Autodesk product naming poll

[Dave McIlhagga]

Hi Ken,

I hope everything is well in Vancouver these days .. I'll be there 
myself in about 24 hours for Christmas.


I felt compelled to write back about this issue -- because I still feel 
very strongly that there are many very good reasons for having a shared 
'MapServer' name with this new web mapping technology.

First of all -- there is a perception that this is simply 'Autodesk 
technology' but it's important to remember that as soon as the 
technology is in an arm's length body, under LGPL and with copyright 
assigned, it becomes as much yours, mine, Autodesk's or anyone elses 
technology. In fact, even less aligned with any one company than 
MapServer is today!

Autodesk then becomes a participant & contributor to open source as much 
as our company, private consultants or any other contributing 
organization is today around MapServer. The Foundation becomes important 
in this context to ensure fairness, and balance in how technology 
continues to be developed for the sake of all stakeholders.

And I believe this is just the beginning -- there are sure to be many 
other organizations discovering that open source web mapping is the 
platform of choice for the future. We're all going to be working to 
bring them into the fold.


The question you have to really ask is, do we want to grow the MapServer 
community to be inclusive of a major new participant, and hopefully many 
more in the future? This is a great way to send a message that MapServer 
is truly open to everyone.


As many have pointed out, MapServer has built up a good reputation over 
the years -- but the majority of this good reputation has been within 
the converted .. I can tell you as someone who does a lot of outreach 
work to the outside world that everyone knows about Google Maps, some 
folks know about ESRI and MapInfo, and only the most knowledgeable about 
MapServer. We still have a lot of work to do to reach those people 
outside of our immediate world -- work I do every day, so working 
together on a common message makes a lot more sense to me than working 
apart.


well -- that's my pitch. I hope everyone has wonderful holidays and I'd 
like to wish you a Happy New year.

Dave








Ken Lord wrote:
> ... And please do check out the comments.
> 
> So far I seem to be the most adamently against Autodesk taking the
> MapServer name ... and I think I give some good reasons.
> 
> To restate what I said in my poll comment, I have already seen a few
> potential clients confused over the MapServer / Autodesk issue that
> could easily work to Autodesk's favour ... and I don't actually spend
> much time building mapserver websites, I'm sure the hard core
> developers have seen more of this than me.
> 
> I also don't appreciate the misleading messages I've seen in the media
> regarding Autodesk open sourcing MapServer as if it were their's to
> open source.  My less open source aware friends have been giving
> Autodesk a lot of undeserved credit because of this lately.
> 
> This may not be directly Autodesk's fault (unless they have let the
> media go uncorrected with their misleading articles), but I can add to
> this that a coworker attended the recent Autodesk conference in
> Orlando where the big announcement was made and he came back with some
> very different ideas on what the origins of MapServer actually was.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Autodesk, I spend most of my working
> hours using Autodesk products, and without these products I'm not sure
> what I would have been doing in the last 5 years.
> 
> But they need to be kept under control.  Want another example on a
> different topic?
> 
> ... At that same conference, my coworker was shocked to find that
> sensitive data from one of our clients was being used as lesson
> material in a short-course, without our permission, without even
> removing his name or our company's logo from the map.  This was data
> sent in confidence to Autodesk to help us overcome an issue with using
> the software.   The sad thing is that the solution they demonstrated
> in the course never was sent to us to fix our problem.  Hopefully no
> one else recognized the data, it was for a very important client to us
> whom we do not want to loose.
> 
> Don't let the Gorilla step on us ... It's welcome in the zoo, but not
> in the same cage.
> 
> Happy Holidays,
> Ken Lord
> Vancouver BC
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/21/05, Tyler Mitchell <tylermitchell at shaw.ca> wrote:
> 
>>At Gary's request, I've posted another poll to the MapServer website to help capture how the community feels about the naming of Autodesk's web mapping product.
>>
>>Please take the time to login and answer this poll:
>>http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/community/polls/autodesk_name/
>>
>>Tyler
>>
> 
> 
>