[OSGeo-Discuss] overall value of market for business based on OSGEO projects?

[María Arias de Reyna]

HI,

On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 7:53 AM, Andrea Giacomelli <pibinko at gmail.com> wrote:
> A simple way of getting the number is simply checking the revenue of the key
> companies involved in the business.

I can't agree with this. That can work on closed software environment,
but on free libre software it is much more complicated.

As a start: what is a "key" company? A big one? Like Red Hat? I doubt
that we have anything like that on geospatial software. We have
companies involved with OSGEO in several degrees, but I don't think
that we have a small group of companies that represents all the osgeo
world.

The reason is very simple: there are a lot of medium and small
companies working with OSGEO software. Companies that you may never
hear about, even if you are very active here or on the conferences,
because they focus on the development and not on the community. Also,
there are a lot of other companies that combine close and free
software. How do you calculate revenue there?

In my opionion, if you really want something like this, I guess that
you will have to invest a lot of time studying the market, asking
hundreds of companies to get a more or less good estimate.

Regards,
María.