[QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Alessandro Pasotti]

Jonathan, I forgot to ask you: do you have any statistics/guesses
about the underlying operating system ?

It would also be interesting to know how much "cloud" technology is
used (AWS & C.).

Cheers


On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 10:43 PM 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



-- 
Alessandro Pasotti
QCooperative:  www.qcooperative.net
ItOpen:   www.itopen.it