OSGeo foundation statement about publicgeodata

[Markus Neteler]

Dear Jo (you are traveling now)
dear all,
(I cc to board to get some comments before the next
meeting)

On 3/3/06, Jo Walsh <jo at frot.org> wrote:
> dear Markus,
>
> On Fri, Mar 03, 2006 at 12:04:43AM +0100, Markus Neteler wrote:
> > I have drafted a statement. Please take some minutes to work
> > on it (it's a wiki):
> > http://www.fossgis.de/osgeo/index.php/Statement_support_publicgeodata
>
> Schuyler kindly volunteered to have an edit pass over this, he made
> the contents a bit more linear, and they read better.

great, I have seen it.

> I guess "next steps" with this involve, what do we (publicgeodata)
> want to use this statement for? If it's going on the publicgeodata.org
> website as a testimony, then we can probably remove some of the
> wording which explains what INSPIRE is, the background detail etc, say
> first half of paragraph 3 and most of paragraph 4 and then it would be
> a good length.

I think that you could, once accepted by the board, also cite
fractions of the statement. Of course the statement should be
not too long in general.

> I don't know if it's worth talking about the US/Canadian top-heaviness
> of activity in the open source geo scene... the fact that a lot of
> companies (dm, refractions, topozone, etc) are making good money out
> of services most of which are built on open access data... or about
> how governments there are funding open source software development on
> open standards as a cost saving/public investment measure ... again,
> our cause is best supported by hard numbers about what value is being
> generated / cost is being saved, there are only a few sources of them.

I agree with the need of hard numbers (maybe we can write
to the discuss  ML to get more input?), but I don't think that
the open source geo scene is basically a US/Canadian business.
Maybe the European/other companies are only less visible.

If you mean data business, you are absolutely right.

> If we use this in a press release, and push it about a bit, then it
> would be good to carry messages that OSGeo wants to push forward
> too...
>
> jo
>

Dear board - suggestions are welcome.

Markus