[OSGeo-Discuss] [Marketing] Proprietary GIS on our OSGeo website

[Jody Garnett]

On 20 September 2017 at 12:44, Maria Antonia Brovelli <
maria.brovelli at polimi.it> wrote:

> Jody this is not respectful of me and the community.  Might I know why the
> people working for the project want ABSOLUTELY to keep the names and links
> to proprietary software on our open source software website?
>

I feel a bit of pressure to express myself exactly correctly on this
outreach topic; or risk people missing the point ...  The outreach approach
was determined months ago when going over our target audience (literally
what the website is for). Te website was defined with these visitor
journey's in mind...

The primary audience for the website is non-community members:
- ESRI GIS Professional (GISP), IT Professionals, Academic Faculty, Academic
Students, Science and Research, Influencers & Decision makers, Software
Developers
- the communication goal is to promote awareness - asking non-community
members to consider and evaluate
- the next goal is adoption - assisting non-community members in adopting
open source
- the final foal is impress - having non-community members be enthusiastic
and advocate open source

The secondary audience is community members:
- osgeo members, partners, service providers, sponsors, contributors
- the steps awarness, adoption, impress reflect contributing to open source
- many of the community member activities are taking place on the wiki and
are happy to remain there.

With this approach in mind the website is explicitly trying help
non-community members. Our goal as an organization is to promote open
source; and making this website to reach out to non-community members is
the best way to do so.

The reason I want to keep the names (don't care about the links) is address
the needs of non-commuity website visitors. To answer the question "I use
XXX, how can you help me?"

For your two questions:
- Maria as a GeoServer lead I would like to offer "Migrate from: ArcGIS
Server", I expect other projects may (or may not) want to offer similar
guidence for non-community members.
- As for the links ... they are to wikipedia - but we can remove them or
not use them if you like.

Aside: *Yes the original bug report showed that the QGIS page had been
filled out incorrectly; I hope we can review these pages and make sure each
project team can edit once the website is hosted on OSGeo hardware.*

Anyhow, I think that the Board can express ourselves about this point. I
> remember you  that we were voted and that the people who voted me don't
> want those names and links. I'm speaking on behalf of many. In case, we
> will ask the whole community to express ourselves about that.
>

We have a balanced board, and do indeed try and provide discussion based on
the members who voted for us. Much like social pressure I do not find
pulling rank to be constructive Maria.

I would much rather we both stand down and respect the wishes of the
projects being represented (they can provide as much or as little
information on these pages as they like), and the marketing committee
performing outreach.


> I want to apologise with the people working at the website if my tone
> could have seen as rude. Who knows me, knows that I'm not a native speaker
> and sometimes my words seem to be worse than what I have in mind. I want to
> claridy that I appreciate a lot their work ( I suppose they appreciate my
> work all the same) and I thank them with all my hearth.  But absolutely I
> don't agree with this choice and I explained you also the reasons.
>

Thanks Maria I am sorry if we are having communication challenge based on
difference in language (and I am sorry for getting upset). As you know I
enjoy working with you on many of our joint activities as board members and
we have done some great things together this year.

I find the discussion productive when focus on what we want the website to
say. It will be a more effective tool as a result.




What would really help is if the board could help SAC make a decision so
this website can be deployed and everyone can work on it again. It seems
very sad to focus on one line on the project pages when the entire thing is
stalled and in danger.
--
Jody
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