MapServer Foundation - Open Letter

[Jeff Hoffmann]

Gary Lang wrote:
> OK. So here's a sincere call for input.
> 
> Here's the rub. Regardless of who made the mistake of suggesting it, I
> liked the name and agreed that we would go with it, so I'll take
> responsibility for MSE.
> 
> On the back of that, we - what can now be seen as the TSC-x cabal + 1
> ADSK person - started drifting from foundation names that had more
> umbrella-like characteristics like osgis.org, mapcommunity, maptools,
> etc. and towards something that focuses on what we were putting out
> together. Based on the fact that both products were named MapServer in
> the root, we went with "MapServer Foundation".
> 
> Now let's assume we change the name back to MapGuide. Why would I now
> want to cripple any hope of adoption by anybody by putting it in a
> foundation (that I helped name) that highlights one map serving product
> over another? 

I think you've described for yourself the fundamental flaw of the recent 
happenings.  You say that "both products were named MapServer" and 
that's why you chose "MapServer foundation" when in fact, there was only 
one MapServer, the other is MapGuide.  To me, if you want MapServer to 
be the dominant project, you call the foundation "MapServer foundation", 
if you want the projects to be treated as equals, you don't name the 
foundation after one of the products, you name it something else (open 
source mapping foundation, for example).  Another thing to be considered 
is that the foundation name becomes a defacto brand name and the product 
name should stand on its own without the foundation name (I used an 
example earlier of "Apache Tomcat" and just "Tomcat").  "Enterprise" 
isn't a product name, it's a qualifier.  If you would have called it 
"MapServer MapGuide" you probably wouldn't have gotten much static at 
all about it at all. Everybody would understand that they were two 
seperate products, which is the biggest problem.

-- 
Jeff Hoffmann
jeff at propertykey.com