[EU] European "partwise" Open Source GIS-Tender

Tue Nov 29 06:02:06 PST 2016

All

Having also initiated similar initiatives in The Netherlands (OpenGeoGroup for open spatial service providers and a group of general open source service providers) organising and positioning of a European wide open spatial group is very worthwhile.

Especially when the objective is;
- positioning for EU tenders
- larger National tenders
- joint marketing and lobby efforts
- co-creation and collaboration
- sourcing specific skills and expertise

It is meant as a coalition of the willing. No guarantees for success, but worth a try.

However, it has a commercial agenda. Linkage with OSGeo (Local, EU, Org) can be on a personal level (companies join the cooperative and individuals OSGeo).
There is an overlap of OSGeo Outreach activities with Cooperative Commercial activities. So the agendas are different but can reinforce one another.

A quick first milk round through Europe shows a lot of interest. So far so good ;-)

Kind regards,
Marc Vloemans

> Op 29 nov. 2016 om 11:57 heeft Jáchym Čepický <jachym.cepicky at gmail.com> het volgende geschreven:
> 
> I would like to note: I agree what  Till concludes. I see companies in Europe (I had chance to participate on some EU-founded projects, where I meat large companies too) and they are all in favor for open source, even then do not really contribute back and they are likely not part of the community. But they are big enought, to get one-two small partners (who usually do the dirty job) and are able to go for such tender.
> 
> Big IT tenders in public administration are IMHO evil in general. They asked for the money, they got it and want a system, which does *everything*. No place for small expert groups, like we usually are.
> 
> What to do about it? Get in people hads, this is not the way, how to support MEs. And not the way, you get something functional any time soon (agile). We started on local level, people seem to start listening. But EU-level? I have no idea whom to approach
> 
> J
> 
> 
> Dne 28.11.2016 v 12:29 till.adams at fossgis.de napsal(a):
>> Maria,
>> 
>> I guess "lobbying" is the word I would use in german too. And yes, feel
>> encouraged in putting our European Chapter forward (and count on me).
>> 
>> Indeed, an open letter of several European Open Source companies was one
>> of the ideas on my list :-).
>> I heard that there is the possibility of a notify of defects in European
>> tenders, but I am not aware where to direct to (but I will care).
>> The good thing is, that this defecting has no legal aspects, it's more a
>> "possibility to complain".
>> 
>> So that could also be one (equal) text sent to them from different
>> companies (and different countries as well).
>> I am sure we also could count on Dirk Frigne's GeoSparc here.
>> 
>> I could write a first draft of that text, but would like to wait for
>> some more opinions here.
>> 
>> Another idea was a formal letter from a European OSGeo regional chapter,
>> but that's somehow the hen and egg problem:
>> As long as we do not have a formalized European chapter....
>> 
>> 
>> Maybe this tender is a kick in our a..., that we needed to inspirit this
>> European chapter.
>> 
>> Till
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Am 2016-11-28 11:42, schrieb María Arias de Reyna:
>>> On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 11:30 AM,  <till.adams at fossgis.de> wrote:
>>>> Dear list!
>>>> 
>>>> I come up, because we stumbled over this tender:
>>>> https://etendering.ted.europa.eu/cft/cft-display.html?cftId=1824
>>>> 
>>>> (and although most of you may regard me as the "guy who was chair of
>>>> FOSS4G
>>>> 2016 in Bonn", I write as managing director of terrestris and
>>>> mundialis, two
>>>> SME's having an Open Source business model.)
>>>> 
>>>> Summary
>>>> EUROSTAT, europes statistical agency, is seeking a contracting
>>>> company, that
>>>> delivers GIS services worth 17.5 million €uros for the upcoming 4
>>>> years (or
>>>> ~7.5k person days per year !!).
>>>> In the tender they define two main technical directions: ESRI and Open
>>>> Source - and they name every popular OSGeo project such as GeoServer,
>>>> Geonetwork Open Source, OpenLayers, QGIS, PostGIS, GRASS etc..
>>>> Also they clearly define, that Open Source must be favoured, if ever
>>>> possible.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> My thoughts:
>>>> Regarding our Open Source business landscape, I see huge problems for
>>>> any of
>>>> our Open Source SME's to have any chance in even participate in this
>>>> tender.
>>>> Nobody of us, even if we all would come together, could approximately
>>>> deliver such an amount of person days and we are not able to prove
>>>> that we
>>>> can deliver knowledge in ESRI technology to their reasonable
>>>> satisfaction.
>>>> My guess is, that on the proprietary side of the market there are
>>>> huge full
>>>> service companies, that are capable in delivering these magnitudes of
>>>> services and who can argue "yes, we can also deliver Open Source
>>>> knowledge".
>>>> Our landscape of service providers with an open business model is quite
>>>> heterogeneous with many small and medium-sized companies, often very
>>>> specialized on single aspects or software packages. This will in the end
>>>> lead to the fact, that even if EU favours to use Open Source
>>>> Software, these
>>>> services are provided not from companies from our community.
>>>> 
>>>> And this matters two things in my eyes:
>>>> 1. The money paid for Open Source will not (or only partwise) be
>>>> invested
>>>> into our community and into our projects
>>>> 2. The contracted service provider will presumably not favour Open
>>>> Source
>>>> software and with that the goal clearly defined by EUROSTAT
>>>> degenerates to a
>>>> well-intentioned idea
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> What I want:
>>>> In general I wanted to let you all know about this tender and the
>>>> drifts,
>>>> that also in the EU take place towards Open Source. All together I
>>>> would be
>>>> happy, if we can start a discussion about how to deal with tenders
>>>> like this
>>>> in the future and how we, as an European Community, can operate
>>>> towards the
>>>> EU for a better understanding of Open Source and also our Open Source
>>>> business models.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> BTW: Also a good discussion on this here on this list could be a good
>>>> starting point to show the appropriate people from EU, that we are here!
>>>> Happy about any contribution to this!
>>>> 
>>>> Till
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Hi Till,
>>> 
>>> Part of the idea of the european chapter was precisely to be able to
>>> ¿lobby? in favor of open source. (I am not sure if lobby is the right
>>> word, in Spanish it has a bad meaning, related to corruption). In
>>> GeoCat we discussed this internally and it was very discouraging that
>>> it was so ESRI oriented.
>>> 
>>> While we solve the legal issues about setting up an official european
>>> chapter (which reminds me, we have a list of TO-DO things pending!),
>>> what do you suggest we can do? Maybe write a formal letter signed by
>>> many european companies asking the European Commission to avoid naming
>>> specific companies or software? Maybe we can try to set up a meeting
>>> with the responsible persons of this tender to try to explain the good
>>> things about being more open (and how the money will be reinvested in
>>> local companies instead of the big monopolistic one)?
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> María.
>> 
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> 
> -- 
> Jachym Cepicky
> e-mail: jachym.cepicky at gmail.com
> twitter: @jachymc
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