<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Thanks to Till for starting this thread.<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I suggest we park the discussion about this specific tender as there is little that we can do to influence it at this late stage we have not been in dialogue with them and as we do not even have a vehicle/organisation/consortium to engage with them.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Large public sector bodies (municipal, regional, national, EU etc) are ‘a' or even ‘the’ main target market for many OSGeo Companies (I am going to coin the acronym OSGCs). In general OSGCs are SMEs and at the smaller end of that grouping - I would guess there are few OSGCs in Europe with more than 50 employees and most are in the 10-25 range. Size is important, OSGCs will compete successfully for projects at municipal level and for some smaller national projects but are likely to be excluded from larger projects due to financial reserves, resources and range of skills. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">It’s not just size that limits us, for most larger projects the successful bidder will have been building a relationship with the client, their senior management and the procurement team for many months or years before the procurement is announced. This is the standard approach of the enterprise sales team whether it be a global software vendor or a big systems integrator. If we want to compete we will need to work out a way to match that approach.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I can think of two approaches that OSGCs could consider (others may come up with some alternatives):</div><div class=""><ul class="MailOutline"><li class="">Partnering with a Systems Integrator - SI’s may prefer to partner with an OSGC to give them some credible skills base. </li><ul class=""><li class="">The downside is that the OSGC will usually be the junior partner and may have less influence in the technical approach proposed. </li><li class="">The upside is that the SI will be known to the customer, there will be no doubt as to their capacity to deliver etc.</li></ul><li class="">Partnering with one or more other OSGCs</li><ul class=""><li class="">Upside - we share all the work. Likely to be more competitive pricing</li><li class="">Downside - questions about commercial responsibility for delivery and ongoing support</li></ul></ul><div class=""><br class=""></div></div><div class="">There is a lot more to discuss about how we would go about forming a partnership, whether it would need permanent staff for sales, marketing etc, how/who would project manage, who would take legal responsibility etc. If we want to succeed in larger projects we will need a lot more than a small amount of advocacy, that will take time, cost money and require long term commitment. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">If there is an appetite for some serious form of collaboration amongst OSGCs we would need to spend some time together exploring options - perhaps a meet up in early 2017?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">mtfbwy</div><div class=""><div class="">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal; border-spacing: 0px;">______<br class="">Steven<br class=""><br class=""></span>
</div>
<br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 30 Nov 2016, at 07:50, <a href="mailto:eu-request@lists.osgeo.org" class="">eu-request@lists.osgeo.org</a> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class="">Send EU mailing list submissions to<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><a href="mailto:eu@lists.osgeo.org" class="">eu@lists.osgeo.org</a><br class=""><br class="">To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/eu<br class="">or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>eu-request@lists.osgeo.org<br class=""><br class="">You can reach the person managing the list at<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>eu-owner@lists.osgeo.org<br class=""><br class="">When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific<br class="">than "Re: Contents of EU digest..."<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Today's Topics:<br class=""><br class=""> 1. Re: European "partwise" Open Source GIS-Tender (Jachym Cepicky)<br class=""> 2. Re: European "partwise" Open Source GIS-Tender<br class=""> (till.adams@fossgis.de)<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">----------------------------------------------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Message: 1<br class="">Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2016 05:41:57 +0000<br class="">From: Jachym Cepicky <jachym.cepicky@gmail.com><br class="">To: dirk.frigne@geosparc.com, eu@lists.osgeo.org<br class="">Subject: Re: [EU] European "partwise" Open Source GIS-Tender<br class="">Message-ID:<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><CAAZUH4GG5ic2P853NuXyi=Qq=m8roSc3C5fsXQK6v1g8hiyLLg@mail.gmail.com><br class="">Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"<br class=""><br class="">I think, that the buzzword we need to promote here is Open APIs - that<br class="">leads to decomposition of the huge task and therefore to possibility to<br class="">split one huge service to many<br class=""><br class="">j<br class=""><br class="">On Tue, Nov 29, 2016, 16:41 Dirk Frigne <dirk.frigne@geosparc.com> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Thank you Till for sharing this tender,<br class="">Thank you Maria for your comments,<br class=""><br class="">I also was discouraged, reading that Eurostats wants a shift towards<br class="">open source (which is imho the right choice and a very good decision!),<br class="">but at the other hand, strictly restrict part of the experience to one<br class="">particular service provider, with a 4 letter word as abbreviation.<br class=""><br class="">What I think we should do (from OSGeo) is writing a letter where we<br class="">encourage the initiative, present the OSGeo foundation, and ask why the<br class="">tender is not divided in two lots: one for open source services, and one<br class="">for services from a specific proprietary system.<br class=""><br class="">We should also write that a lot of community members of OSGeo, working<br class="">for businesses with an business model based on open source software<br class="">values, are interested to work together to provide an answer to this<br class="">tender, if the specific proprietary know how was not requested. (in<br class="">other words, if there where two separated lots in the tender).