[OSGeo-Fundraising] Autodesk sponsorship page

[Gary Lang]

I wouldn't personalize a press release as representing "Autodesk" as if
we were some monolithic entity that agrees on everything. Autodesk may
be humble - we are - but one person may write a press release that is
hyperbolic.

I don't agree with this press release material either; it's factually
incorrect. Tyler, who were you working with on this? I want to get this
changed. Feel free to take it down until it's fact-checked.

Gary

-----Original Message-----
From: fundraising-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:fundraising-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Arnulf Christl
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 3:13 AM
To: Fundraising Committee
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Fundraising] Autodesk sponsorship page

Tyler Mitchell wrote:
> As part of Autodesk's sponsorship benefits they get a full page 
> company profile.  I've worked with them to get the text pulled 
> together and posted it to:
> http://www.osgeo.org/sponsors/autodesk
> 
> Does this look okay to you?  I'm happy with it.  Once we are agreed 
> I'll change the link from their logo on http://www.osgeo.org/sponsors/

> to point to this new page.
> 
> Sound good?
> 
> Tyler

Hi,
yes this is fine except for one thing which I already identified as
problematic before. 

"In 2005, Autodesk became the first commercial software vendor to
contribute to the geospatial open source community, opening the source
code to its MapGuide Open Source and feature data objects (FDO)
technologies."

This is simply not true. There are many examples of commercial
enterprises either contributing to Open Source, or releasing their own
proprietary software as Free Software before 2005. You could say:
Autodesk is the first of the few GIS big ones (Intergraph, ESRI,
SmallWorld, etc) to get the gist - but even that would feel skewed as
Autodesk is not that big regarding GIS at all.

It is not that I disrespect the decision made by Autodesk or want to
belittle their boldness but it just tastes wrong to say that they are
the first around. And as people are still eying Autodesk closely I
suggest that it would be wise to be careful what to say and maybe even
be a little humble. It would just suit them so much better. Autodesk has
so many ways to market and show off in their standard stance that I had
hoped they would do something more interesting on this page. 

Best regards,
Arnulf. 
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