[OSGeo-Discuss] Open Technology Group, Inc. announces PostGIS & UMN MapServer Training

[Cameron Shorter]

Howard Butler wrote:
>
> On Jan 17, 2008, at 1:34 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
>> If you were to lead the development of this material and put it into 
>> the Open Source (with your name attached) this would give you extra 
>> credibility and marketing reach.
>
> Why?  Why must OTG put their hard earned training materials in the 
> public domain and give them away for free for "extra credibility"?  
> What would then be the incentive for someone to pay $$$ to go to an 
> intensive training session?  IMO, what OTG is doing is a very 
> classical business model of Open Source development.  Publishers like 
> O'Reilly, Apress, Springer or our own FOSS4G event workshops (did you 
> know FOSS4G cleared 100k this year? ;) ) follow this exact model.
>
In answer: OTG doesn't need to put training material into Public Domain, 
same as software companies don't need to put software into Open Source.
However, I'd hope that companies would see a good business case for open 
data and open documentation for the same reasons we write Open Source 
Software. And OSS users would be receptive to Open Documentation 
business models.


-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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