MapServer Foundation thoughts and reactions

[Andy Canfield]

While I am not a big part of the Mapserver project I do have a huge
amount of time and effort vested into getting my company to use
Mapserver for our server side GIS. I agree with a lot of Ed's points
to some extent. I have dealt with Autodesk for years and despite
whatever they may say upfront and in the open they are far from being
open source friendly. To the point where they have sued and threatened
to sue some very close friends for a small amount of reverse
engineering they did on the dwg format. So I was very, very, very
surprised to see this mornings announcement that a company who abuses
the patent system, puts it's API's under pay to use programs, and sues
developers who try and use it's file formats without using proprietary
products is suddenly deeply in bed with the largest ( and best ) open
source GIS project in the world. Autodesk seems to have taken a
horrible product ( Mapguide ) and turned it into something awesome (
Mapserver ) all at no cost to themselves plus picking up the brand and
name recognition it so desparetly needs in the GIS community because
lets face it normal GIS professionals sweat bullets when they hear
they have to work on a project where the file format is DWG and
Autodesk has always been the last late date to the GIS party. In one
swoop they changed all that and without the knowledge of almost the
entire community of Mapserver users and developers. Brilliant move on
Autodesk's part. Does anyone else see that maybe "something is rotten
in the state of Denmark" here? Am I missing something? I read the
press releases and I think a foundation is a great idea but with this
partner and without the knowledge of the greater community? It just
doesn't feel right to me it feels like in a year or two I might really
regret the day I read that press release. Am I over reacting? Am I not
seeing something really great that everyone else sees? Help me out
here folks and let me and everyone else know if this thing is good or
bad or neutral or what your thoughts are on this whole very surprising
turn of events.
Andy