[OSGeo-Discuss] project not found in list

[Tim Bowden]

On Tue, 2013-05-21 at 11:01 -0300, Jeff McKenna wrote:
> Hi Adrian, comments below:
> 
> On 2013-05-19 11:50 PM, Adrian Custer wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Yes, OSGeo has been primarily focused on its own projects and
> > historically has been weak at recognizing and promoting other efforts.
<snip>
> > 
> > OSGeo is one player among many others and is slowly being forced to
> > recognize that. OSGeo might eventually change from seeing its role as
> > promoting itself and its projects to taking on an expanded role of
> > promoting all the geospatial software that provides its users with
> > various freedoms...
<snip>
> ...What does this tell us?  It tells us that yes there are many groups out
> there in the geospatial world, but, through the hard work of the OSGeo
> community since 2006, OSGeo has become the leader in Open Source
> geospatial today, and the other groups realize this.

Interesting discussion.  This reminds me of when GPSbabel came knocking
on OSGeo's door looking for a home and we didn't know how to respond;
imho OSGeo dropped the ball on that one (maybe because it came a bit
early in the story for us).  For me that was one of those future
signposts in time events.

I think OSGeo does need to find a way to be more inclusive of 'outside'
projects that reflects OSGeo's leadership in the FOSS spatial realm.  I
don't think that should be at the expense of the 'foundation' role for
OSGeo projects, but there is a very real challenge there if OSGeo wants
to rise to the challenge of being the dominant player in FOSS spatial.
I fear the alternative is to one day wake up and discover OSGeo is 'just
another foundation', not because anyone else has taken up the wider FOSS
spatial advocacy role, but because we've shied away from it.

Regards,
Tim Bowden