<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Dear QGIS devotees<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">(With apologies for top-posting). Could I ask everyone to please to make an effort to keep discussions rational and polite. It could be a mistaken impression on my part or just cultural nuances at play, but my feeling is that in the last few months we are losing some of the grace that has been a trademark of the QGIS community. It is fine to disagree with each other’s ideas but please try to do so in a way that maintains a sense of respect to all the parties involved.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">My thoughts:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">* I would prefer that we do not use QGIS funds for payment of annual licenses for ODA.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">* Andreas could you clarify if your intention is to have a data provider that reads DWG on the fly, or a transformation tool that converts it to e.g. spatialite with embedded QML styles that reflect the original styles of the DWG data? If something like the latter then Vincent’s suggestion of building a discrete tool packaged separately from QGIS might be worth considering.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">* Just tossing ideas around, one alternative we could consider is to follow the ubuntu route - when you want to install a proprietary driver for your video card - they give the user a nice little message indicating why it might not be nice to use it and then fetch it online if they want to continue anyway. I think their model is quite good in that they provide a balance between pragmatism and a more purist approach that e.g. debian goes with. Perhaps other proprietary stuff like ECW, MrSID could also be managed in this way and we get to raise some awareness about which functionality is provided by proprietary code, and those who want a ‘pure’ FOSS QGIS experience can have it by not installing those binary blobs.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Regards</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Tim</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">On 15 Dec 2015, at 22:28, Andreas Neumann <<a href="mailto:a.neumann@carto.net" class="">a.neumann@carto.net</a>> wrote:<br class=""><br class="">Hi Vincent, Strk and others,<br class=""><br class="">First, let me know that this is my personal proposal and not the proposal of the <a href="http://qgis.org" class="">QGIS.ORG</a> board. I happen to be on the <a href="http://qgis.org" class="">QGIS.ORG</a> board, but the board did not endorse my proposal.<br class=""><br class="">Second - the open design alliance (ODA) is a non-profit organization. But - it has to find a sustainable way of funding. They need to employ people to work on reverse engineering the unspecified DWG format developed by Autodesk. While I agree with you, that it would be better if they would have memberships and still release the code in the open, this is not up for me/us to decide. Maybe - if ODA was founded today, it would have taken the route of open-sourcing their work - but back then in 1998, when it was founded - this was not the standard route to take. It is the ODA members who decide about their policies.<br class=""><br class="">So let me state: by being an ODA member I am not funding a regular proprietary software vendor, but helping to sustain the income of a non-profit organization. ODA is a self-help organization of CAD vendors and projects that need to compete or interoperate with the market leader Autodesk.<br class=""><br class="">If I had 500k Euros in my chest, I would wholeheartedly agree with you and fund the LibreDWG project to do a good job. Unfortunately this is not the reality. I even have a hard time getting the 32k necessary to pay Jürgen to implement the CAD/DWG import functionality.<br class=""><br class="">I am trying to be pragmatic. I would like to have a solution for a problem that most communal GIS managers have. Architects deliver data in DWG and DXF format and we need to review against our GIS data. We also need to integrate CAD data in our database, or use it as digitizing background, also being able to snap against CAD data sources. My employer, along with many other GIS manager on the municipality level, needs to find a timely solution with a modest budget.<br class=""><br class="">If you help me put together a fund-raising campaign to bring LibreDWG into a usable state, I am very much willing to propose LibreDWG instead of the Teigha library. Note, however, that the Teigha library is significantly more advanced than LibreDWG. It also has sustainable funding to keep it up-to-date with recent versions of DWG.<br class=""><br class="">Vincent, Strk and others - it is easy to criticize the board. But where is the alternative? Something that can be delivered within 2016? On a high quality level? With a small budget <50k Euros?<br class=""><br class="">Again - if you can help me find a real alternative I would be more than happy to follow that alternative route.<br class=""><br class="">We can decide to be hard core GPL and fight everything else - but then we will most likely remain a niche project. Or we can be pragmatic, do compromises where reasonable, without betraying our core values, and we have the chance of making a real difference for many people and organizations in a meaningful timeframe.