[QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

Tue Jun 9 00:39:25 PDT 2020

I appreciate your viewpoint and assessment very much, Jonathan.

I trust the board heeds your advise and lead towards focused investment in
those things that matter to the majority users.

Thank you,

On Mon, Jun 8, 2020, 1:12 PM <qgis-developer-request at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. QGIS Server and the Grants programme (Jonathan Moules)
>    2. Plugin [383] Buffer by Percentage approval        notification.
>       (noreply at qgis.org)
>    3. Re: QGIS Server and the Grants programme (Tim Sutton)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 21:42:25 +0100
> From: Jonathan Moules <jonathan-lists at lightpear.com>
> To: QGIS Developer Mailing List <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org>
> Subject: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme
> Message-ID: <6987c634-eb32-57a5-9d4f-455c2c49f463 at lightpear.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
>
> Hi List,
> Some of you may have seen my blog post on the OSGeo-Discuss list about
> which mapping servers are the most deployed. For those who haven't seen
> it, QGIS Server has about 60 public deployments (1% of all of them), and
> it serves 11,924 datasets (0.5% of all public geospatial
> WMS/WFS/WCS/WMTS datasets).
>
> Potentially controversial here and I appreciate it's not a competition,
> but given the low uptake of QGIS Server compared to other Open Source
> offerings (GeoServer: 964 deployments, 963,603 datasets; MapServer: 544
> deployments, 389,709 datasets), is QGIS Server something the grant
> program should be funding? There are three Server proposals totalling
> €10,000, 22% of the fund.
>
> Now, before you get the pitchforks out(!), please consider the following:
>
> * Zero sum game - Any money spent on QGIS Server cannot be spent on QGIS
> Desktop. (The grants mostly aren't things that will improve the shared
> QGIS Core). (This reasoning also follows through to OSGeo funds).
>
> * Multiple solutions - Open Source (and OSGeo) already has a very
> healthy ecosystem of mapping servers - does it need another one?
>
> * Limited number of users benefited - I don't have stats for it, but
> QGIS Desktop is probably the most popular Open Source Desktop GIS, and
> is certainly going to have many orders of magnitude more users than QGIS
> Server.
>
> * Playing to your strengths - QGIS' strength is it's Desktop and it's
> generally good practice to play to your strengths.
>
>
> So given the above, and that QGIS is already "winning" as an Open Source
> Desktop (great job!), I'd like to suggest it's not a good idea to dilute
> the limited resources by spending them on QGIS Server. Instead it seems
> that far more people would benefit if that money was spent on Desktop,
> especially the bug fixing programme.
>
> Or alternatively, given the "Unique Selling Point" of QGIS Server is its
> integration with QGIS Desktop, those resources could be used to further
> improve interoperability with GeoServer/MapServer/deegree/etc. Those are
> all successful mature OSGeo projects that excel at serving maps, have an
> architecture designed for it, and already have huge install bases.
>
> TLDR: QGIS excels at being a Desktop, and I'd like to suggest it should
> play to its strengths and focus its limited funds there to benefit the
> most users.
>
> I shall now retreat to my bunker. :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Jonathan
>
> Note: The above only applies to the Grant program and funding; how
> developers wish to spend their time, and on which projects is of course
> their own prerogative.
>
> (Disclosure: I have no horse in this race; I don't run or administer any
> mapping servers, but I have done GeoServer in the past.)
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2020 21:23:42 -0000
> From: noreply at qgis.org
> To: juernjakob at gmail.com, qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: [QGIS-Developer] Plugin [383] Buffer by Percentage approval
>         notification.
> Message-ID: <20200608212342.2210.78484 at 2c6504964296>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>
> Plugin Buffer by Percentage approval by zimbogisgeek.
> The plugin version "[383] Buffer by Percentage 0.3.3" is now approved
> Link: http://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/BufferByPercentage/
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2020 00:09:13 +0100
> From: Tim Sutton <tim at kartoza.com>
> To: jonathan-lists at lightpear.com
> Cc: QGIS Developer <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org>
> Subject: Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme
