[QGIS-Developer] QGIS 4.0 - let's start some early discussions!

[C Hamilton]

I don't agree with the implied solution (i.e. slowing down development to
> focus on documentation) because I don't see how this is economically
> feasible.
>
> If those offices that switched back from QGIS to ESRI would have invested
> the money they are now paying for licenses into QGIS, we could probably
> have fulfilled Tim's vision of having someone working full-time on QGIS
> documentation and Q&A.
>
> They could also have hired a developer to write the missing documentation.
> Or hired someone to port their scripts. Or stayed with QGIS 2 until more
> documentation is ready ...
>
> This story is sad and frustrating but we need to find an economically
> feasible solution and I think that involved educating users about how open
> source projects work.
>

Most of out QGIS users are using it because they have the interest and want
to use open source. Management is tolerating its use and in this situation
the users are not in a position to either hire a developer nor pay someone
to write the documentation. That has to come form above. There are
government entities that are supporting QGIS who have contributed
significantly, but that doesn't necessarily translate down to individual
offices and users.

I don't know what the solution is, but just know that this is what some
face and the less API breaks, better documentation, and better transition
methods can make a huge difference for these offices.

In the government users normally do not see the actual cost of ESRI
licenses so if QGIS does not work out they just go back to ArcGIS. There
are real benefits to QGIS. Users of ArcGIS occasionally feel the impact of
the licenses being exhausted or the license server going down. QGIS does
not have this problem. Additionally, QGIS normally runs faster, crashes,
less, and can work with larger amounts of data.

The one thing I see with many users is that they just want to do their job.
They don't like redoing scripts they worked so hard on. They just want to
run the software year after year and have it work.

Calvin
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