Choosing the Choosers

[Lester Caine]

Tyler Mitchell wrote:

> So, I'm partly ambivalent about where the project lives, but partly focused on 
> ensuring that it lives in a place that helps the community grow as much as 
> possible.

That is perhaps why a tie up with Autodesk raises alarm bells?
Autodesk's intentions HAVE to be in their interest, so they want a 
community that they HAVE to make money out of at some point. We as users 
have invested time in building a system - round Mapserver - that does 
what we want and, while it would benefit from some of the functionality 
provided by Autodesk, the risk is that it will only achieve that by our 
having to use commercial tools at some point. We are presented currently 
with either using MapServer or the new Autodesk offering and we should I 
suppose have a look at that offering, but that is a distraction that I 
personally do not have time to indulge in. If I have any spare time it 
would be better spent improving my own understanding of MapServer, but 
am I wasting my time on that path and should I just jump ship now to a 
new MapServer that I have to start all over again with. Even if it has 
nice new tools, I already have an 'Enterprise' interface into MapServer 
and don't need the distractions that an alternative it is creating :(

*ARE* Autodesk seriously addressing the dropping of the hijack of the 
MapServer name from their 'non'MapServer offering?

Even just drafting this letter is a distraction that I could do without :(

-- 
Lester Caine
-----------------------------
L.S.Caine Electronic Services
Treasurer - Firebird Foundation Inc.