[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo friendly countries to live in

[P Kishor]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Landon Blake<lblake at ksninc.com> wrote:
> Cameron wrote:
>
> " Canada looks preferable to the US. I wonder how much the Canadian
> GeoConnections program is responsible for Canada's strong OSGeo
> industry."
>
> I believe governments in Canada are much more supportive of open source
> software than governments in the United States. In my experience, the
> attitude towards open source software held by many organizations in the
> United States is still skeptical, if not hostile.
>

Well, I would make that assertion if I can back it up.

A quick check shows me that while I don't know what Whitehouse.gov
uses on the backend, it uses the open source jquery framework on the
front-end, and publishes all its content under a CC3.0 Attribution
license.

Similarly for data.gov, and its http://www.data.gov/catalog/geodata catalog.

Reminds me of the story --

Reporter sees Bill Gates' dog swimming. Next day the headlines says,
"Bill Gates' dog can't walk on water!"

My feeling is (_feeling_, not an assertion backed by evidence) that
the US govt. agencies stay out of supporting or not supporting any
particular kind of software or technology. They use what they think is
best, without creating a policy out of it, and generally let the
provider and the consumer of technologies duke it out. Of course, I
have no scientific evidence for this statement. But the proliferation
of Canadian Blackberries in the US Senate and House is a fairly decent
reflection of this.

Other govts. may choose to support a particular vendor or sector
because of various reasons -- one reason might be to make a concerted
effort to develop an alternative to US vendors and technologies.




> I believe this may be due in part to successful lobbying and marketing
> campaigns by big software companies in the US. We also seem to be more
> tolerant of software monopolies than other industrialized nations.
> Microsoft's trouble with the EU might be one example demonstrating the
> differences in attitude.
>
> Go Canada! (Home of the original JUMP desktop GIS, I might add.) :]
>
> Landon
> Office Phone Number: (209) 946-0268
> Cell Phone Number: (209) 992-0658
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
> [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Cameron Shorter
> Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2009 1:43 PM
> To: OSGeo Discussions
> Subject: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo friendly countries to live in
>
> Yves Jacolin has sliced FOSS4G <http://2009.foss4g.org/> website hits to
>
> determine the number of FOSS4G attendees per million people, broken down
>
> by country. From this, you can get a feeling for the most OSGeo tolerant
>
> populations in the world (distorted around Australia due to the
> conference location).
>
> So what can we learn?
>
>    * Japan and Mongolia are the place be in Asia
>    * Chilli is the place to be in Latin America
>    * Canada looks preferable to the US. I wonder how much the Canadian
>      GeoConnections program is responsible for Canada's strong OSGeo
>      industry.
>    * There is a lot of interest across Europe, so FOSS4G 2010 should be
>      a crowded event.
>    * Africa seems to have learned all they need to know when FOSS4G
>      attended Johannesburg last year, and won't be heading to Australia
>      in force.
>
>
> You can view the maps here:
> http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2009/08/osgeo-friendly-countries-to-l
> ive-in.html
>
> and in French on Yves blog:
> http://georezo.net/blog/geolibre/2009/08/16/geolocalisation-des-visite-d
> u-site-foss4g-2009/
>
> --
> Cameron Shorter
> Geospatial Systems Architect
> Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
> Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
>
> Think Globally, Fix Locally
> Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
> http://www.lisasoft.com
>
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>




-- 
Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org
Carbon Model http://carbonmodel.org
Charter Member, Open Source Geospatial Foundation http://www.osgeo.org
Science Commons Fellow, http://sciencecommons.org/about/whoweare/kishor
Nelson Institute, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu
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