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

[Allan Doyle]

+1 on no "advertising" or "announcements" on this list. I agree that  
it may sound churlish to stop good organizations from sending good  
information to good people; I also agree that allowing it would  
diminish the usefulness of this list. If the web page of offerings is  
not enough, then maybe set up a separate list for that kind of thing.

+1 on Arnulf's analysis of freely provided course materials. MIT  
started the Open Course Ware (OCW) movement a few years ago[1] and it  
certainly has not cut back on MIT's ability to attract "customers",  
i.e. students. In fact, it has spawned a mini-industry of other  
universities putting their materials online[2].

	Allan

[1] http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
[2] http://www.ocwconsortium.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=26


On Jan 18, 2008, at 7:58 AM, Arnulf Christl wrote:

> 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?
>
> Entrepreneurs, we have thoroughly analyzed this aspect over the past  
> years and come to the conclusion that publishing course material  
> openly is not detrimental to earning money. Quite the contrary it  
> even helps us making more business. The added value is generated at  
> several levels including both hard cash and marketing (find out  
> details below). As active FOSSGIS software contributors we are happy  
> to foster and promote the projects that we are involved with. In  
> some cases (for example MapServer and PostGIS) this is the only way  
> that we can give back our 2Ct contribution.
> To better understand the involved factors we have studied uses cases  
> in detail. First we have grouped our clients into three distinct  
> categories who *use* our course material, these are: * Experts
> * Students
> * Professionals
>
> Then we have identified three distinct groups who *profit* from  
> having course material released under an open and free license.  
> These are: * Clients (~users, as categorized  above) * Creators (for  
> example the WhereGroup or Chandler OTG who produce "Intellectual  
> Property") * the FOSSGIS project and communities that are in the  
> focus of the training material (here MapServer and PostGIS).
>
> A multidimensional matrix would probably make this transparent but  
> unfortunately I am too dumb to create it and will need to use words  
> to explain the dependencies.
> 1. Real Experts (hackers, nerds, freaks). They would never pay for  
> our courses because they are too damn smart. They wont offer courses  
> themselves (which would be detrimental to our business) because it  
> would bore them to death. But they still profit from having access  
> to material because it will speed up understanding the corresponding  
> FOSSGIS project. This will make them choose this project one over  
> another one because good developers are also lazy. This is good for  
> the FOSSGIS project and community because those people listen to  
> what those real experts have to say, recommend, etc. Hard to measure  
> - but unquestionably there.
> 2. Students. They will not be able to pay our rates anyway, so we do  
> not loose anything if we give them the material for free. Quite the  
> contrary, when those students leave school and come into a position  
> where they have to decide where to go - who you'r gonna ask -  
> Ghostbusters. This is a long term strategy that only market leaders  
> can follow. Corporations Besides that students can potentially also  
> enhance the course material, keep it up to date, etc. But only if it  
> is available under a FOSS license, etc. This currently does not  
> happen because universities and educational personnel are still in  
> the late sixties wrt their knowledge about Open Source but so what.  
> We have to be patient. Eventually the old farts who don't get it  
> will be replaced by those that we have helped educate with our  
> freely available course material and Bingo! If you lock your  
> training material away and treat it as "Intellectual Property" you  
> will be the only idiot who invests keeping it up to date. Why not  
> exploit those who are prepared to give (FOSS4G 08, Keynote by Damian  
> Conway)?
>
> 3. Professionals: Those are the ones that pay us money. They have a  
> problem on their hand, a budget to solve it and limited time. These  
> are the ones we love, we live off them. They would never bother to  
> try and learn by themselves with freely available material because  
> they have the resources to do it professionally and get somebody to  
> explain it to them. They don't have the time to learn it by  
> themselves. If they don't have the budget, they are not interesting  
> to us anyway.
> All folks from these three groups will see who created the course  
> material and will memorize them as the experts on the topic. The GNU  
> FDL license has a clause where invariant sections can be defined,  
> typically this could be the front page and back cover, there you can  
> find the authors, company logo and web site links or the creators'  
> individual address, contacts. Link to the repository where the  
> document is maintained, mailing list or whatever you want to  
> advertise as important for this publication.
> Therefore our competitors who offer the same training courses with  
> our material (Outrageous! My "Property") always advertise us as the  
> real real experts. Who're you gonna ask if you really wanna know?
> Lastly - and so important that I cannot stress this enough -  
> obviously the Software Project is going to profit. Because the  
> largest open gash in FOSS' outward image is missing, rotten and  
> wrong documentation and training materials. If you miss that people  
> don't want you and go elsewhere. This is why EduCom is so important  
> to OSGeo (intellectual cross post).
>
> My usual rate for this kind of consultancy is €145,- per hour plus  
> taxes. Writing this mail took me one hour (finding out the detail  
> took a little while longer though). From an OSGeo perspective all  
> this amounts to just a little more than 1€Ct because the greenback  
> unfortunately is so bad these days... This is frustrating and makes  
> one wonder why to produce anything for free.
> I probably missed some things and got others wrong because I am just  
> a professional and not an expert. If you are an expert and know  
> which parts I got wrong, please let me know - then I can also profit  
> from this discussion. If it gets us anywhere we could also add this  
> to the Wiki.
>
>> 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.
>> The fact that OTG sees an opportunity to do this and has put forth  
>> effort in developing materials is a signal there's a market there  
>> and it is an indirect measurement of those projects' success -- not  
>> a failure of the projects' documentation efforts.  Not everyone has  
>> the time to go learn all of this stuff on their own or the ability  
>> to travel to FOSS4G and hope one of the workshops covers what they  
>> need.  I applaud OTG for developing a curriculum and providing  
>> training services to serve this market, and I think the osgeo- 
>> discuss is a perfect place for an announcement like this.
>> Howard
>
> Does this mean that all businesses providing this kind of service  
> should now spam this list with their latest announcements? Maybe we  
> can add an announcement feature to the SPD which appears in the news  
> section for a few days? I just added a link to the EPR project  
> OpenBravo (little content but looks professional) as a new reference  
> site of how the SPD can be integrated into OSGeo's portal pages:
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/SPD_Prioritization
>
> Best regards, Arnulf.
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