epiphany about the idea of the Foundation

[Kralidis,Tom [Burlington]]

> 
> " You are missing the point that the creation of a MapServer 
> Foundation in no way required the contribution of any code 
> from Autodesk."
>

Maybe the two actions together are the bane here.  What if the MapServer
Foundation was established independent of the gracious Autodesk
contribution?  The naming / optics of the Autodesk contribution didn't
help, either.
 
> Yes, this is true. Now I understand the sense of the 
> "precondition" in your comment. I would say that if we 
> weren't allowed to contribute our code, then we'd have gone 
> it alone, so you are correct.  
> 
> Some people are complaining that they woke up and Autodesk 
> was involved in the MapServer community, and some don't like 
> it. (Some do, BTW.) 
> 
> But the only other scenario is that the same people would 
> have woken up Monday and found that there was a now a 
> competitor. Because no matter what we were going to put that 
> code into open source and work hard to make it successful. If 
> the assumption is that we would be unable to create a 
> community, the assumption is faulty - many other companies - 
> some larger than us - have done so, and the people who did it 
> for them are available to us as well. We had a non-zero 
> probability of success taking that approach. 
> 
> But instead we're trying to embrace the one that's there who 
> has done such good work, to sing its praises, and spend our 
> money and brand equity to help it do so. We think a united 
> approach is better than a go-it-alone approach.
> 

Exactly.

> We expected some of this reaction - think it's mostly FUD 
> owing to not really knowing us- and do indeed have a lot to 
> learn about open source. But we're willing to actually take 
> the leap, try it out, and learn from the community. That's 
> more than you can say for many other companies.
>