MapServer Foundation thoughts and reactions

[Jeff Hoffmann]

Peter Giencke wrote:
>  
> All,
> 
> Having just read that Autodesk will be using/usurping the Mapserver name for
> their decidedly not-Mapserver corprate product, I was reminded of the
> feeling I get when someone buds in front of me in a line - it's unjust. A
> LOT of work/support/etc has been put into making Mapserver (and its good
> name) into what it is today. I just don't see how diluting Mapserver (and
> its associate tools) with different (competing?) product(s) can be a good
> thing for this community. 
> 
> My mini-rant aside, I'm very(!) enthused about the Mapserver Foundation and
> for what it will bring to the Mapserver community ("classic community" and
> otherwise) in the coming months.

I think the model for a lot of people creating a foundation like this is 
the Apache Foundation.  When you look at them, they now have a lot of 
projects, but the started with Apache, then added other ones like, for 
example, Tomcat (which also functions as a web server, among other 
things and was originally developed by Sun and later donated to Apache). 
To this day, when people mention "Apache" they think the original web 
server, even though technically it's call the "Apache HTTP Server". 
Nobody ever calls Tomcat "Apache" or "Apache Tomcat", it's usually just 
"Tomcat".  You can use Apache in the name, it's still definately 
identified with Apache as one of the foundation projects, but it has a 
distinctive seperate identity.

I think that pretty well distills what most people are thinking -- 
foundation=good, confusion=bad and it's pretty hard to be anything other 
than confusing if you conflate two definately distinct products using 
the naming already suggested.  I really think that Apache gets it right 
in this respect.

-- 
Jeff Hoffmann
jeff at propertykey.com