[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo barriers to entry

[Frank Warmerdam]

Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Tyler Mitchell wrote:
>> Perhaps we can turn the thread to discussing what are the real or 
>> perceived barriers people, in general, find to getting involved with 
>> OSGeo.   I'm sure that any barriers women would have might also affect 
>> others, so it might be useful to broaden the discussion so more 
>> participate.
>>
>> 1 What barriers are there to joining OSGeo and its projects?
> Getting paid tends to be a big one.
> 
> Seriously.  Most of the successful open source projects I'm familiar 
> with involved salaries or other work-related support.
> 
> - University researchers working on grants (Apache)
> 
> - Students working on thesis material (Linux)
> 
> - IT staff developing software as part of their work, then open sourcing 
> the software as a way to reduce ongoing support costs (Sympa)
> 
> - Corporate developers open sourcing code to expand a user base (Erlang)
> 
> - Government contractors working working on an SBIR contract (one of our 
> current projects)
> 
> - etc.
> 
> Labors of love are fun, but ultimately most people have to pay the bills.
> I guess that leads to a central question:  What are the day jobs of the 
> core developers associated with OSGeo projects, to what extent are those 
> developers paid to work on the projects, and what are the business 
> reasons of their employers for doing so?

Miles,

Certainly all of the above tend to apply to many people contributing
to OSGeo projects.  Certainly the bulk of my work on GDAL, and MapServer
is client funded.  I know that most of the contributors to GDAL and
MapServer have at least some of their time funded.  Likewise many of
the other projects though my knowledge gets thinner on some of them.

I think one challenge is to get people who have funded time to work on
specific features into broader involvement with the projects and
OSGeo in general.

Best regards,
-- 
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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