[postgis-users] ESRI San Diego

[Gerry Creager N5JXS]

Part of my comment was tongue-in-cheek, part because I support the OGC 
concept and procedures.

One of my favorite passtimes at meetings Jack's been to is 
ESRI-(Jack)-baiting.  Last couple of sessions he's refused to call upon 
me for an open question...

gerry

Paul Ramsey wrote:
> Gerry Creager N5JXS wrote:
> 
>> Don't forget that for everything else they might be to closed source, 
>> ESRI is one of the founding members of the OGC.
> 
> 
> And they have been ignoring any standard which might cause product 
> interoperability for the past several years. :/ I have no illusions 
> about ESRI's interest in interoperability or the OGC standards process. 
> They are an OGC member so they do not get blindsided by pre-release 
> standards, and so they can manipulate the process in ways which are 
> convenient to their own product strategies. Just because they are in OGC 
> does not mean than (a) they are not monopolists or (b) they are not 
> dedicated to remaining monopolists. MicroSoft is a member of lots of 
> standards bodies too.
> 
>> Are you going to ask them when there's gonna be ArcView for Linux?
> 
> 
> I'll ask, if I can. They have a nice Q&A session at the end of the 
> conference, but it might be on the Friday, and I leave on the evening of 
> the Thursday. :(  Jack had the gall to talk about ESRI's "commitment to 
> open source" in his plenary last year -- turns out it just means they 
> distribute (mostly other peoples) Avenue, AML and VB scripts. Whee, some 
> commitment. One would think that ArcView 3.X would be a trivial Linux 
> port, since it already has HP/UX and Solaris ports. Depends on the 
> underlying cross platform GUI library they used though, which ESRI did 
> not write themselves but licenced from another company.
> 

-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Network Engineering -- AATLT, Texas A&M University	
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.847.8578
Page: 979.228.0173
Office: 903A Eller Bldg, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843