[OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G 2018 sponsorship

Mon Feb 26 08:03:57 PST 2018

Sergio,
I for one am delighted to hear your well expressed concern. In point of fact, ESRI certainly has no real interest in open source. They are there to make as much money as possible and don’t mind playing rough to get it. That is not to suggest we cannot find ways to live and even work together. Though like you said and said well “This approach should make OSGeo more alert.” On another but related issue, I am still curious as to where ESRI and the OS community are on LiDAR format and compression as ^one^ open standard.
-Patrick

From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of SERGIO ACOSTAYLARA
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2018 7:03 AM
To: María Arias de Reyna; André Cruvinel Resende
Cc: OSGeo Discussions
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G 2018 sponsorship

Stefano, certainly you are NOT the only one. In the past I have expressed my concern about this fact. It's as if Monsanto were sponsoring an organic food event. I don't think ESRI (or Google or IBM or others) approaches OSGeo innocently. This approach should make OSGeo more alert. And distrust their intentions. I remember that some years ago ESRI did not let gvSIG people even assist an ESRI conference. And now what has changed? That the FOSS4G movement is now "cool". So it makes these companies present themselves as OS ("we support the OS movement, we even sponsor their events", even "we are OS") and it is easier for them to enter certain places (later it is more difficult for them to leave). Maybe these companies should be asked something more than money in exchange for sponsoring the FOSS4G. And see how far they can get with that support to the FOSS4G movement...

Sergio Acosta y Lara
Departamento de Geomática
Dirección Nacional de Topografía
Ministerio de Transporte y Obras Públicas
URUGUAY
(598)29157933 ints. 20329/20330
http://geoportal.mtop.gub.uy/
________________________________
De: Discuss <discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org>> en nombre de María Arias de Reyna <delawen at gmail.com<mailto:delawen at gmail.com>>
Enviado: lunes, 26 de febrero de 2018 4:34
Para: André Cruvinel Resende
Cc: OSGeo Discussions
Asunto: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G 2018 sponsorship

Hi,
I share your fears. But on the other hand, the list of sponsors is not closed for this year, I know for sure there are open source companies that are still pending to be shown there. GeoCat for example, being a small SME in comparison, will do the yearly effort to be a key sponsor proving that open source companies support FOSS4G events.
You know (because I have been tiring on this subject) that I am completely against openwashing. And I will not be comfortable (and protest) if FOSS4G is used as a platform to promote closed source software. If I see a track full of selling closed architectures and software or some keynote talking about the greatness of closed software, I will be angry. But until now, we have had closed source companies sponsoring OSGeo and the "worst" thing we have had is some talk with a lot of openwashing that made us laugh. No big harm, but useful to reopen the debate and refresh terms.
Look at it like this: If a closed source software company (and I won't say ESRI here, because we have more examples, don't focus only on one) wants to sponsor an FLOSS conference... look at it as a small fee for all the work they are reusing from our open side. Is it the only budget they spend on open source? Is it because they want to get close to the community and keep in touch with the state of the art software in the industry? Great! If anything, I would be more worried if they had no interest in FLOSS. This means we are an important piece of the industry and they want to be involved, either to -steal- research about our way of working, our ideas or whatever we have.
Big companies with closed software history can't change from one day to another. Can you imagine Microsoft announcing Windows is going to be FLOSS? Would be insane and dangerous (if a code is going to be FLOSS, it should be FLOSS from the beginning to avoid big security holes in the open that come inherently on closed software). Let them get closer and, maybe in the future, they will become real FLOSS advocators.
While they "only" sponsor and maybe promote the ¿little? job they do on FLOSS, I am fine. If they want to cross that line and start a conversation about how great closed software is, then we will have to stop them.
Regards,
María.

On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 2:49 AM, André Cruvinel Resende <andrecr at gmail.com<mailto:andrecr at gmail.com>> wrote:
Folks,

We have had this fear in the past.

I remember when Autodesk decided to open Mapguide and some of us were furious and upset and worried about our community's influence and decisions.

It seems that in the end It was not that important and It does not kill Mapserver.

Good and open week. (And mind too)

https://mapguide.osgeo.org/about.html.

André Cruvinel.

Em 25 de fev de 2018 7:11 PM, "Jody Garnett" <jody.garnett at gmail.com<mailto:jody.garnett at gmail.com>> escreveu:
I do not think of it as just an emotive response - some business models do not match our ideals as an organization (requirement to purchase a platform subscription for services, or an API key for data use). While some organizations match our ideals, but I do not like the ethics (dumping software to opensource as part of an exit strategy).

Both these approaches use open source as a tool, but to enable behaviour that is not necessarily collaborative. The free-and-open end of the open source pool is working on this, but it is a big pool and we want to help everyone.

I see our role as changing the the playing field over time so that these business models do perform as well as the ones that embrace, contribute to and leverage open source.
On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 1:59 PM <bradh at frogmouth.net<mailto:bradh at frogmouth.net>> wrote:
Indeed GDAL/OGR uses some ESRI code, example:
https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/a1df7cb9df2fe3cbcfac974b434b01ac6a1946e5/gdal/frmts/mrf/JPEG_band.cpp#L21

If you don’t want anyone with competing products, it’ll be a short list, and somewhat difficult to justify (e.g. OSGeo has lots of software that is mostly developed and tested against Oracle’s Java, but Oracle Spatial is an alternative to PostGIS). If you don’t want anyone who does patents, it’ll exclude most of the big IT companies.

Is this just an emotive response?

Brad

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