[Board] New Mexico OSGeo Chapter

[Arnulf Christl]

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> 
> Folks,
> 
> We have received a letter of intent to form a New Mexico OSGeo
> chapter (attached).  I have put this on the agenda for the next
> board meeting, tentatively scheduled for Feb. 2nd.
> 
> Best regards,

Hi,
going through the document I have a few remarks and questions. 

Use of the term "commercial" as opposed to "Open Source" is a classical misleading interpretation of Free Software and should be pointed out to them. 

"The engineering and mapping firm, Bohannan-Huston, Inc. (BHI), would like to create open source tools to replace commercial photogrammetry software..."


I checked the site http://www.bhinc.com/search/collection_search_action.cfm and there is no Open Source to be seen anywhere. Yet. But this page is the core from which it will spawn: http://www.bhinc.com/sd/technology.cfm and I am thrilled at having them put the OSGeo logo there and start to wriggle into Open Sourcing what they do. 

Who will talk to them about sponsoring? This ties directly into the local sponsorship discussion Venka and others have brought up. 

I propose to have someone knowledgeable about Free Software Business models go there and consult them so that they do not get frustrated by stepping into every pit hole that is on the way. This is part of OSGeo's mission that we are neglecting completely imnsho. We (the WhereGroup) are offering this as commercial service to companies here in Europe so that OSGeo should be careful how to frame this so that it does not collide with business interests of its members. Wait - there are not enterprise members at all, so no conflict?!. Actually me myself as an OSGeo individual member could do this for free as a service provided by OSGeo but I also do it as a consultant for cost. Any ideas how to resolve this?


OSGeo has not yet resolved what membership means. The emerging New Mexico, USA Chapter wants to "draw members mainly from the state of New Mexico...". OSGeo needs to address its membership issue in order to be able to advise its Local Chapters. Maybe we can revert processes and have them advise us on how to do it so we finally get over it. 


>From what I can see they are planning to set up their own server and infrastructure. In my understanding this is one of the prime benefits that OSGeo can actually provide for? It will give them a considerable head start over doing it all by themselves. Again, I do not want to undermine what they have done / are about to do but I think it is not necessary. 


I am missing the Open Source aspect a little in what they want to offer for download: "We also will provide a download site for miscellaneous open source geospatial utilities written by core and any non-members. These include anything from Excel spreadsheets containing useful formulas to ArcView 3.2 extensions to AutoCAD LISP routines". 

:-)

Don't get me wrong, this is all cool and I am fully supportive but "we" now have to get active and actually talk to them and explain a few things and channel their energies. 

In VisCom we have the "Event Owner" concept, in Incubation we have "Mentors" but we fail completely for businesses. 

Regards, Arnulf.