[postgis] Next Level Redux

[Paul Ramsey]

I would be happier flying into the group in my Bell JetRanger with the
'Ride of the Valkyries' playing... however, the news is not all that
triumphant:

I have done the rounds of (almost) all the Canadian federal contacts I
have or have had provided, some prominant people in the local provincial
government, and have not been able to turn up a partner for a proposal
to GeoInnovations for this funding round. (For those not in on the
original newsflash, GeoInnovations is a Canadian Federal Gov't program
to promote geomatics R&D. It provides a 50% cost-sharing of selected R&D
projects. If we put in a proposal, we would have to either cover the
remaining 50% ourselves or find a partner to take up some of that slack.
We were looking to cover 25% ourselves and find a partner for the
remaining 25%. The total dollars we needed to fund our $CA 120K project
were therefor about 30K from outside sources. I should also note that as
a company we are only 5 people, and have very limited resources to
self-fund this. The only reason we are getting so much work done lately
is because paying consulting work has been slow and we have idle hands:
our pain is the community's gain. :) )

Both Red Hat and Greatbridge are currently hoarding cash. Red Hat to try
and remain profitable, and Greatbridge to try and remain solvent. The
upshot is, they were not willing to be one of the project partners. Both
were open to pursuing GIS extensions in the future in happier times
however. 

Anyhow, the gate is closing on GeoInnovations, since there are only two
weeks left until the proposal closing date, so I fear we will not be
able to take advantage of that particular opportunity. From a magnitude
point of view (compared to the kinds of dollars dropped on things like
dead simple Oracle db implementations), getting PostGIS/PostgreSQL up to
99% OpenGIS compliance is an astonishly small project: under $100K US
dollars. Somewhere, somehow, there is an organization with a commitment
to PostgreSQL that needs/wants that functionality. We will be working
our way there, however slowly, over the next 12 to 18 months anyways,
but keep your fingers crossed that someone wants to get there
faster/sooner.

>From the front,
Paul

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