919-856-4520 ext. 14 <a href="mailto:doug_newcomb@fws.gov" target="_blank">doug_newcomb@fws.gov</a></div><div>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div>The opinions I express are my own and are not representative of the official policy of the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service or Dept. of the Interior. Life is too short for undocumented, proprietary data formats.</div></div>
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