[QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

Tue Jun 9 02:23:22 PDT 2020

Hi,
I can't agree more with Andreas.

Just note that we have major companies betting on QGIS server for
production use and considering switching from Geoserver to QGIS server to
get rid of the double administration task burden.
They fund progressively what is missing and QGIS.org helps sometimes for
OGC certification testing and documentation but the majority of the fund
are not made by QGIS.org

So yes, we have open ecosystems, I don't get the point of trying to cut
(small) funds on a solution that is useful, supported by users and funders.

Best regards
Régis

Le mar. 9 juin 2020 à 11:12, Andreas Neumann <a.neumann at carto.net> a écrit :

> Hi Jonathan,
>
> Rest assured - the majority of QGIS funds is already (and has always been
> going) into bug fixing. Again - both Desktop and server users benefit from
> that bug fixing.
>
> We publish our financial reports here:
> https://www.qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/governance/finance/index.html
>
> If you look into the 2019 report, you can see that around 50% of our funds
> go into bug fixing and quality assurance (in some years even more). Only
> about 10% of our funds went into the grants in 2019. And from these grants,
> server received a small fraction. So, the absolute amounts of investments
> that QGIS.ORG invests into QGIS sever is really negligible.
>
> Most investments done in QGIS server go directly from clients to QGIS
> development companies - and that has nothing to do with QGIS.ORG
>
> If you talk about the number of users of a server installation - I think
> this is debateable: if you only count the admin of a server (regardless of
> which server), then the numbers are low - no matter if we talk about ArcGIS
> server, Geoserver, UMN, QGIS, etc. But every server easily has a hundred or
> sometimes several thousand users who use these services - don't you think.
> If I look at our small province - we have maybe 100 QGIS desktop users, but
> certainly several thousand users who use our Web-GIS and OGC services -
> don't you agree? And our services integrate with a lot of other
> applications that are vital to a province level government. So in this
> perspective, (QGIS)-server installations need to be multiplied with some
> factor to compare it with QGIS desktop user numbers.
>
> Andreas
>
> On 2020-06-09 10:38, Jonathan Moules wrote:
>
> Hi Andreas, (& All),
> A fair point, but I believe this is an important point and this year I do
> have data to back up my point; in fact the grant program is what motivated
> me to finally get around to doing this analysis.
>
> It seems from the replies that while there are a few differentiators, the
> key one is indeed cartography and styling. (There's also an interesting
> conversation about vectors going on there too). Some thoughts:
> * The vast majority of WMS/WMTS layers are not cartographically
> complicated, let alone beautiful. They're "here is a layer with small green
> points for trees", and "this polygon represents conservation areas". You
> can easily play around and see what's out there here:
> http://www.geoseer.net/api-demo/
> * WFS/WCS can't be styled server side.
> * It seems like overkill to create and maintain an entire server
> distribution that fundamentally only solves one (relatively simple compared
> to what QGIS Desktop can do) problem.
> * Rendering is only one part the QGIS package (Analysis, digitisation,
> management, etc.).
>
> If I'm honest, the "competition" on this point isn't really between QGIS
> and MapServer/GeoServer. It's really between QGIS and ArcGIS. Because
> ArcGIS does exactly what QGIS Server seeks to do: offer a single integrated
> solution for Desktop-> Server. And certainly ArcGIS Server does have a huge
> number of deployments (53%), however again, there really aren't many
> cartographically complicated outputs on there. And despite the huge number
> of deployments, most services and datasets are actually served by
> MapServer/GeoServer (about 60% of datasets between them!). Basically ArcGIS
> is deployed by local government and used for bitty-stuff ("here are our
> fire stations"), but if you want a real data-service then you go with
> GeoServer/MapServer/etc.
>
> Most importantly though, I think I haven't conveyed my core point well:
> this really is a zero sum game!
> Even allowing for the above, any funds spent on QGIS Server are not spent
> on QGIS Desktop. There are 60 public facing QGIS Server deployments. Even
> assuming that there's a ratio of 10:1 for private/public servers (made up
> ratio, feels too high), any funding on QGIS Server benefits only hundreds,
> or being very generous, maybe low-thousands number of users. Funding on
> QGIS Desktop however benefits as a *minimum* tens of thousands, potentially
> millions of users (no idea how many QGIS installs there are, I can't find
> the download-stats I remember seeing in the past).
> Heck, even pretending for a second QGIS Server had 100% of the deployments
> (a 100 fold increase!), there would /still/ be orders of magnitude more
> people using the not-Server parts of QGIS Desktop by its very nature.
>
> There are 3,102 open issues on the QGIS issue tracker. 95 are labelled
> regressions, 137 are "high priority", and 92 are "crash/data corruption".
> Just 49 are "Server". I'm not seeking to denigrate the project here; QGIS
> is a extremely complex tool that is an amazing accomplishment and by its
> nature it will have bugs. I raise these numbers to highlight that any money
> spent on Grants to Server (and yes new Desktop features) is money that
> isn't spent fixing these (I'm aware of the bug-fixing fund). Something I
> think the grant voters should be cognizant of.
>
> Hope that clarifies,
> I'll step back now. :-)
> Cheers,
> Jonathan
>
>
> On 09/06/2020 08:09, Andreas Neumann wrote:
>
> Hi Jonathan,
> You keep repeating yourself. You started the exact same discussion a
> year ago.
> You have a valid point, of course, I don't argue that. But if you think
> about small organizations  that do not have a lot of personal (or
> financial) resources, it would be a lot of burden to invest twice the
> time in styling: once for QGIS desktop and another time again for UMN
> mapserver and Geoserver. Even if SLD output from QGIS improved (also
> thanks to efforts of Andrea Aime and others), it still can't transport
> everything. If it would, then I would better agree with your argument.
> For such smaller organization, speed (and I know that UMN and Geoserver
> are a bit faster than QGIS server) is not the only important thing - it
> is also their personal and financial resources and complexity of their
> software landscape.
> And QGIS server has some other unique selling points: the proprietary
> GetPrint command that doesn't have a match in Geoserver or UMN, the
> ability to create Atlases from server, and who knows, in the future
> perhaps QGIS server can run processing models.
> Greetings,
> Andreas
> On 2020-06-08 22:42, Jonathan Moules 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 EUR10,000,
> 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.)
>
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