epiphany about the idea of the Foundation

[Gary Watry]

Just had an interesting talk with an individual from Autodesk and I think
that they are in the right ball park. Here are a few things that came out of
the conversation.

1. The secrecy: Autodesk is public and traded on the stock market. If what
was being discussed was released prematurely and misunderstood, it could
drive the stocks through the floor and lose life savings for people. Not a
good plan. Therefore, do it with a select few, resolve the issues, then do a
press release.

Could it be that Autodesk insisted that everyone participating in this
process sign non-disclosure agreements with Autodesk to prevent premature
release to the media?  

2. The number of Autodesk players are relatively small.

3. The Foundation is already talking to several other commercial companies
about joining but does not feel comfortable releasing who they are. Probably
for the same reasons as give in #1 above.

4. The concept seems to be that commercial companies develop code or provide
code, drivers, that make MapServer compatible with their data formats
without conversion. That makes sense as the commercial company gains as does
the open source group.

5. Autodesk does not seem to be fixated on the names of the end products and
in fact the tentative names came from the open source group. Let the
Foundation work on it with everyone's input.

6. Who can sit on the board, Maybe it should have a few seats from the
commercial side, a few from the open source group, and few general seats.

More to follow I am sure.

p.s. When we did press releases with Autodesk, they were approved by both
the State and Autodesk, Did you do the same?

______________________________________________________________
Gary L. Watry

GIS Coordinator
Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies
FSU / COAPS
Johnson Building, RM 215
2035 East Paul Dirac Drive
Tallahassee, Florida 32306-2840
 
E-Mail: watry at coaps.fsu.edu