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<p>Hi Andreas, (& All),<br>
A fair point, but I believe this is an important point and this
year I do have data to back up my point; in fact the grant program
is what motivated me to finally get around to doing this analysis.<br>
<br>
It seems from the replies that while there are a few
differentiators, the key one is indeed cartography and styling.
(There's also an interesting conversation about vectors going on
there too). Some thoughts:<br>
* The vast majority of WMS/WMTS layers are not cartographically
complicated, let alone beautiful. They're "here is a layer with
small green points for trees", and "this polygon represents
conservation areas". You can easily play around and see what's out
there here: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.geoseer.net/api-demo/">http://www.geoseer.net/api-demo/</a><br>
* WFS/WCS can't be styled server side.<br>
* It seems like overkill to create and maintain an entire server
distribution that fundamentally only solves one (relatively simple
compared to what QGIS Desktop can do) problem.<br>
* Rendering is only one part the QGIS package (Analysis,
digitisation, management, etc.).<br>
<br>
If I'm honest, the "competition" on this point isn't really
between QGIS and MapServer/GeoServer. It's really between QGIS and
ArcGIS. Because ArcGIS does exactly what QGIS Server seeks to do:
offer a single integrated solution for Desktop-> Server. And
certainly ArcGIS Server does have a huge number of deployments
(53%), however again, there really aren't many cartographically
complicated outputs on there. And despite the huge number of
deployments, most services and datasets are actually served by
MapServer/GeoServer (about 60% of datasets between them!).
Basically ArcGIS is deployed by local government and used for
bitty-stuff ("here are our fire stations"), but if you want a real
data-service then you go with GeoServer/MapServer/etc.<br>
<br>
Most importantly though, I think I haven't conveyed my core point
well: this really is a zero sum game!<br>
Even allowing for the above, any funds spent on QGIS Server are
not spent on QGIS Desktop. There are 60 public facing QGIS Server
deployments. Even assuming that there's a ratio of 10:1 for
private/public servers (made up ratio, feels too high), any
funding on QGIS Server benefits only hundreds, or being very
generous, maybe low-thousands number of users. Funding on QGIS
Desktop however benefits as a *minimum* tens of thousands,
potentially millions of users (no idea how many QGIS installs
there are, I can't find the download-stats I remember seeing in
the past).<br>
Heck, even pretending for a second QGIS Server had 100% of the
deployments (a 100 fold increase!), there would /still/ be orders
of magnitude more people using the not-Server parts of QGIS
Desktop by its very nature.<br>
<br>
There are 3,102 open issues on the QGIS issue tracker. 95 are
labelled regressions, 137 are "high priority", and 92 are
"crash/data corruption". Just 49 are "Server". I'm not seeking to
denigrate the project here; QGIS is a extremely complex tool that
is an amazing accomplishment and by its nature it will have bugs.
I raise these numbers to highlight that any money spent on Grants
to Server (and yes new Desktop features) is money that isn't spent
fixing these (I'm aware of the bug-fixing fund). Something I think
the grant voters should be cognizant of.<br>
<br>
Hope that clarifies,<br>
I'll step back now. :-)<br>
Cheers,<br>
Jonathan<br>
<br>
<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 09/06/2020 08:09, Andreas Neumann
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:60678ac8bb517e0ca643ab028ba4e63f@carto.net">Hi Jonathan,
<br>
You keep repeating yourself. You started the exact same discussion
a
<br>
year ago. <br>
You have a valid point, of course, I don't argue that. But if you
think
<br>
about small organizations that do not have a lot of personal (or
<br>
financial) resources, it would be a lot of burden to invest twice
the
<br>
time in styling: once for QGIS desktop and another time again for
UMN
<br>
mapserver and Geoserver. Even if SLD output from QGIS improved
(also
<br>
thanks to efforts of Andrea Aime and others), it still can't
transport
<br>
everything. If it would, then I would better agree with your
argument. <br>
For such smaller organization, speed (and I know that UMN and
Geoserver
<br>
are a bit faster than QGIS server) is not the only important thing
- it
<br>
is also their personal and financial resources and complexity of
their
<br>
software landscape. <br>
And QGIS server has some other unique selling points: the
proprietary
<br>
GetPrint command that doesn't have a match in Geoserver or UMN,
the
<br>
ability to create Atlases from server, and who knows, in the
future
<br>
perhaps QGIS server can run processing models. <br>
Greetings, <br>
Andreas <br>
On 2020-06-08 22:42, Jonathan Moules wrote:
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Hi List,
<br>
Some of you may have seen my blog post on the OSGeo-Discuss list
about which mapping servers are the most deployed. For those who
haven't seen it, QGIS Server has about 60 public deployments (1%
of all of them), and it serves 11,924 datasets (0.5% of all
public geospatial WMS/WFS/WCS/WMTS datasets).
<br>
<br>
Potentially controversial here and I appreciate it's not a
competition, but given the low uptake of QGIS Server compared to
other Open Source offerings (GeoServer: 964 deployments, 963,603
datasets; MapServer: 544 deployments, 389,709 datasets), is QGIS
Server something the grant program should be funding? There are
three Server proposals totalling EUR10,000, 22% of the fund.
<br>
<br>
Now, before you get the pitchforks out(!), please consider the
following:
<br>
<br>
* Zero sum game - Any money spent on QGIS Server cannot be spent
on QGIS Desktop. (The grants mostly aren't things that will
improve the shared QGIS Core). (This reasoning also follows
through to OSGeo funds).
<br>
<br>
* Multiple solutions - Open Source (and OSGeo) already has a
very healthy ecosystem of mapping servers - does it need another
one?
<br>
<br>
* Limited number of users benefited - I don't have stats for it,
but QGIS Desktop is probably the most popular Open Source
Desktop GIS, and is certainly going to have many orders of
magnitude more users than QGIS Server.
<br>
<br>
* Playing to your strengths - QGIS' strength is it's Desktop and
it's generally good practice to play to your strengths.
<br>
<br>
So given the above, and that QGIS is already "winning" as an
Open Source Desktop (great job!), I'd like to suggest it's not a
good idea to dilute the limited resources by spending them on
QGIS Server. Instead it seems that far more people would benefit
if that money was spent on Desktop, especially the bug fixing
programme.
<br>
<br>
Or alternatively, given the "Unique Selling Point" of QGIS
Server is its integration with QGIS Desktop, those resources
could be used to further improve interoperability with
GeoServer/MapServer/deegree/etc. Those are all successful mature
OSGeo projects that excel at serving maps, have an architecture
designed for it, and already have huge install bases.
<br>
<br>
TLDR: QGIS excels at being a Desktop, and I'd like to suggest it
should play to its strengths and focus its limited funds there
to benefit the most users.
<br>
<br>
I shall now retreat to my bunker. :-)
<br>
<br>
Cheers,
<br>
Jonathan
<br>
<br>
Note: The above only applies to the Grant program and funding;
how developers wish to spend their time, and on which projects
is of course their own prerogative.
<br>
<br>
(Disclosure: I have no horse in this race; I don't run or
administer any mapping servers, but I have done GeoServer in the
past.)
<br>
<br>
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