[OSGeo-Discuss] Any plan for improving "Service Providers"?

[Frank Warmerdam]

Yves Jacolin (free) wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Anyone could tell me it there are any plan for improving the Service Provider 
> [1] ?
> 
> For instance, add more information about service provided by each company like 
> formation, support, custom dev, development of OSGeo application, etc.

Yves,

There was a plan to add indicators for service providers that had
contributed back to the community in a variety of ways (sponsorships,
supporting projects with developers, etc), but it never was implemented.

   http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SPD_Prioritization

I have tried to avoid attempting to describe services in too much detail
within the application itself, and instead *hoped* that organizations would
provide a landing page that gave a good description of their services
appropriate to people coming from the service provider directory.

Organizations provide a wide set of services, and it is hard to describe
them consistently for searching purposes.  I think it is better to see the
SPD as giving pointers to service providers that the searcher can then
research more deeply using other mechanisms.

Also, keep in mind that we do not currently vette organizations and the more
complicated the classification the more inconsistently it is likely to be
applied.  We already have the problems that service providers which to list
lots of countries where they are willing to operate while we really want that
field to indicate countries where they have existing staff on the ground
in an office.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent