[Incubator] [rasdaman-users] Re: Rasdaman as a 'Benevolent dictatorship' Project: was [rasdaman-dev] patch quality

[Daniel Morissette]

I'd like to correct the *fact* that contrary to what Susanne wrote (see 
quoted msg below), the PostGIS PSC is not controlled by Refractions and 
seems qute well balanced if you ask me. I am not sure where she got that 
info or impression, but PostGIS would NOT (and I insist, *NOT*) have 
passed incubation if it had been loaded with individuals from a single 
organization (provenance from even just two or three orgs is considered 
weak for a PSC).

The PostGIS steering committee is defined by PostGIS RFC 1:

http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/wiki/RFC/RFC-1

And the list of PSC members and their affiliation are:

* Mark Cave-Ayland, Independent(?) - http://www.ilande.co.uk/
* Chris Hodgson, Refractions
* Regina Obe, Paragon Corporation - 
http://www.paragoncorporation.com/team.aspx
* Paul Ramsey (Chair), OpenGeo and Clever Elephant - 
http://www.cleverelephant.ca/cv.html
* Sandro Santilli, Independent - http://strk.keybit.net/services.html


Best Regards

Daniel


> On 08/02/2013 10:46 AM, Susanne Ebrecht wrote:
>>
>> 1. POSTGIS
>>
>> Just looking to http://postgis.org
>>
>> Do you see a link on the page how to contribute?
>> Do you see where to find community support?
>>
>> Click the support button ...
>> You will get to refraction.net (why the hell is it .net and not .com?)
>> Placed as eye cacher on the page you will find that you should pay USD
>> 5000 before you will get an answer to a single question.
>> Ok, click the back button of your browser.
>> Click Documentation
>> Now you get forwarded to postgis.net
>> The Domain postgis.net not even belongs to the PostGIS project. It is registered from OSGeo.
>> Also the community mailing list is managed from OSGeo.
>> That looks like Refraction not has any interests in any community
>> action. If OSGeo would not manage the community communication there just wouldn't be community communication.
>> Neither free support nor something else.
>>
>> Did one of you ever try to send a patch to PostGIS? Did you get an
>> answer? Did you got a contributor agreement? Did somebody took care at all?
>> On the PgCon (PostgreSQL Conference) in Ottawa I got aware from more
>> guys who send a patch to PostGIS and never got an answer. Not even a simple and polite Thanks!.
>>
>> Additionally, within the first 5 minutes searching postgis.org and
>> .net web-pages I can't find where to send bug reports.
>>
>> Also interesting is that the Project Steering Committee members all are Refraction employees.
>>
>> More interesting is - why is PostGIS under GPL? PostgreSQL is under BSD.
>>
>> Am I allowed to use PostGIS in my closed source software project without paying license fees?
>> I couldn't find the answer.
>>
>> In any case - refraction also is a benevolent dictatorship.
>>


-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/
Provider of Professional MapServer Support since 2000