[Marketing] [OSGeo-Discuss] Proprietary GIS on our OSGeo website

[Harrison Grundy]

> On Sep 20, 2017, at 3:19 PM, Jody Garnett <jody.garnett at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 20 September 2017 at 12:44, Maria Antonia Brovelli <maria.brovelli at polimi.it> wrote:
>> Jody this is not respectful of me and the community.  Might I know why the people working for the project want ABSOLUTELY to keep the names and links to proprietary software on our open source software website? 
> 
> I feel a bit of pressure to express myself exactly correctly on this outreach topic; or risk people missing the point ...  The outreach approach was determined months ago when going over our target audience (literally what the website is for). Te website was defined with these visitor journey's in mind...
> 
> The primary audience for the website is non-community members:
> - ESRI GIS Professional (GISP), IT Professionals, Academic Faculty, Academic Students, Science and Research, Influencers & Decision makers, Software Developers
> - the communication goal is to promote awareness - asking non-community members to consider and evaluate
> - the next goal is adoption - assisting non-community members in adopting open source
> - the final foal is impress - having non-community members be enthusiastic and advocate open source
> 
> The secondary audience is community members:
> - osgeo members, partners, service providers, sponsors, contributors
> - the steps awarness, adoption, impress reflect contributing to open source
> - many of the community member activities are taking place on the wiki and are happy to remain there.
> 
> With this approach in mind the website is explicitly trying help non-community members. Our goal as an organization is to promote open source; and making this website to reach out to non-community members is the best way to do so.
> 
> The reason I want to keep the names (don't care about the links) is address the needs of non-commuity website visitors. To answer the question "I use XXX, how can you help me?"
> 
> For your two questions:
> - Maria as a GeoServer lead I would like to offer "Migrate from: ArcGIS Server", I expect other projects may (or may not) want to offer similar guidence for non-community members.
> - As for the links ... they are to wikipedia - but we can remove them or not use them if you like.
> 
> Aside: Yes the original bug report showed that the QGIS page had been filled out incorrectly; I hope we can review these pages and make sure each project team can edit once the website is hosted on OSGeo hardware.

As an occasional contributor to SAC, marketing and various OSGeo projects, who also deploys many of the software components with clients, this is definitely something comes up during that process. 

While clients may ask me to perform the actual deployment, it is hugely beneficial when advocating for OSGeo for those companies to be able to find the analogous projects on their own. A client who wants to replace ArcGIS desktop for mapping frequently isn't even aware that they can also replace Arc Server with Geoserver or SQL Server Spatial with PostGIS. 

Unless they tell us they're using those things, we have no way to know, so giving them a pathway to discover that kind of information independently can be the difference between them deploying more OSS software and engaging with the community, versus just having us do a one-off project.

> 
>> Anyhow, I think that the Board can express ourselves about this point. I remember you  that we were voted and that the people who voted me don't want those names and links. I'm speaking on behalf of many. In case, we will ask the whole community to express ourselves about that. 
> 
> We have a balanced board, and do indeed try and provide discussion based on the members who voted for us. Much like social pressure I do not find pulling rank to be constructive Maria.
> 
> I would much rather we both stand down and respect the wishes of the projects being represented (they can provide as much or as little information on these pages as they like), and the marketing committee performing outreach.
>  
>> I want to apologise with the people working at the website if my tone could have seen as rude. Who knows me, knows that I'm not a native speaker and sometimes my words seem to be worse than what I have in mind. I want to claridy that I appreciate a lot their work ( I suppose they appreciate my work all the same) and I thank them with all my hearth.  But absolutely I don't agree with this choice and I explained you also the reasons.
> 
> Thanks Maria I am sorry if we are having communication challenge based on difference in language (and I am sorry for getting upset). As you know I enjoy working with you on many of our joint activities as board members and we have done some great things together this year.
> 
> I find the discussion productive when focus on what we want the website to say. It will be a more effective tool as a result.
> 
> What would really help is if the board could help SAC make a decision so this website can be deployed and everyone can work on it again. It seems very sad to focus on one line on the project pages when the entire thing is stalled and in danger.

For what it's worth, as a member of the community, I think this piece is crucial. I'm sure that many revisions to content will occur over time, so it seems like we are better served moving forward, even if our message is slightly muddled at the moment. We always have the ability to change things based on feedback from the board, member projects and the community at large.

Harrison
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