<br class=""><br class="">This is my personal opinion,<br class="">Andreas<br class=""><br class="">On 15.12.2015 20:00, Vincent Picavet (ml) wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Hello,<br class=""><br class="">On 15/12/2015 15:37, Andreas Neumann wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Hi <a href="http://qgis.org" class="">QGIS.ORG</a> board,<br class=""><br class="">As you may be aware, Jürgen I worked on a proposal to allow import of<br class="">CAD data into QGIS. Jürgen provided an offer.<br class=""><br class="">We plan to use the Teigha library of the OpenDesign Alliance (ODA)<br class="">(<a href="https://www.opendesign.com/the_oda_platform/Teigha" class="">https://www.opendesign.com/the_oda_platform/Teigha</a>). It isn't GPL<br class="">compatible and it requires a membership fee with annual renewal.<br class=""><br class="">I was investigating whether OSGEO could become a member - this is<br class="">theoretically possible, but it would require a higher and more expensive<br class="">membership level than as if <a href="http://qgis.org" class="">QGIS.ORG</a> would become a member. I would thus<br class="">propose that <a href="http://qgis.org" class="">QGIS.ORG</a> becomes a sustaining member of the ODA, which<br class="">would allow to distribute binaries of the Teigha library for all of our<br class="">supported platforms, along with the QGIS binaries.<br class=""><br class="">Financially, the sustaining membership level would mean US $5000.- in<br class="">the first year and US $3000.- annual renewal in the subsequent years. I<br class="">would propose that <a href="http://qgis.org" class="">QGIS.ORG</a> would pay this membership fees from the<br class=""><a href="http://qgis.org" class="">QGIS.ORG</a> funds - and if you agree - will include it into our 2016<br class="">budget. See <a href="https://www.opendesign.com/Sustaining" class="">https://www.opendesign.com/Sustaining</a><br class=""></blockquote>I am really wondering where we are going to right now with <a href="http://qgis.org" class="">QGIS.Org</a>.<br class=""><br class="">I already gave my opinion that the organization should not spend money<br class="">to fund features. This is just an opinion, and I do respect that some<br class="">would not agree. It would at least need a debate first though.<br class=""><br class="">But this yet is another story. Funding directly some proprietary<br class="">software vendors ? Yearly ? Really ?<br class=""><br class="">I have no problem with QGIS plugins using some prorietary piece of code,<br class="">circumventing the GPL. But this proposal is a different beast :<br class="">* It is feature-related funding, for a quite large amount ( that's ok if<br class="">it is not <a href="http://qgis.org" class="">qgis.org</a> paying, but this should be clear)<br class="">* It would fund a proprietary software vendor ( definitly not ok)<br class="">* It would package proprietary software with default QGIS releases ( not<br class="">ok )<br class="">* It would implement a technical (ugly) workaround for licence<br class="">compatibility ( not ok in core or default installed plugin )<br class="">* It is a recurrent spending, with a very difficult way back ( removing<br class="">the user such a feature will be hard)<br class=""><br class="">Why don't you implement a separate proprietary tool with a end-user<br class="">installer, having nothing to do with <a href="http://qgis.org" class="">QGIS.org</a>, OSGeo, nor QGIS<br class="">distribution, that allows format conversion to QGIS project/data/style<br class="">files ?<br class="">We would not have to mess with proprietary software, and any<br class="">non-opensource organization could pay the money to be allowed to<br class="">distribute it. Even a simple end user could distribute this separate<br class="">tool, paying the licence fee.<br class="">But please, do not involve <a href="http://qgis.org" class="">QGIS.org</a> in this mess, we have plenty enough<br class="">with the ECW opensource-not-libre dragon.<br class=""><br class="">Or follow strk's advice and improve the libredwg library. That's the<br class="">right way to do things.<br class=""><br class="">Regards,<br class=""><br class="">Vincent<br class=""><br class="">PS : Jeff will probably not answer your queries as he resigned from<br class="">OSGeo's board<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">I will propose to make this decision dependent on our ability to raise<br class="">the 32k Euros required to pay Jürgen for the QGIS-side development. So<br class="">far I only have confirmations for about 10k Euros. Still some work to<br class="">raise the full amount.<br class=""><br class="">Do you have any questions regarding this proposal?<br class="">Thanks,<br class="">Andreas<br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">Qgis-psc mailing list<br class=""><a href="mailto:Qgis-psc@lists.osgeo.org" class="">Qgis-psc@lists.osgeo.org</a><br class="">http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-psc<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">Qgis-psc mailing list<br class=""><a href="mailto:Qgis-psc@lists.osgeo.org" class="">Qgis-psc@lists.osgeo.org</a><br class="">http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-psc<br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><div class=""><span><img height="60" width="60" apple-inline="yes" id="029F38D3-5BE5-45AC-8B76-764E407EDA10" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" src="cid:DDEF9B12-67C3-4498-BD7D-EC3563CC35A4" class=""></span><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Tim Sutton<br class="">QGIS Project Steering Committee Member<br class=""><a href="mailto:tim@qgis.org" class="">tim@qgis.org</a><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""></div><br class=""></div></body></html>