[postgis-users] "Linux" geocoder script ?

[Paragon Corporation]

On 27-3-2011 11:14, Sandro Santilli wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 07:05:48PM -0400, Paragon Corporation wrote:
>
>> Sorry to bring the whole money thing, but I feel people tend to lose 
>> sight of that, that most of the PostGIS development team contributes 
>> back stuff they were getting paid to work on and also work  in 
>> general that has no strategic value to be kept behind closed doors.
> I'd like to point out that, personally, I think there's no strategic 
> value in keeping any code behind closed doors.
> This is actually the first reason why I'm refusing jobs.
> Especially frustrating when potential employers are public bodies, 
> funded in turn by citizens, and wasting their money on proprietary 
> software licenses rather than public, open doors, development.
>
> Of course it depends on what your strategy is aimed at.
> Sharing, IMHO, makes everyone richer.
>
>
> Hear, hear,

> Jan

I agree with both of you which is why we designed the loader so it would be
easy to rework for Unix flavor of computers. Testing on Unix/Linux does take
time and time I'd much rather spend doing other things unless someone is
willing to put their money where their mouth is.

I also agree that governments that spend tons on proprietary software that
can't even be used by the people paying taxes should be really ashamed of
themselves
-- they should be shot in fact -- but don't get me started on that.  Oh yeah
I use windows -- I should probably be shot too :). Scratch that thought.

Truth of the matter is that we live in a very screwed up society with very
warped ideas of the value of money and lack of respect for community goods.
I can give you a piece of paper for free and charge you an arm and a leg
For the pen to go along with it.  Is one more valuable than another -- you
be the judge, but most naïve people would think the pen that writes on the
paper is more valuable than the paper it writes on? There is this warped
sense that something you pay money for is more valuable than something you
get for free.  So some of us just like to charge for stupid things or things
that serve a very focused audience (buying into the game so to speak) and
redirect the money to work on free projects that can benefit everyone.  

A book that is free is less valuable than a book that costs money.
Therefore if there is a book on PostGIS that costs money, that makes PostGIS
more valuable.  That's actually the main reason we went with a commercial
publisher and charging for our book.

So we are pretty careful too on the contracts we sign and what we get to
give back to the community. If we feel it's something that has mass
beneficial or that a lot of synergy can be gained by working with others we
try to make that free and sell that idea to our customers as well that they
aren't giving away their ship by giving away a side product of their core
offering.  We also stay away from contracts where all code we produce is
owned by the company we are producing it for.

Thanks,
Regina
http://www.postgis.us