[OSGeo-Discuss] What is Openwashing? Is there any examples in GIS Vendors?

Barry Rowlingson b.rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk
Fri Nov 2 03:54:58 PDT 2018


Let's see what the main player has to say about open source:

http://www.esriuk.com/software/open/open-source

"As part of Esri’s technology and business strategy, we release and
support open-source software. We have shared 350+ open-source projects
on the developer collaboration platform GitHub. We also provide many
focused open-source solutions for customizing and extending ArcGIS."

This can be considered "open washing" because most, if not all, of the
"open-source solutions" still *require* a proprietary GIS.

Its been a while since I nosed round ESRI's github, but this appears
to not require ArcGIS:

 https://github.com/Esri/geometry-api-java

has anyone compared its performance with the JTS? -
https://github.com/locationtech/jts - assuming its functionality is
similar...

Barry
On Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 10:02 AM Suchith Anand
<Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> I came across this term OpenWashing at http://openwashing.org
>
> Openwashing: to spin a product or company as open, although it is not. Derived from 'greenwashing.'
>
>
> Openwashing: n., having an appearance of open-source and open-licensing for marketing purposes, while continuing proprietary practices.
>
>
> I am trying to understand the impact of this in GIS. Is there any examples of GIS Vendors using this OpenWashing?
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
> Suchith
>
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