<br class=""><br class="">We should mention that we (from the OSGeo community) are convinced that<br class="">solutions fully based on open source technology are a perfect<br class="">replacement for any proprietary system out there today, and that the<br class="">change for vendor lock-in is much smaller with such solutions.<br class=""><br class="">Apart what OSGeo could do, I think we (the individuals belonging to<br class="">commercial service providers) can start an initiative to form a<br class="">consortium so we can provide an answer to such questions if we spot a<br class="">new opportunity.<br class=""><br class="">But even then I think it is very ambitious to shift such an amount of<br class="">'good professional quality' in such a sort term, that I think that we<br class="">also should promote and work on capacity building trough initiatives<br class="">such as Geo4all.<br class=""><br class="">Dirk<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">On 28-11-16 11:42, María Arias de Reyna wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 11:30 AM, <till.adams@fossgis.de> wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Dear list!<br class=""><br class="">I come up, because we stumbled over this tender:<br class="">https://etendering.ted.europa.eu/cft/cft-display.html?cftId=1824<br class=""><br class="">(and although most of you may regard me as the "guy who was chair of<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>FOSS4G<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">2016 in Bonn", I write as managing director of terrestris and<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>mundialis, two<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">SME's having an Open Source business model.)<br class=""><br class="">Summary<br class="">EUROSTAT, europes statistical agency, is seeking a contracting company,<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>that<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">delivers GIS services worth 17.5 million €uros for the upcoming 4 years<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>(or<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">~7.5k person days per year !!).<br class="">In the tender they define two main technical directions: ESRI and Open<br class="">Source - and they name every popular OSGeo project such as GeoServer,<br class="">Geonetwork Open Source, OpenLayers, QGIS, PostGIS, GRASS etc..<br class="">Also they clearly define, that Open Source must be favoured, if ever<br class="">possible.<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">My thoughts:<br class="">Regarding our Open Source business landscape, I see huge problems for<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>any of<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">our Open Source SME's to have any chance in even participate in this<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>tender.<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Nobody of us, even if we all would come together, could approximately<br class="">deliver such an amount of person days and we are not able to prove that<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>we<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">can deliver knowledge in ESRI technology to their reasonable<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>satisfaction.<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">My guess is, that on the proprietary side of the market there are huge<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>full<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">service companies, that are capable in delivering these magnitudes of<br class="">services and who can argue "yes, we can also deliver Open Source<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>knowledge".<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Our landscape of service providers with an open business model is quite<br class="">heterogeneous with many small and medium-sized companies, often very<br class="">specialized on single aspects or software packages. This will in the end<br class="">lead to the fact, that even if EU favours to use Open Source Software,<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>these<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">services are provided not from companies from our community.<br class=""><br class="">And this matters two things in my eyes:<br class="">1. The money paid for Open Source will not (or only partwise) be<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>invested<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">into our community and into our projects<br class="">2. The contracted service provider will presumably not favour Open<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>Source<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">software and with that the goal clearly defined by EUROSTAT degenerates<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>to a<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">well-intentioned idea<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">What I want:<br class="">In general I wanted to let you all know about this tender and the<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>drifts,<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">that also in the EU take place towards Open Source. All together I<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>would be<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">happy, if we can start a discussion about how to deal with tenders like<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>this<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">in the future and how we, as an European Community, can operate towards<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote>the<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">EU for a better understanding of Open Source and also our Open Source<br class="">business models.<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">BTW: Also a good discussion on this here on this list could be a good<br class="">starting point to show the appropriate people from EU, that we are here!<br class="">Happy about any contribution to this!