[OSGeo-Discuss] Re: [postgis-users] A bit off topic, but FOSSGIS clients...

[Miguel Montesinos]

Markus Lupp said:
 
>Paul Ramsey schrieb:
>>> Also, wasn't there a FOSS4G presentation about
>>> consulting as a way to further FOSS GIS development
>>> and make a living at it as well?
>>
>> Bit of a myth, as far as I can tell.  This open source technology
>> wedge is still so small that the business opportunities remain
>> relatively tiny, particularly in North America, where the technology
>> base is so homogenous and the mental lock-in to a vendor-led mentality
>> so strong.
>>
>Not a myth in Europe (or to be more precise, at least in Germany). There
>is a number of (growing) companies that have FOSS GIS consulting
>business models and do pretty well.

I would say that in other european countries, FOSSGIS don't have so much presence as it happens in Germany. In Spain, there are a good number of companies making money out of FOSSGIS (maybe less than in Germany), but it's not the same (I think) in other countries like UK, Italy,.. Am I wrong?
 
Paul Ramsey said:
 
>"Everyone should drop their projects and work on uDig."  But all the 
>gvSIG developers are supported by funding from Spanish government 
>that requires all the work be GPL; and they also prefer a pure Java 
>implementation to the SWT/Eclipse implementation that uDig uses.  And 
>the OpenJUMP people have an existing rich set of editing tools that 
>are not easily portable to the uDig application model. Are they going 
>to throw away all their existing functionality to move to another 
>platform?  Why?  OpenJUMP works fine for them.

I agree Paul. Diversity is richness. Every community may have its place under the sun. Otherwise, it's true that is a pity not sharing more resources on common tasks.
Regarding gvSIG, GPL is a *must* for the project. Other things about technology (like Swing vs.SWT) are just decissions made in a moment under some constraints, and as all technical decissions, must be open to change if necessary.
 
Regarding merges, I prefer some approaches like the case of openLayers and other WebMapping projects. I think that pure merges do not exist, it's usually a project taking over another one, or a project moving to a new one.
 
And just a quote. 70% of gvSIG funding come from European Union, and they do not require a special license, it's a decission of the PSC.
 
Oh, and I agree Andrea, fun is the only way to produce good software, and specially good open-source softwre.
 
Regards,
 
---------------------------------
Miguel Montesinos
Technical Manager
PRODEVELOP
C/ Conde Salvatierra, 34 - 10
46004 Valencia. Spain
e-mail: mmontesinos at prodevelop.es
http://www.prodevelop.es <https://www.prodevelop.es/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.prodevelop.es> 
Tlf: +34 963510612

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