[OSGeo-Conf] Wanking on about FOSS4G 2010

[Eric Wolf]

I wrote this last night after mulling over the Denver LOC's loss in bidding
for FOSS4G 2010:
An interesting thing happened today. The proposal from Barcelona, Spain for
hosting the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial in 2010 won the
committees vote. Right before the election, Peter Batty and I were
attempting to understand what factors might impact the vote.

But first, a little background. Peter and I lead a group (the Denver Local
Organizing Committee – or LOC) that put together a competing proposal to
host the conference in Denver. We put together an all-star LOC from North
American geospatial bloggers, experienced industry leaders, significant FOSS
contributors, US Government researchers and academics. We teamed up with the
Geospatial Information Technology Association (GITA) who would manage the
logistics of hosting, what we estimated, would be a 1000+ attendee
conference.

In addition to our proposal and the winning proposal from Barcelona,
submissions were made from Beijing, China and Utrecht, The Netherlands. We
had a great deal of confidence going into the vote. Our proposal was very
professional and extremely well organized and directly addressed the issues
mentioned in the RFP. This was born out in the fact that we had less than
half the number of questions posed to the other bidding groups in the first
round of questions and significantly less time was spent discussing issues
with our proposal in the final IRC discussion.

We had a fantastic proposal, a great organizing committee and the support of
a well-respected organization handling the logistics. So, what happened?

Like so many coincidences in life, I happen to be preparing for my
comprehensive exams. One of the three areas I am being tested over is
"Critical Cartography". So I've been reading lots of Denis Wood, J. Brian
Harley, Denis Cosgrove, Gunar Olsson, Jeremy Crampton, etc., etc. This
reading guided part of the discussion with Peter as the votes were being
tallied.

One way to look at FOSS4G is as a resistance response to the power of
commercial software, especially ESRI's ArcGIS. Much of Harley's conception
of the map, historically, was through a Foucauldian discourse of power. Maps
reflect a position of power. Maps, historically, have been used to define
boundaries and guide wars. But, in accordance with Foucault, power cannot
truly exist without resistance. If we grant ESRI the same position of power
as Harley grants maps and cartography, then the resistance to that power is
FOSS4G.

In the US, we specifically value capitalism and commercialism. We admire, as
heroes, men like Bill Gates and Jack Dangermond. Open Source software
consistently struggles against the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt generated by
the commercial software developers. We feel the need for support structures
of technical support and legal entities to sue. Consider the roe against
Dell when they outsourced their customer service to India. Americans would
get irate if they heard someone with a foreign accent on the end of the
line. But for the rest of the world, commercial support ALWAYS has a foreign
accent – an American accent! Americans like power – and they mistake it for
security. No one ever got fired for buying IBM. And no one ever will get
fired for buying ESRI.

The Denver LOC proposed a large, commercially-focused FOSS4G 2010
conference. This proposal very much reflected the American values. Let's
find a way to marry open source with commercial interests! We'll have over a
thousand participants… and skiing!

It's my belief that the vote worked out to a debate over whether OSGeo
wanted the conference to become just another part of the American power
structure or to use it to grow the resistance where it is strongest. Even
the choice of Barcelona over Utrecht seems to support his argument.
Utrecht's proposal, like the Denver proposal, was very thorough and well
supported by both commercial and non-commercial interests. While Utrecht
would have kept the conference in Europe, it wouldn't have fostered
resistance to Western, capitalist values and the power represented by ESRI
to the same degree as much as Barcelona.

It is important to note that the Beijing organizing committee challenges
with language barriers. Further, they estimated that only 10% of the
attendees would be international. So their proposal looked much more like a
regional conference and less like the international conference OSGeo was
looking for.

The resistance to American commercial power in geospatial software is
created through the efforts of individuals and organizations. The resistance
is frequently due economic exclusion from the power of ESRI software. But
even in many corners of American academics, we see this resistance, usually
due to Redmond's inability to respond to their needs. It is appropriate that
OSGeo chose to keep FOSS4G out of America. The resistance needs to build.

So, how do we reconcile the power and resistance? Maybe America can help the
world understand the value of Free Geospatial Data while starting to listen
to the rest of the world (or even the local voices) about the utility of
FOSS4G. Maybe Americans can begin to understand that an investment in FOSS
improves the quality and capability. Perhaps FOSS does entail hiring more
intelligent IT people – but that investment pays off in the long run.

Just some thoughts… See you in Sydney in 2009 and Barcelona in 2010!
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Eric B. Wolf                          720-209-6818
USGS Geographer
Center of Excellence in GIScience
PhD Student
CU-Boulder - Geography
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