<br class=""><br class="">Till<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote><br class="">Hi Till,<br class=""><br class="">Part of the idea of the european chapter was precisely to be able to<br class="">¿lobby? in favor of open source. (I am not sure if lobby is the right<br class="">word, in Spanish it has a bad meaning, related to corruption). In<br class="">GeoCat we discussed this internally and it was very discouraging that<br class="">it was so ESRI oriented.<br class=""><br class="">While we solve the legal issues about setting up an official european<br class="">chapter (which reminds me, we have a list of TO-DO things pending!),<br class="">what do you suggest we can do? Maybe write a formal letter signed by<br class="">many european companies asking the European Commission to avoid naming<br class="">specific companies or software? Maybe we can try to set up a meeting<br class="">with the responsible persons of this tender to try to explain the good<br class="">things about being more open (and how the money will be reinvested in<br class="">local companies instead of the big monopolistic one)?<br class=""><br class="">Regards,<br class="">María.<br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">EU mailing list<br class="">EU@lists.osgeo.org<br class="">http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/eu<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote><br class="">--<br class="">Yours sincerely,<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">ir. Dirk Frigne<br class="">CEO @geosparc<br class=""><br class="">Geosparc n.v.<br class="">Brugsesteenweg 587<br class="">B-9030 Ghent<br class="">Tel: +32 9 236 60 18<br class="">GSM: +32 495 508 799<br class=""><br class="">http://www.geomajas.org<br class="">http://www.geosparc.com<br class=""><br class="">@DFrigne<br class="">be.linkedin.com/in/frigne<br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">EU mailing list<br class="">EU@lists.osgeo.org<br class="">http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/eu<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote>-------------- next part --------------<br class="">An HTML attachment was scrubbed...<br class="">URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/eu/attachments/20161130/d3e1b7fb/attachment-0001.html><br class=""><br class="">------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Message: 2<br class="">Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2016 08:50:19 +0100<br class="">From: till.adams@fossgis.de<br class="">To: Jáchym Čepický <jachym.cepicky@gmail.com>, <eu@lists.osgeo.org><br class="">Subject: Re: [EU] European "partwise" Open Source GIS-Tender<br class="">Message-ID: <e4d4514a2e5024730578266d96b4979e@fossgis.de><br class="">Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed<br class=""><br class="">Hi Jachym, @all<br class=""><br class="">I agree in nearly every issue you list up. The tender I posted is more <br class="">about "hiring people" for manifold projects, so the goal is not one big <br class="">all singing, all dancing application, it's more a "work on demand" in <br class="">various projects for various agencies.<br class=""><br class="">Especially for this kind of tender I see the great chance to share this <br class="">tender and divide it at least into two (or even more) parts:<br class="">One proprietary and one open source part.<br class=""><br class="">The procedure they selected shows to me, that people in EU <br class="">administration on the one side take note of (and even see the need for) <br class="">Open Source, but do not understand our business, our community and how <br class="">Open Source works at all.<br class="">My goal is, to take this tender as an example and try to start a <br class="">discussion with them - because if nobody is there, that explains our <br class="">business, things will not change in future.<br class="">And in general: In my understanding this is one of OSGeo-EU's core <br class="">goals: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Europe<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">;-) Till<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Am 2016-11-29 11:57, schrieb Jáchym Čepický:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">I would like to note: I agree what Till concludes. I see companies<br class="">in Europe (I had chance to participate on some EU-founded projects,<br class="">where I meat large companies too) and they are all in favor for open<br class="">source, even then do not really contribute back and they are likely<br class="">not part of the community. But they are big enought, to get one-two<br class="">small partners (who usually do the dirty job) and are able to go for<br class="">such tender.<br class=""><br class="">Big IT tenders in public administration are IMHO evil in general.<br class="">They asked for the money, they got it and want a system, which does<br class="">*everything*. No place for small expert groups, like we usually are.<br class=""><br class="">What to do about it? Get in people hads, this is not the way, how to<br class="">support MEs. And not the way, you get something functional any time<br class="">soon (agile). We started on local level, people seem to start<br class="">listening. But EU-level? I have no idea whom to approach<br class=""><br class="">J<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Dne 28.11.2016 v 12:29 till.adams@fossgis.de napsal(a):<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Maria,<br class=""><br class="">I guess "lobbying" is the word I would use in german too. And yes, <br class="">feel<br class="">encouraged in putting our European Chapter forward (and count on <br class="">me).<br class=""><br class="">Indeed, an open letter of several European Open Source companies was <br class="">one<br class="">of the ideas on my list :-).<br class="">I heard that there is the possibility of a notify of defects in <br class="">European<br class="">tenders, but I am not aware where to direct to (but I will care).<br class="">The good thing is, that this defecting has no legal aspects, it's <br class="">more a<br class="">"possibility to complain".<br class=""><br class="">So that could also be one (equal) text sent to them from different<br class="">companies (and different countries as well).<br class="">I am sure we also could count on Dirk Frigne's GeoSparc here.<br class=""><br class="">I could write a first draft of that text, but would like to wait for<br class="">some more opinions here.