Choosing the Choosers

[Paul Spencer]

Lester,

On 18-Dec-05, at 3:05 AM, Lester Caine wrote:

> 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.

sure they do, but I don't think the Foundation is key to them making  
money.  Co-branding was perhaps a bigger part of it I think, since it  
provided instant brand power but I also think that most of the folks  
in the ADSK universe would probably never have heard of MapServer ...  
which means that for the MapServer community, we now have a whole  
bunch of visibility in places we've never been considered or even  
heard of before, a major benefit to those that use and maintain  
MapServer I think.

I don't think that ADSK would deny that they have made the move to  
open source in order to strengthen their business.  But that isn't  
necessarily evil (and I guess only time will tell if you are not  
already convinced of their good intentions).

> 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.

Perhaps this is a difference between user groups.  I have the luxury  
of choosing either depending on what a client might need because I  
build custom solutions whereas I suppose others have built a single  
product that they then sell ... and re-crafting a product to move  
from MapServer to Tux would be a lot of work.

On the other hand, if moving to Tux provides tangible business  
benefits, then I suppose one would make the jump regardless of  
Foundation or naming ...

> 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?

I believe that Gary Lang stated his intention on this quite clearly.   
I personally feel it is sad that we may be losing the opportunity to  
co-brand (I also think Cheetah and Enterprise are the wrong suffixes  
to use if the products would have been co-branded) without really  
thinking through what the benefits to MapServer (ours) could be - not  
to the developers but to the folks like you and I who are building  
solutions on top of it.  I think it is really shortsighted and based  
on an emotional response (I think of the responses that I saw, most  
were emotional and didn't have a lot of persuasive logic either  
way) ... but perhaps I am wrong :)

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

I hear ya :) ... which is why I think a lot of people will come down  
on the "just get it done" camp.

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

Cheers

Paul

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|Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
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|Applications & Software Development                              |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
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