[Board] Some food for thought from Directions magazine ahead of our board meeting

[Tim Schaub]

On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 10:40 AM, seven at arnulf.us <seven at arnulf.us> wrote:
> On 01/03/2012 02:19 PM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:
>> I heard this too, but never got around to writing anything down about
>> it.  My quick thought was that OpenGeo’s charter is (I claim)
>> fundamentally different from what OSGeo’s charter is/should be -- I
>> don’t see any there is or should be any “competition” between the two
>> groups.
>
> Folks,
> I do not really like the idea of calling OSGeo and OpenGeo both a
> "group" as if they were anything that you can compare. They are not
> comparable, they do different things with different goals but they can
> profit from each other and they collaborate.
>
> Unfortunately OpenGeo chose to choose a name and TLD that is meant to cause
> confusion - but nothing much we can do about this.

It's common practice in the US for 501(c)(3) to register .org domains.
 OpenGeo is a division of OpenPlans, a nonprofit corporation.  Please
rest assured that registering for a .org domain name was in no way
"meant to cause confusion."

I typically refrain from responding to jabs like this, but I don't
want the misstatements to be perpetuated.

>> It would be a useful exercise for the meeting to try and agree on a
>> “response” to their statement quoted below.  Not for publication or
>> anything like that, but rather just using their quote as a strawman
>> position for exploring the design space.
>>
>
> Yes. My first knee jerk reaction actually was to congratulate us because if
> there is no more need for OSGeo it means we have done our job. :-) Albeit I
> do not quite believe that yet.
>
> So instead we should take this as constructive input and work on how we can
> improve our outward facing vision.
>
> Looking forward to do some good work in the two days, and good to see Aaron
> and Paul join us.
>
> Cheers,
> Arnulf.
>
>>
>> -mpg
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:*board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
>> [mailto:board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] *On Behalf Of *Peter Batty
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, January 03, 2012 11:06 AM
>> *To:* board at lists.osgeo.org
>> *Subject:* [Board] Some food for thought from Directions magazine ahead
>> of our board meeting
>>
>>
>>
>> I don't know if any of you have listened to this podcast from Adena and
>> Joe at Directions magazine, with their predictions for 2012:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.directionsmag.com/podcasts/podcast-predictions-for-the-geospatial-marketplace-2012/219405
>>
>>
>>
>> They talk about open source starting at around 13:30. The interesting
>> thing is that they predict that OpenGeo will "become the go to company
>> for information about open source tools ... it doesn't seem like OSGeo,
>> which had been that leader before, is taking on that role."
>>
>>
>>
>> Now I don't always agree with Joe and Adena, and I've told them that on
>> occasion :), but they are widely listened to in the broader geospatial
>> world, and their views are probably representative of a lot of folks in
>> that space. And I can see where they're coming from to some extent -
>> part of it probably relates to letting Tyler go, and part of it I think
>> is that (IMO) we are not doing enough to get the word out about open
>> source to the broader geospatial community (which of course will be a
>> topic of conversation in Seattle). I might try to connect with Joe
>> and/or Adena before we meet to talk more about their perspectives (in
>> particular Joe said he was disappointed in FOSS4G - I suspect that he
>> felt it was too technical with not enough content for newcomers, and in
>> that regard it's a shame he didn't attend the newcomer day which I think
>> he would have got more out of, but it would be interesting to chat in
>> more detail about his thoughts).
>>
>>
>>
>> I plan to write more on my thoughts about our strategy etc before
>> Seattle, and encourage others to do the same, but thought this was worth
>> sharing just as an input to the thought process.
>>
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>>     Peter.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Board at lists.osgeo.org
>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/board
>
>
> --
> President, OSGeo
> http://www.osgeo.org
>
>
>
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-- 
Tim Schaub
OpenGeo http://opengeo.org/
Expert service straight from the developers.