[OSGeo-Discuss] Future perspectives for OSGeo

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 5/2/2012 1:32 PM, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
> Il 02/05/2012 19:04, Arnulf Christl (OSGeo) ha scritto:
>> We see new opportunities by starting joint activities with the Eclipse
>> foundation - which is in the process of spawning activities explicitly
>> focused on geospatial. They have lots of high level contacts but lack a
>> noteworthy community. This is where we in turn did exceptionally well,
>> we are perceived as *the* global voice for open source geospatial.
> Hi Arnulf.
> Thanks for your thoughts and work. As everybody knows, the free GIS
> community is unfortunately split, more or less deeply, in two tribes
> (C/C++ and Java). I must admit I do not know the Eclipse community very
> well, so my words could be inappropriate, but given the presumably
> strong tie between Eclipse and Java, I am slightly worried that the move
> you propose would make OSGeo perceived as more Java-inclined. Being the
> global voice, as you pointed out, is OSGeo strength, and should not be
> missed.
> All the best.
>

Paolo,

You make a very good point that we should not sway to far from being the 
global voice. And to that end and the success of OSGeo, we need to be 
inclusive. Working with a partner like Eclipse is fine, we should not 
turn it down, but likewise we need to find other partners to be successful.

I have been in too many corporation where they had a few very large 
customers and very bad things happened if they lost one of these 
customers because of the level of dependence on it. We need broad-based 
support and relationships. I would rather have 100 customers supporting 
use at $100/year than one customer giving us $10,000/year. Change the 
numbers to fit the business model but I think you get the idea. It 
would/is very hard to replace the support we are getting from AutoDesk.

Both models have their problems, but it all starts with signing up 
clients one at a time.

All the best,
   -Steve W