My MapServer Foundation thoughts

[Ed McNierney]

Tyler -

In order to be independent, the Foundation needs to have financial
support from a broad variety of commercial members.  Commercial firms
don't just throw money around - they need to get value for it.  A large
part of that value, from groups like this one, is the PR/marketing
value.  Why do you think Autodesk insisted that you keep it a secret?
Because they didn't want to have to risk sharing that value with, say,
Intergraph.  If word had gotten out that a major firm was on board,
other major firms would have been attracted, too.  Now that a large
chunk of the PR value is used up (read all the articles that are popping
up - they're 90% about Autodesk and 10% about MapServer), it is much
harder to get other commercial firms to commit financial support.  That
is why the PR issue is such a barrier.  It has fundamentally damaged the
Foundation's ability to survive long-term independent of Autodesk.

	- Ed

Ed McNierney
President and Chief Mapmaker
TopoZone.com / Maps a la carte, Inc.
73 Princeton Street, Suite 305
North Chelmsford, MA  01863
ed at topozone.com
(978) 251-4242  

-----Original Message-----
From: UMN MapServer Users List [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On
Behalf Of Tyler Mitchell
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 2:58 AM
To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
Subject: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] My MapServer Foundation thoughts

Hi guys,
As you probably already know, I believe today's announcements are
something worth being exciting about.  Allow me to clarify my thoughts
on this a bit and maybe help put things in a different light.

Foundation is only begun
In a nutshell, several groups and individuals have agreed that a
foundation is a good idea and they want to see it move forward.
Someone, at some point had to at least start talking about how to do
this.  There have been no final decisions about how it will run, what it
will do or even how much funding it requires.  All that's been decided
is that there will be a foundation and that Autodesk wants to contribute
code to it.  That is what has happened, the rest is unwritten and open
for the community to decide.

Autodesk's Role
The assumption that Autodesk has somehow rolled in and taken the best
seat in the house is far from the truth.  We debated the issues such as
naming and branding.  Our group became comfortable with the ideas and
thought they could at least serve as a starting place for community
discussion.  There was no name stealing, these were mutually debated and
agreed upon ideas.  No one was forced to sign the open letter.  We could
have told Autodesk to take their product and head out the door and they
would have.  Instead we tried to find the best possible way to work with
them and build on the momentum around their open source announcements.
We debated and struggled to get to where we are, but we also found some
common ground.

I see your point about DM and Autodesk's press release as being a PR win
for them, but what I see is a win for the MapServer community in
general.  We got some great PR - more than we could have mustered on our
own.  Both those companies can speak for themselves, but I know they are
excited about the foundation and how it can help the community.  Are
they interested in running the foundation?  Not at all.  Are they going
to stack the deck and push it around?  Impossible - you and I won't let
it happen.  An important function of the foundation is to protect
MapServer from being controlled by any individual company or
organisation be that Autodesk, DM Solutions, UMN or anyone else.  So why
talk as if Autodesk is taking over the world when it is still, and
always will be, a community effort?  I, for one, would never have signed
the letter if I felt the MapServer community or the product were in
jeopardy.

I appreciate the concern from those of you who have built your
businesses on MapServer, I certainly don't have as much at stake.  But
what I don't understand is why, for the broader community's benefit, the
PR issue is such a barrier.  Is that really standing in the way of your
wanting to be involved in what you argue is a good idea?

Tyler