MapServer Foundation thoughts and reactions

[Peter Giencke]

All,

Having just read that Autodesk will be using/usurping the Mapserver name for
their decidedly not-Mapserver corprate product, I was reminded of the
feeling I get when someone buds in front of me in a line - it's unjust. A
LOT of work/support/etc has been put into making Mapserver (and its good
name) into what it is today. I just don't see how diluting Mapserver (and
its associate tools) with different (competing?) product(s) can be a good
thing for this community. 

My mini-rant aside, I'm very(!) enthused about the Mapserver Foundation and
for what it will bring to the Mapserver community ("classic community" and
otherwise) in the coming months.

-pete

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Woodbridge [mailto:woodbri at SWOODBRIDGE.COM] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 12:48 AM
Subject: Re: MapServer Foundation thoughts and reactions

Ed,

Thank you for putting exactly what I have been feeling into words. I've been
reading all the posts today and getting more and more depressed by the
situation and I can't agree with you more. The idea of a foundation is great
for Mapserver and needed for all the reason you point out.

But this does not feel great to me, nor does it feel like a great thing for
mapserver and the Mapserver brand dilution might be catastrophic only time
will tell. I'm sure it feels great to DM Solutions and AutoDesk. I wish this
had been done in a more open and inclusive way, that is what a community
project is about.

-Steve W.

Ed McNierney wrote:
> Folks -
> 
> This morning I sent a few comments about the MapServer Foundation 
> off-list to Steve Lime, and (at my request) he forwarded them on to 
> some of the other folks involved.  After a comments by a few folks 
> there were requests that I post my messages to the broader community.  
> This post is an attempt to do that in a consolidated way.  I apologize 
> for being wordy, but there's a lot to say.
> 
> I've been a member of the MapServer "community" for several years now.
> The Foundation project is the first time I can ever recall there being 
> a conscious, ongoing, and deliberate attempt to exclude most of the 
> community from a discussion of significance about MapServer.  A small 
> number of people - some of whom are dedicated developers who've 
> contributed far more than I ever have - decided to enter into 
> discussions that included two commercial firms (DM Solutions and 
> Autodesk).  No one else got to participate, and the work was 
> deliberately kept secret.  Doesn't sound like much of an "open" 
> project to me.
> 
> A MapServer Foundation is a very, very good idea.  This MapServer 
> Foundation has gotten off to a very, very bad start.  I find myself in 
> the position of being quite reluctant to support this instance of a 
> concept I eagerly wish to support.
> 
> I think I should start by explaining why I think a MapServer 
> Foundation is a very good idea (as opposed to what others think, even 
> though we generally seem to agree).  MapServer has been well-served by 
> the technical and development community that supports it.  It has 
> mainly lacked many of the things that make a "program" a "product".  
> It needs better documentation, easier setup and sample sites, product 
> summaries and literature, feature/benefit brochures and comparisons, 
> benchmarking tests, presentations, a coordinated trade show/conference 
> plan, better marketing, directories of consultants, reference sites, 
> etc.  I don't mean to denigrate any of the efforts made along any of 
> these lines, but I think we all know there are things you can 
> currently get from commercial vendors that aren't available with 
> MapServer.  A Foundation would be a great way to provide these things.  
> It wouldn't need to get in the way of the development work, and could 
> complement it by filling in the blanks.
> 
> All of that takes money.  A MapServer Foundation needs funding to do 
> these things.  Fortunately, there are several subsets of the MapServer 
> community that are in a position to contribute funding.  There are 
> commercial users of MapServer (folks like me, GlobeXplorer, etc.), 
> commercial developers/consultancies like DM Solutions and others, and 
> the government and educational users who tend to not have much money 
> to spend but can usually contribute something.
> 
> To date, organizations interested in financial support for MapServer 
> have been limited to funding specific software development tasks.  The 
> pace of that development has been such that every time I raise an idea 
> about a project TopoZone could fund, it seems that someone else has 
> gotten there first.  I could have chipped in money for "future 
> development", but there was no place to put it - it didn't make sense 
> to just send Frank or Daniel or Steve a check and tell them to try to 
> spend it somehow.  And I would rather fund the "other stuff" than fund 
> feature development - there's more of a need for it.  A Foundation 
> could fix that, by providing a place that takes in revenue from 
> members and sponsors, and uses that revenue to fund projects - 
> probably non-development projects as I mentioned above, since those 
> won't get funded otherwise.  The OGC membership model is a relevant 
> and simple example of this sort of thing.
> 
> So what does the Foundation need to do that?  It needs to be open and 
> inclusive, eligible to all to participate as peers or as peers within 
> certain classes of membership.  It needs to be independent of any 
> particular sponsor, and it also needs to APPEAR to be independent.  It 
> needs to have a clear mission and it needs to simplify and clarify 
> things for its members and for its constituent base.  It needs to be 
> seen as the unswerving voice dedicated to the support of MapServer and 
> nothing else.
> 
> Today's announcement missed those goals by a wide mark.  Some of those 
> errors can be corrected, but some we'll have to live with forever.  
> And most of them could have been avoided by the kind of open, 
> inclusive discussion we've always had in the MapServer community - until
now.
> 
> Supporting the MapServer Foundation is a great PR and marketing 
> opportunity.  It appears that Autodesk and DM Solutions were extremely 
> aware of that, and made sure that they didn't have to share that 
> opportunity with anyone else.  Being a "founder" is very important, 
> and you've already seen Autodesk and DM Solutions take advantage of 
> that through their own press releases today.  No other company will 
> *ever* get that chance - the press doesn't really care about the next 
> few companies to sign on.  When I created TopoZone in 1999, it was 
> incredibly important to be the first topographic map site on the Web, 
> because the PR value was so great.  I suspect very few folks remember 
> who launched the second one....
> 
> Companies will be attracted to sponsor the Foundation because of that 
> PR value.  Unfortunately, that value's gone and nothing will get it back.
> I'm certainly a potential financial supporter of the Foundation, but 
> I'm also running a business.  I can't simply give money away, but I 
> can spend it on things that give me PR and marketing value.  I could 
> spend a pretty substantial (for me) sum as an annual commitment to the 
> Foundation.  I am now a *lot* less inclined to provide that support to 
> this Foundation, because the value (in PR and marketing terms) is a 
> whole lot less than it would have been if I could have been invited to 
> the party.  I'm certainly welcome to sign on and take a seat right up 
> near the front - as long as it isn't in the front row.
> 
> I don't say that because I'm personally miffed at being excluded - I'm 
> just TopoZone.  I say that because we'll never know how many firms and 
> how much financial support could have been raised if someone had tried 
> to solicit input and support in an open, inclusive way.  There are 
> lots of us out here.  I've been told that it's "incredibly important" 
> that the Foundation be seen as vendor-neutral and that it not be at 
> the mercy of a single funder's contributions.  Sounds good, but don't 
> tell me that now - those are both reasons to solicit a larger number 
> of contributing founding members rather than selling the whole package to
Autodesk.
> It's not easy to undo that; the Foundation is clearly already seen as 
> an Autodesk initiative by the press (in part because Autodesk has 
> tried to make that point clear) and not many firms are interested in 
> throwing money at Autodesk - they've got more of it than I do.
> 
> My second huge concern is the branding/product lineup for the 
> Foundation.  I woke up this morning to two MapServers where we had one 
> before.  One of them has the impressive-sounding name "MapServer 
> Enterprise" while the other is currently named after a large pussycat 
> but may or may not be open to the possibility of being named after a 
> different mammal.  There's no doubt in the potential customer's mind 
> which one is the grown-up, field-tested, production-ready, scalable, 
> capable system.  Unfortunately, they're thinking of the wrong one.
> 
> Branding really matters.  It's very important.  Tyler Mitchell says 
> so, too, on the new MapServer site.  Autodesk has zillions of people 
> who know that very, very well.  They just bought a great brand and 
> MapServer suddenly managed to take a back seat to itself, something I 
> would have thought anatomically impossible.  They've managed to 
> appropriate a well-respected brand name and take center stage with it.  
> Autodesk's press release takes advantage of that ambiguity by 
> introducing Steve Lime as the "creator of MapServer" without saying 
> which one they're talking about!  Speaking of press releases, in an 
> effort like this it is common for all founding members to see and sign 
> off on each other's press releases in advance, something which appears 
> (from some developer
> comments) to not have happened here.  This is PR 101 stuff - if you 
> don't try to keep what you're doing a secret, you might get helpful 
> advice.
> 
> The same is true, by the way, about the questions raised on Autodesk's 
> patent policy.  This should NOT be an open question *after* the 
> announcement - Autodesk's patent portfolio and their defense of it are 
> well-known.  It should have been one of the first questions raised and 
> answered.  Once the Foundation's plans were made public it only took a 
> few hours to bring it to everyone's attention - remember the benefits 
> of open development?
> 
> The "MapServer Enterprise" product just got inserted into the 
> MapServer family by decree.  Customers know very well that when they 
> see two similar products side-by-side, usually due to a merger or 
> acquisition, they sit back and wait to see which one gets killed off.  
> This usually has the effect of discouraging adoption of BOTH products, 
> because customers don't know which one to implement and don't want to 
> make the wrong choice.  Believe me, I've been a CTO standing up in 
> front of customers in that situation more than once - they don't 
> believe you can serve two masters, and they're right.
> 
> Does the Apache Foundation offer two Web servers?  Apache Enterprise 
> and Apache Other?
> 
> Can't kill off MapServer, you say?  Perhaps not in a technical sense, 
> but if there's a MapServer Foundation and a MapServer Enterprise, 
> who's going to notice if that other thingy doesn't get the same amount 
> of attention?  Perhaps the platypus is indeed a good choice, as it may 
> belong with the nearly-extinct monotremes.  You can't kill the 
> MapServer code, but you can certainly kill the brand.  Please don't 
> confuse the two.
> 
> Why was the Foundation "announced" when it apparently doesn't actually 
> exist?  It seems like today's announcement was designed primarily to 
> maximize the PR value to DM Solutions and Autodesk - after all, the 
> press got briefed about it before the rest of us did.  As far as I can 
> tell, there isn't any foundation, but when we get one it's going to be 
> great and open to all, because DM Solutions and UMN and Autodesk have 
> all assured each other that it will be.  Each time I hear that "now's 
> the time to participate", I cringe because I'm being told that by the 
> exclusive group who deliberately prevented all of us from 
> participating until they decided they had gotten what they needed out 
> of it and it's now OK to let the rest of us inside.  The time to 
> participate was last week, or last month, before anything got 
> announced and before we were all handed the Foundation.  If the 
> Foundation is really a genuinely open opportunity for us, then tell us 
> that the inclusion of Autodesk's product isn't non-negotiable.  Do the 
> rest of us get to insert MapServer-branded products whenever we want to?
> 
> All of these problems were preventable.  All it would have taken was 
> an open discussion of the proposal.  You get a lot of people spouting 
> off, and then you find out who's really interested.  You find out how 
> many commercial sponsors you can get and at what level of support.  
> You create what appears to the public as a truly open consortium 
> that's worth watching, instead of one that triggers discussions about
Autodesk.
> You demonstrate right from the start that you have a broad base of 
> commercial support, with commercial firms from the USA, Canada, 
> Europe, South America, Australia, etc.  What was the perceived benefit 
> of keeping the process secret and exclusive?  Did someone threaten to 
> pick up their marbles and go home?  You can often be surprised at how 
> many folks are willing to contribute their own marbles when something 
> like that happens - but you never know until you ask.
> 
> The MapServer community really needs a Foundation to support it and to 
> keep the product healthy and growing.  There are many examples of the 
> creation of such consortia to draw from, both inside of and outside of 
> the Open Source community.  It doesn't appear those examples were 
> considered.  We really need a MapServer Foundation - I'm not at all 
> sure that we need this one.
> 
> 	- Ed
> 
> Ed McNierney
> President and Chief Mapmaker
> TopoZone.com / Maps a la carte, Inc.
> 73 Princeton Street, Suite 305
> North Chelmsford, MA  01863
> Phone: +1 (978) 251-4242
> Fax: +1 (978) 251-1396
> ed at topozone.com
>