[OSGeo-Discuss] Is the integration of FOSS4G and proprietary software good for FOSS4G?

[Brian Russo]

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 2:28 AM, Miguel Montesinos
<mmontesinos at prodevelop.es> wrote:
>
> 1) Do you think that it may avoid proprietary users to migrate to open
> solutions, as they can benefit of open-source libraries under their
> proprietary software?

It's overwhelmingly a good thing.

If people are using proprietary software that incorporates open source
libraries.. then they are using both open source AND proprietary
software components. "100% open source" purists (in my opinion)
alienate themselves from a large portion of the community. There are
many practical reasons to use proprietary software, I don't see it as
something that ever gets 100% eliminated (in an realistic timeline
relevant to me).

> Besides, this give arguments to proprietary
> manufacturers because of the weakness of open-source software needing to
> run on top of proprietary ones, or to sell out their compatibility with
> FOSS4G.

No more than an argument that proprietary software is weak for
'needing' to leverage open source. And how is selling compatibility
with FOSS4G bad? Isn't that the goal?



-- 
Brian Russo / (808) 271 4166