Will someone summarize this?

[Frank Warmerdam]

On 12/1/05, Aniruddha S. Khadkikar <as.khadkikar at ncl.res.in> wrote:
> Have we agreed that:
>
> Mapserver retain its identity as before (I vote for that - in case
> polling is on).

Aniruddha,

I, for one, don't agree with keeping MapServer named just "MapServer".
Clearly a number of people do feel this way.

> The Autodesk product not have Mapserver in its name to remove ambiguity.
> UMN Mapserver clearly scores in terms of precedence/priority on this
> issue (a rule followed by the scientific community). The may ofcourse
> choose to include "Based on Mapserver" as part of their product
> description if they wish to.
>
> In future, transparency in decision making be mandatory for a community
> project to succeed and retain its value. And as part of a democratic
> process, a consensus be taken everytime such important decisions are made.

We currently have no consensus process.  To me, one major role of the
foundation is to establish a consensus process.  I would like to see some
sort of polling on a foundation charter but even for that I have no idea how
to make the poll reasonably representative of the community.

> There would be no change in the license policy in future that would
> affect end users banking on open source products like me.

There has been no talk of changing the license of traditional
MapServer.  Even if we wanted to, it would be challenging to
get all the varied copyright holders of MapServer code to agree.

> and, most importantly,
> What are the steps forward? Let us immediately put an end to renaming
> Mapserver. Rename the Foundation, Rename the Autodesk product, or rename
> any other thing. But there is no necessity to rename Mapserver.
>
> Mapserver is, and should always remain Mapserver.

I don't feel there is a consensus on this point.  I have heard a
number of people point out the issue that this is too generic
a name.   I would add that in the extensive "naming discussion"
it was clear there were lots of folks interested in other names,
though not necessarily any clear front runner.

Best regards,
--
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent