[OSGeo-Discuss] Is it possible for proprietary GIS vendor to market their proprietary product as Open ?

[Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX)]

There is CopyLeft which is the purest form of ‘open source’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft

Then there is the ‘Cathedral and the Bazaar’ [essay] for a considering how process-and-chaos vie as community reaches for fruition.

To my mind, the ‘core’ platforms for communication must be CopyLeft. We need to maximize the essentials for exchange of ideas, our franca lingua.

But, like Jody suggests, value-added should be free to be open ^or^ proprietary. But, but with ‘open’ always able to challenge ‘proprietary’ for true value-added.

Our world needs both, open and proprietary, with ability for ‘open’ to challenge ‘proprietary’ never to be compromised. In this way we can unleash small and medium enterprise to all kinds of spectacular and innovative solutions.

Caveat: For our collective intellect to accelerate at the speed of enlightenment, we need maximum and fully open education for every kid on this planet. That is if we care enough to invest in our greatest natural resource, our children. Not to mention a beautifully ‘open’ tomorrow for ourselves, as oldies but goodies. ;-)

For a light-hearted semordnilap, there is no nepo-tism in open!

As for the Android Tower of Babel, how to fix? Would CopyLeft have forced a more collective approach?
The question I ask is, why doesn’t Linux have a world-class GUI, so the darn thing would be more friendly to app development!
Is it the Cathedral and Bazaar syndrome?

-Patrick Bonobo

From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Jody Garnett
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2017 6:53 PM
To: Suchith Anand
Cc: discuss at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Is it possible for proprietary GIS vendor to market their proprietary product as Open ?

Considering android is marketed as open, yes this is possible in our industry as well :)

Keep in mind we have several definitions of "open", even "open source" does not match the same meaning of open advocated by the free software foundation.

In our industry specifically we have open standards, allowing many proprietary (and open source) products to be marketed as "open" (in the sense that they support a standard allowing integration in a larger systems).

By the same token a proprietary vendor can define an API with license terms allowing customers and third-party vendors to create additional functionality that extends their software. This is the meaning of "open platform" I think you are referring to. There is a lot more meaning behind "open platform" though, ideally you have a way for those third-party vendors to turn a profit thus motivating their continued participation in your platform.

This is a rough-and-tumble competition - we can no longer use the short hand "open" to capture what we do here at OSGeo. We are going to have to wade into these debates with a strong story and clear examples from our community. We should also expect platforms to be built up around our open source projects (say Carto being built around PostGIS). This is a great way to ensure these projects stay viable, as long as we keep everyone involved sufficiently encouraged/valued/funded.

Oh and to answer your question, the mislead customers may of confused "open source" with "open platform". If we want the distinction clear in the market we need to use organizations such as OSGeo to push that message.

--
Jody Garnett

On 22 March 2017 at 13:15, Suchith Anand <Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk>> wrote:


Hi all,


I have a query. If a proprietary GIS vendor starts marketing their proprietary products as Open platform and software then what rights do the organisations and customers have who are misled buying the proprietary software thinking it is open have? The definition of Proprietary software [1] is very clearly defined, so how can it be possible for any proprietary GIS vendor to market their software knowingly as open platform if it is proprietary?


This also greatly affects the business and revenues of true open source software companies. Who is responsible for any misleading marketing that results in losses to both customers who are misled to buy the proprietary software thinking it is open and also to other companies who do true open source business who lose out on the business opportunities? Is it right business ethics to do this?


Best wishes,
Suchith

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_software
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20170323/e7ba3603/attachment.html>