[OSGeo-Discuss] An OSGeo Marketplace?

[Tyler Mitchell]

I've mentioned before about the OSGeo Service Providers Directory.[1] It's nothing fancy but quite useful, especially if you're trying to get a feel for the ecosystem of providers out there. Currently there are 196 providers registered (are you?) for 25 software projects. I haven't done the country or language calculations, but I took a look at the cumulative number of service providers saying they support a given GFOSS project. I'll tidy it up eventually, but provide a rough graph for your viewing pleasure. Average 51, Max 197, Min 2:

http://bit.ly/osgeomarket

That's pretty astounding for me to see. Consider what it would have been 5 years ago before anyone even started collecting this data.

Now what I'd like to know is how many of those providers are VARs vs developers vs committers. Ohloh.net may help identify, for example, core committers. But it's more of a challenge to make the connection between developers that can provide code-level support (i.e. bug fixes, new features, as hinted at in my previous post) and those user/customers who could use the help.

I wish you could group ohloh users into companies, or that we could have a flag in the directory for the various levels of service one provides. A good project to start digging into for the next rainy day.

[1] http://osgeo.org/search_profile