[Incubator] Re: Is rasdaman suitable/ready for OSGeo incubation?

[Pieter De Graef]

I believe your situation resembles mine a bit (2 years ago). When 
Geosparc was founded to support the Open Source project Geomajas, there 
where people from only 2 companies behind the project. We too had it 
quite difficult in the beginning to attract people.

I believe what you need to do is make the intentions of your company as 
clear as possible, and make sure the Open Source project is a 
stand-alone project.
On the Geomajas website, you will have a hard time looking for the 
Geosparc name. We made sure that the Geomajas website was 100% community 
based, and even though in the beginning there hardly was any community, 
now there is.
It could be me, but when I see services etc on the main page, it does 
not give me the impression of being a stand-alone project. Although this 
is just an impression, don't forget perception is king. Of course I'm 
known to be mistaken every now and then.



Op 4/12/2010 4:30, Cameron Shorter schreef:
> Peter,
> The (possibly incorrect) understanding I have is that you, being one 
> person, have been the central driver behind rasdaman, sometimes under 
> the banner of the university and sometimes under your company.
>
> However, my key concern from OSGeo's point of view is that the current 
> link with a proprietary license will hinder growth of a robust community.
> Other OSGeo Incubation members may suggest otherwise.
>
> On 04/12/10 13:51, Baumann, Peter wrote:
>> Cameron,
>>
>> thanks for all the effort and serious considerations put into your 
>> looking at rasdaman. I am very grateful about our discussion - among 
>> others, it has shown me that the description provided on 
>> www.rasdaman.org needs refinement and clarification. I have attempted 
>> to go into that immediately with the "feature matrix" as a start, but 
>> other places will have to undergo a check as well.
>>
>> About the licensing, let me correct some false impression. The 
>> open-source rasdaman code is _not_ maintained by a company, but by a 
>> university. So the conclusion that further development of rasdaman 
>> would depend on one company is wrong in two respects:
>> - it is not one, but two entities supporting rasdaman
>> - it is not a company which is the main promoter of open source 
>> rasdaman, but a university
>>
>> Hope that helps to clarify situation a bit. I feel it very fruitful 
>> that now we have come to a discussion, hope we can continue this 
>> fruitful exchange.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Peter
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: Cameron Shorter [cameron.shorter at gmail.com]
>> Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 12:40 AM
>> To: Baumann, Peter; Bruce Bannerman; OSGeo-incubator
>> Subject: Is rasdaman suitable/ready for OSGeo incubation?
>>
>> I had the pleasure this week of meeting Peter Baumann, the primary
>> author behind rasdaman [1], a dual licensed raster processing
>> application. Along with Bruce Bannerman, we discussed rasdaman's
>> application for OSGeo application (initiated 18 months ago).
>>
>> Understandably, Peter noted some frustration by the lack of progress
>> moving toward OSGeo Incubation.
>>
>> Since talking to Peter, I've looked at rasdaman further, and think that
>> rasdaman has some great functionality, but I'm concerned that the
>> current dual license will hamper uptake from the open source community.
>>
>> Radaman is provided via an open source community edition, and then has
>> extensions which are in a proprietary enterprise edition. [2] My concern
>> is the dual license will substantially reduce the number of developers
>> prepared to grow the rasdaman developer community, as there will be a
>> feeling that the prime developer will only maintain and advance the
>> enterprise version.
>>
>> One of the key goals for incubation is to build a robust developer
>> community, with contributors from multiple organisations, and to have
>> the project grow sustainably. As it stands, I think that rasdaman's
>> licence model will make the project dependent upon the organisation
>> offering the enterprise software, which is counter to some of OSGeo
>> principles.
>>
>> Peter,
>> I understand the challenge of finding a suitable business model and
>> deciding whether to go down the proprietary or open source route. Yes,
>> with Open Source you do get significant marketing reach and having
>> others share development costs. Alternatively, with proprietary, you can
>> charge for software. If you wish to try to achieve both, then you will
>> likely end up having to write most/all software yourself, which doesn't
>> align with OSGeo goals of building a robust developer community.
>> This may be a reason why people on the incubation committee have not
>> pushed rasdaman forward further.
>> If you wish to continue with OSGeo incubation, I would suggest
>> considering adjusting your licence model.
>>
>>
>> [1] http://rasdaman.eecs.jacobs-university.de/trac/rasdaman
>> [2] 
>> http://rasdaman.eecs.jacobs-university.de/trac/rasdaman/wiki/Features
>>
>> -- 
>> Cameron Shorter
>> Geospatial Director
>> Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
>> Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
>>
>> Think Globally, Fix Locally
>> Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
>> http://www.lisasoft.com
>>
>
>

-- 
Pieter De Graef

Community Manager
GeoSparc nv.
http://www.geosparc.com/

Chairman of the Geomajas project
http://www.geomajas.org/