<br class=""><br class="">Another idea was a formal letter from a European OSGeo regional <br class="">chapter,<br class="">but that's somehow the hen and egg problem:<br class="">As long as we do not have a formalized European chapter....<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Maybe this tender is a kick in our a..., that we needed to inspirit <br class="">this<br class="">European chapter.<br class=""><br class="">Till<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Am 2016-11-28 11:42, schrieb María Arias de Reyna:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 11:30 AM, <till.adams@fossgis.de> wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Dear list!<br class=""><br class="">I come up, because we stumbled over this tender:<br class="">https://etendering.ted.europa.eu/cft/cft-display.html?cftId=1824<br class=""><br class="">(and although most of you may regard me as the "guy who was chair <br class="">of<br class="">FOSS4G<br class="">2016 in Bonn", I write as managing director of terrestris and<br class="">mundialis, two<br class="">SME's having an Open Source business model.)<br class=""><br class="">Summary<br class="">EUROSTAT, europes statistical agency, is seeking a contracting<br class="">company, that<br class="">delivers GIS services worth 17.5 million €uros for the upcoming 4<br class="">years (or<br class="">~7.5k person days per year !!).<br class="">In the tender they define two main technical directions: ESRI and <br class="">Open<br class="">Source - and they name every popular OSGeo project such as <br class="">GeoServer,<br class="">Geonetwork Open Source, OpenLayers, QGIS, PostGIS, GRASS etc..<br class="">Also they clearly define, that Open Source must be favoured, if <br class="">ever<br class="">possible.<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">My thoughts:<br class="">Regarding our Open Source business landscape, I see huge problems <br class="">for<br class="">any of<br class="">our Open Source SME's to have any chance in even participate in <br class="">this<br class="">tender.<br class="">Nobody of us, even if we all would come together, could <br class="">approximately<br class="">deliver such an amount of person days and we are not able to prove<br class="">that we<br class="">can deliver knowledge in ESRI technology to their reasonable<br class="">satisfaction.<br class="">My guess is, that on the proprietary side of the market there are<br class="">huge full<br class="">service companies, that are capable in delivering these magnitudes <br class="">of<br class="">services and who can argue "yes, we can also deliver Open Source<br class="">knowledge".<br class="">Our landscape of service providers with an open business model is <br class="">quite<br class="">heterogeneous with many small and medium-sized companies, often <br class="">very<br class="">specialized on single aspects or software packages. This will in <br class="">the end<br class="">lead to the fact, that even if EU favours to use Open Source<br class="">Software, these<br class="">services are provided not from companies from our community.<br class=""><br class="">And this matters two things in my eyes:<br class="">1. The money paid for Open Source will not (or only partwise) be<br class="">invested<br class="">into our community and into our projects<br class="">2. The contracted service provider will presumably not favour Open<br class="">Source<br class="">software and with that the goal clearly defined by EUROSTAT<br class="">degenerates to a<br class="">well-intentioned idea<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">What I want:<br class="">In general I wanted to let you all know about this tender and the<br class="">drifts,<br class="">that also in the EU take place towards Open Source. All together I<br class="">would be<br class="">happy, if we can start a discussion about how to deal with tenders<br class="">like this<br class="">in the future and how we, as an European Community, can operate<br class="">towards the<br class="">EU for a better understanding of Open Source and also our Open <br class="">Source<br class="">business models.<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">BTW: Also a good discussion on this here on this list could be a <br class="">good<br class="">starting point to show the appropriate people from EU, that we are <br class="">here!<br class="">Happy about any contribution to this!<br class=""><br class="">Till<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote><br class="">Hi Till,<br class=""><br class="">Part of the idea of the european chapter was precisely to be able <br class="">to<br class="">¿lobby? in favor of open source. (I am not sure if lobby is the <br class="">right<br class="">word, in Spanish it has a bad meaning, related to corruption). In<br class="">GeoCat we discussed this internally and it was very discouraging <br class="">that<br class="">it was so ESRI oriented.<br class=""><br class="">While we solve the legal issues about setting up an official <br class="">european<br class="">chapter (which reminds me, we have a list of TO-DO things <br class="">pending!),<br class="">what do you suggest we can do? Maybe write a formal letter signed <br class="">by<br class="">many european companies asking the European Commission to avoid <br class="">naming<br class="">specific companies or software? Maybe we can try to set up a <br class="">meeting<br class="">with the responsible persons of this tender to try to explain the <br class="">good<br class="">things about being more open (and how the money will be reinvested <br class="">in<br class="">local companies instead of the big monopolistic one)?<br class=""><br class="">Regards,<br class="">María.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">EU mailing list<br class="">EU@lists.osgeo.org<br class="">http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/eu<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Subject: Digest Footer<br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">EU mailing list<br class="">EU@lists.osgeo.org<br class="">http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/eu<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">End of EU Digest, Vol 7, Issue 3<br class="">********************************<br class=""></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></body></html>