[Pacific] Attack on the FOSS4G Community

[Edwin Liava'a]

Hi All,

I came across Martin Isenburg's post on linkedin and it got me
concerned. Especially for us here in the Pacific with limited budgeted
financial resources to mitigate recurrent costs of licensing
proprietary software such as ESRI and likes.

And I quote:

"The U.S. Department of the Interior seems to be elevating their
attack on our community. Now they are not only going after #LAStools
but also after the #QGIS community. Who is really behind this? Maybe
it is Esri? Come on Jack (Dangermond). I thought we brought the "LAZ
clone war" behind us. But it may well be that the #Covid19 crisis is
challenging the role of #Esri as the premier #GIS software. And
license troubles in home offices make a good new argument for
switching to QGIS with #LAStools. Maybe ESRI is now using their
"muscle" with the U.S. federal agencies to get rid of competitors such
as LAStools and QGIS ... ? ☢️💚🐥"

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6687470117200171008

Which reminds me of someone supporting ESRI during the Pacific GIS/RS
Conference 2009, this person threatening me to be very careful after
doing a presentation using QGIS for Hydrological Cycle Observing
System(HYCOS) Time Dependent Data.

Interesting times indeed. I encourage all Pacific Islands
practitioners of FOSS4G to keep at it. Power to the people :)

cheers,

Edwin