[OSGeo-Discuss] Future perspectives for OSGeo

[Ari Jolma]

On 05/02/2012 08:32 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.

Come on, we're split in much more ways that just C++ and Java. I'm in a 
not very visible (and degrowing?) tribe called Perl hackers (I don't say 
anything about Python users) and split between Windows (dot spatial 
what?) and Linux tribes. Now again more in the Linux tribe thanks to 
virtual machine technology.

But rather than issues that separate us I think there are more of those 
uniting us. Also, technologies (Standards, Swig, porting, multilingual 
virtual machines, standards, ...) for overcoming the moats should be 
supported and used.

I think talking to other FOSS organizations and foundations is a very 
welcome idea. Kudos to those who made the connection to Eclipse.

Cheers,

Ari