[Board] notice: SAC approval of Request for Services for OSGeo4W project

[Arnulf Christl]

On Fri, March 28, 2008 16:34, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Jeff McKenna wrote:
>
>> Board,
>>
>>
>> SAC has voted to approve a Request for Services for the OSGeo4W
>> project. Shawn Barnes has volunteered to be the administrator for the
>> new Trac and SVN instances.
>
> Folks,
>
>
> To clarify this is our notice of opportunity to object to SAC providing
> hosting for the OSGeo4W project (for instance on legal, or strategic
> grounds).
>
> OSGeo4W is an win32 installer for a variety of OSGeo and other FOSS
> project software.  Principle contributors include myself, Jeff, and
> Assefa.  You can
> read more about it at:
>
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo4W
>
>
> Best regards,

The only argument that I have against this project is that it furthers and
promotes the use of Windows as a platform. Microsoft still being one of
the prime opposing voices to Open Source (although a lot more moderately
nowadays) does make me wonder why we would want to support it - especially
with an extra effort.

I felt the need to clarify that I definitely favor a solution that will
promote FOSS beyond our primary target.

Having said this I vote +1 for SAC to go ahead because our mission is not
to fight proprietary operating system platforms but to promote free
geospatial. Many potential users are still tied to Windows for reasons
beyond their influence and denying them spatial FOSS would be detrimental
to our mission.

OSGeo should look into officially endorsing this project because it will
help people to get it past the gate of their data center if they can point
to an authority. It will also be a good argument when working with
restricted architectures that abhor anything not distributed by a major
label.

Best regards & have a nice weekend,

-- 
Arnulf Christl
http://www.wheregroup.com