[Journal] Fwd: Re: OSGeo-Journal: proof reading
Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)
tmitchell at osgeo.org
Mon Apr 16 15:56:50 EDT 2007
> I'd like to point out a similar problem with a different article:
> Landon Blake did a write up on spatial relations. No where in his
> article is FOSS (or any softwre for that matter) mentioned. It's a
> theoretical presentation, and the FOSS aspect is totally ignored. I
> have more misgivings about that article than the Mapguide one.
Hi everyone, I appreciate the open honesty about your concerns Micha,
but the last thing I want to do now is start dropping content. I
would really like to keep this article in because I believe it is
applicable and interesting to our communities/readers. Hopefully I
can convince you of this too.
Please consider the Journal as an extension of the other parts of our
communities - mailing lists, web sites, conferences, articles, etc.
These contain a mixture of ideas, theory, discussions, debates, case
studies and show that we are part of a larger community of interest -
and a healthy community that has many diverse viewpoints. How can we
help capture some of this energy, mind-share and direction? By
writing articles and wrapping them up neatly for others to use, re-
use and share with friends and colleagues. No one goes to print off
a lengthy email discussing to share it with their friends - so we
help do this for them by finding topics of interest to ourselves and
our communities.
For example, I particularly requested the article from Landon and was
glad he offered to do it. I think you would be surprised how
interesting is will be to many readers. I thought it was a good
approach to helping educate readers to some fundamental geospatial
basics that Landon could then apply in a future article.
I also believe these are important topics that help make the Journal
more applicable to a much larger audience than only FOSS-related
readers. Please remember it is not "The GFOSS Journal" but
represents a much larger community of interest. I don't want to run
the risk of being so tightly focused that we exclude valuable content
because it doesn't meet precise criteria. 100% pure FOSS-focused
publications can easily slip into a category that makes them only
useful to those who already recognise that FOSS has value.
My hope for the Journal is to have it reflect the interests,
expertise and software tools of those who work in our OSGeo-related
project communities (and beyond). I want this to be a publication
that not only talks about FOSS, but about real people, projects and
solutions. In the mean time I appreciate the theoretical articles
because it helps build knowledge and awareness. Landon and I spoke
about this when I twisted his arm to write it - so that it set the
stage for a FOSS topology implementation example later. Likewise
with the WPS topical article, a follow up article will show how
Mapwindow is used to implement the spec.
In the end, if there are people interested in writing about useful
and applicable technology, concepts, software, examples, then I want
to harness their energy and put it into our journal. First of all it
engages our communities to learn more about each other in a fuller
capacity (not just the FOS Software portion of our lives and work),
but it also encourages people to write more articles that could then
be re-used in the compilation of a book or for presentations, etc.
Consider also the alternatives: our community members may go and
write articles for magazines that usually *only* promote proprietary
solutions. I'm not against those publications and think we *should*
be writing for them too, but I also think that our community is
advanced enough to be able to help itself grow and teach each other
in our ways.
In a nutshell, consider the journal as a way of building our image as
geospatial professionals, not only GFOSS advocates, while also
promoting open source projects to others who may not know about
them. I think we've got a pretty good mix in this volume, though I'd
like to have more case studies and a few less project introductions
in the next volume.
I hope that makes some sense and that the authors of SFUF case study
and Landon don't run away screaming ;-)
Tyler
More information about the newsletter
mailing list