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

[Andy Turner]

Hi,

It is possible to come up with a set of tasks and tests used to confirm and classify what software are capable of. Working out what is included and how this is included is non-trivial and I think this is in the domain of the Open Geospatial Consortium and the standards defining organisations generally. Sorry, I've not been engaging there of late, but when I did interoperability was the primary goal and standardisation of data and services and how to use the services was key. Anyway, there can be other descriptors of software/services too, like the nature of the user interfaces (whether there are optional GUI/command line/whether things operate via web protocols and indeed whether it is more a single desktop application or something that has more of a client/server architecture, whether it is modular, whether there is an API (and what the nature of this is), what language(s) it is written in and possibly loads of other things).

Sorry, I digress, let me try to get to the point...

If there was a breakdown of what functions there are and how the software works then this may help in identifying not only similarities between one FOSS offering and other proprietary ones, but between FOSS ones. This could be useful in a number of ways, one of which might be identifying whether there is a single FOSS offering that does everything that a user currently wants to do (and may do already using other software).

Migrating from using one set of software to using another to perform the same tasks can be quite a job for any organisation. It might require a significant amount of research, the development of educational resources and training.

It would be great if there was a set of educational resources that show how to perform tasks in different software (and indeed using different programming languages). Whatever the platform, there are metrics on the complexity the level of automation and the computational efficiency that can be developed. With a set of metrics it would be easier to measure the similarity and difference between software. 

Sorry, having rambled on I realise that I have gone a bit off topic, I expect this has already been suggested and is being worked on, I've dared not to read the entire thread before posting, and I have very little time to help get this in place! Also I have not replied to the very last post on this thread but one a bit back as these others have spun off in other important directions.

Anyway, you have my moral support, thanks for all your efforts developing the OSGeo website, educational resources, services and software.

Best wishes,

Andy
http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.turner/index.html
  


-----Original Message-----
From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of María Arias de Reyna
Sent: 21 September 2017 09:23
To: Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com>; Maria Antonia Brovelli <maria.brovelli at polimi.it>; OSGeo Discussions <discuss at lists.osgeo.org>; OSGeo-Marketing <marketing at lists.osgeo.org>; Helmut Kudrnovsky <hellik at web.de>
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] [Marketing] Proprietary GIS on our OSGeo website

On Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 10:15 AM, Sandro Santilli <strk at kbt.io> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 08:33:05PM -0700, Jody Garnett wrote:
>
>> How much of your initial concern was providing a link? Or is it just 
>> displaying the name (switching to MapInfo for the example here). It 
>> would be kind of nice if the it behaved like a keyword, and linked to 
>> the project page short listing all the projects that one can migrate to from MapInfo.
>
> It's different degrees of annoyance. I guess a brand-less and 
> link-less list of names of proprietary products would not be too 
> "offensive" for me (assuming spam filtering lets it pass) but I'd 
> still prefer an hidden keyword. Something that you never see written 
> but is recognized by the search engine to give you back a similar
> software: you search for <proprietary> you get <free>.
>
> The "like Photoshop, only better" motto I like even when it contains 
> the name because it explicitly bashes it :)

That would work very good if we use for example google ads. But still, for people who are lookiing for "how to migrate to FLOSS", a non-linked name could be useful. I mean: they exist, they are there, they are a fact. We don't need to promote them to be able to say "if you already use this, you can move to this".

And now I realize I put a link on the GeoNetwork page just because I copypasted from another project :) Bad María, bad.
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