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<div style="font-family:sans-serif;overflow:auto;width:100%;margin: 0px 10px"><h2 style="margin: 0.25em 0 0 0"><div class=""><a href="http://appdomains.slashgeo.org/article.pl?sid=09/10/22/080219&from=rss">The Economics of Geospatial Software</a></div></h2>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.5em">via <a href="http://slashgeo.org/" class="f">Slashgeo</a> by Satri on 10/22/09</div><br style="display:none">
I plan to share a whole lot of great FOSS4G-related geonews starting next Monday (I'm too busy enjoying the conference until then ;-). Here's a teaser while you wait: the great keynote given by OpenGeo's <a href="http://blog.cleverelephant.ca/">Paul Ramsey</a> about the economics of open source geospatial software. Here's the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/opengeosuite">three-parts talk on YouTube</a>. Paul is not only funny, he's particularly insightful. He addresses what is central to businesses: not software but rather a product which, in addition to the actual software, includes training, support, certifications, updates, online services, etc.
Software only 'lives' because it 'feeds' on developers. Whether proprietary or open source, if there aren't developers anymore, the software dies out of starvation (obsolescence, incompatibilities, unattended bugs, etc). Paul argues that the developers bassin from which the software feeds is much larger and less constrained for open source software, which thus have better chances of growing and evolving. In order to attract mainstream users (e.g. large organizations) to open source geospatial software, geospatial businesses interested in living on open source must sell the full suit of services related to the 'product' they offer. Even major proprietary geospatial software companies are 'feeding' open source geospatial software with 'developer time' or financial resources, including ESRI, Google, FME and others, because their geospatial products directly benefit from open source geospatial software. I encourage you to watch Paul's 30-minutes talk on YouTube (see link above), it's worth.<p><a href="http://appdomains.slashgeo.org/article.pl?sid=09/10/22/080219&from=rss">Read more of this story</a> at Slashgeo.</p></div>
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