> Message-ID: <D277D1E1-B3B5-439F-99EA-C4B6969E352E at kartoza.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Hi
>
>
> Nice, thoughtful message below, thanks Jonathon. I wonder what it will
> take to move the needle above 1%? And whether we should try to use our
> funds to make that happen. QGIS is surely the most expressive way to do
> cartography of any GIS out there (acknowledging total bias on my part) and
> seeing that cartography on the web would surely please many people. Clients
> like QWC, QWC2 or anything that requires you to hand edit a config file or
> log into a unix shell to publish map services are probably the main
> limitation (no offence to those tools). Also the lack of an built in tiling
> server (with proper metalling and meta buffering) must surely be the
> other.  Maybe a more useful approach to your discussion below would be to
> promote funding the elements that add resistance to deploying QGIS
> server……but then we would be in new feature space and circling back to the
> idea of not funding QGIS Server with grants…..
>
> Regards
>
> Tim
>
> > On 8 Jun 2020, at 21:42, Jonathan Moules <jonathan-lists at lightpear.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi List,
> > Some of you may have seen my blog post on the OSGeo-Discuss list about
> which mapping servers are the most deployed. For those who haven't seen it,
> QGIS Server has about 60 public deployments (1% of all of them), and it
> serves 11,924 datasets (0.5% of all public geospatial WMS/WFS/WCS/WMTS
> datasets).
> >
> > Potentially controversial here and I appreciate it's not a competition,
> but given the low uptake of QGIS Server compared to other Open Source
> offerings (GeoServer: 964 deployments, 963,603 datasets; MapServer: 544
> deployments, 389,709 datasets), is QGIS Server something the grant program
> should be funding? There are three Server proposals totalling €10,000, 22%
> of the fund.
> >
> > Now, before you get the pitchforks out(!), please consider the following:
> >
> > * Zero sum game - Any money spent on QGIS Server cannot be spent on QGIS
> Desktop. (The grants mostly aren't things that will improve the shared QGIS
> Core). (This reasoning also follows through to OSGeo funds).
> >
> > * Multiple solutions - Open Source (and OSGeo) already has a very
> healthy ecosystem of mapping servers - does it need another one?
> >
> > * Limited number of users benefited - I don't have stats for it, but
> QGIS Desktop is probably the most popular Open Source Desktop GIS, and is
> certainly going to have many orders of magnitude more users than QGIS
> Server.
> >
> > * Playing to your strengths - QGIS' strength is it's Desktop and it's
> generally good practice to play to your strengths.
> >
> >
> > So given the above, and that QGIS is already "winning" as an Open Source
> Desktop (great job!), I'd like to suggest it's not a good idea to dilute
> the limited resources by spending them on QGIS Server. Instead it seems
> that far more people would benefit if that money was spent on Desktop,
> especially the bug fixing programme.
> >
> > Or alternatively, given the "Unique Selling Point" of QGIS Server is its
> integration with QGIS Desktop, those resources could be used to further
> improve interoperability with GeoServer/MapServer/deegree/etc. Those are
> all successful mature OSGeo projects that excel at serving maps, have an
> architecture designed for it, and already have huge install bases.
> >
> > TLDR: QGIS excels at being a Desktop, and I'd like to suggest it should
> play to its strengths and focus its limited funds there to benefit the most
> users.
> >
> > I shall now retreat to my bunker. :-)
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Jonathan
> >
> > Note: The above only applies to the Grant program and funding; how
> developers wish to spend their time, and on which projects is of course
> their own prerogative.
> >
> > (Disclosure: I have no horse in this race; I don't run or administer any
> mapping servers, but I have done GeoServer in the past.)
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > QGIS-Developer mailing list
> > QGIS-Developer at lists.osgeo.org
> > List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
>
> —
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Tim Sutton
>
> Co-founder: Kartoza
> Ex Project chair: QGIS.org
>
> Visit http://kartoza.com <http://kartoza.com/> to find out about open
> source:
>
> Desktop GIS programming services
> Geospatial web development
> GIS Training
> Consulting Services
>
> Skype: timlinux
> IRC: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net
>
> I'd love to connect. Here's my calendar link <
> https://calendly.com/timlinux/30min> to make finding time easy.
>
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