<HTML dir=ltr><HEAD><TITLE>Re: [Marketing] OSGeo benefits</TITLE>
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<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>Hi Jo,</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>>Cameron thanks for reinforcing the investment-in-community point - i<BR>>plan to emphasise gvSIG and Geomajas as projects that have origins in<BR>>enlightened public administrations - i would love to see the numbers<BR>>that added up to "let's develop our own desktop GIS in house rather than<BR>>buy software licenses"...</FONT></DIV><FONT size=2></FONT></DIV>
<P><FONT size=2>It was not only about cost savings. There was a full migration to open source, and there were no GIS desktop tools running on linux (apart from Grass), so it was decided to build a brand-new GIS desktop based on Java (for multiplatform support).</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Some studies have been done comparing figures, but IMHO it's like comparing pears and apples, because with privative closed software there were just a few users (around 20-30), and now, as it's free, there are more than 300. That's a gain difficult to compare with previous situation talking only on a cost basis. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>><BR>>Hey, this conversation is a lot more fun than making PowerPoint slides.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>For sure, Power ¿what? :-P<BR></FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Cheers,</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Miguel</P></FONT></BODY></HTML>