[postgis-users] A bit off topic, but FOSS GIS clients...

[Frank Warmerdam]

dnrg wrote:
> Will importing the shapefiles into PostgreSQL solve
> the data access speed issues? Is the rendering engine
> itself problematic, or is the slowness a function of
> its inability to work efficiently with shapefiles?

Dear impatient person without an apparent name,

I think the above question is best asked on the qgis
mailing list.  I'd suggest not describing QGIS as
a decade behind ArcView as a preamble to your request
for answers.

> Finally, have the QGIS, uDig, and other folks
> considered joining forces to create a killer GIS
> client? I find it depressing to see many different
> fiefdoms in the FOSS community generally. If several
> projects merged, it could lead to one heck of a FOSS
> software product rather than, perhaps, several
> marginal ones.
 >
> One of the beauties of FOSS is that anyone with a
> vision can start a project and attempt to create
> something better than already exists. However, that
> vision may be realized, if ever, at a glacial pace. I
> myself am impatient, and am not a software developer.
> But if I was a developer, I would want to find the
> best FOSS GIS client out there and focus efforts on
> it.

Contributing to an existing good package, to make
it great is indeed much better than starting
yet another project.

> Seems to me if people joined forces more often and
> consolidated projects, QGIS, for instance, might not
> still be choking trying to access, search, and render
> moderately sized shapefiles after 5 years of
> development.
> 
> So what gives? At conferences like FOSS4G, is there
> ever talk of project consolidation? If not, why not? I
> tend to think of all the development hours spent on,
> say, 8 FOSS GIS clients, wasted, when, if
> there was focus, 1 or 2 FOSS GIS clients could really
> kick some butt and give commercial products real
> competition.

At FOSS4G and similar venues there is often talk of
how to share efforts though common libraries and such.
Generally it is considered impolite to suggest that
another project team abandon their efforts and fit them
selves into your project.  I think there has been some
exciting progress in this regard with projects like
MapBuilder, ka-map and others focusing quite a bit
of effort on using OpenLayers as a common client side
toolkit.  This is one example of sharing some effort.

Generally speaking project consolidation occurs by
a process of user and developer attrition.  The
stronger project will tend to suck users away from
the weaker (comparible) project over time.  Given a
loss of interest in the weaker project (and perhaps
corresponding funding) developers will often transition
to the stronger project (or perhaps to other efforts).

It is rare for a project to make an across the board
decision to dissolve in favor of another.  After all,
it only takes one developer willing to keep the old
project alive though it might be in rather a weak state.


> Why doesn't project consolidation happen often--or not
> often enough? Hurt feelings? Unwillingness to judge
> one product over another?

Many reasons:
  * It takes almost no effort to keep a project in a very
    vague state of life so projects rarely completely die.
  * Developers and users are attached to what they know,
    so generally there is always at least a small core
    that will stick with even a weak project.
  * Different projects often have somewhat different focus
    and it can be hard to mix these different foci into
    one project successfully.

> Have there been no systematic attempts by the
> community to seriously assess what projects are out
> there, find 1 or 2 best of breeds, then encourage the
> focus of development on those?

I do not feel this can be a top down process, so
essentially this is done by the community in an
adhoc process as folks select the best project for
their needs.

> I appreciate all the work that's been done on QGIS,
> uDig, and others. But I personally would love to see
> more consolidation so we make larger, quicker strides.

The best way you can encourage consolidation is to
pick a best-of-breed project for your needs, and then
to contribute to making it better.  This might include
development, documentation, helping users, promotion
or funding.  Promotion can include gentle advocacy of
the project to the user communities of other comparible
projects though this could turn ugly if not handled a
bit more nicely than this particular email was.

This sort of meta-discussion likely belongs places like
OSGeo discuss list, or the freegis list.

Many people feel one great weakness of the free software community
is that there is no top down authority directing and redirecting
efforts.  But, in my opinion, this is really one of it's great
strengths.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org