[Qgis-psc] Proposal that QGIS.ORG will become a member of the OpenDesign Alliance

Tue Dec 15 12:28:36 PST 2015

Hi Vincent, Strk and others,

First, let me know that this is my personal proposal and not the 
proposal of the QGIS.ORG board. I happen to be on the QGIS.ORG board, 
but the board did not endorse my proposal.

Second - the open design alliance (ODA) is  a non-profit organization. 
But - it has to find a sustainable way of funding. They need to employ 
people to work on reverse engineering the unspecified DWG format 
developed by Autodesk. While I agree with you, that it would be better 
if they would have memberships and still release the code in the open, 
this is not up for me/us to decide. Maybe - if ODA was founded today, it 
would have taken the route of open-sourcing their work - but back then 
in 1998, when it was founded - this was not the standard route to take. 
It is the ODA members who decide about their policies.

So let me state: by being an ODA member I am not funding a regular 
proprietary software vendor, but helping to sustain the income of a 
non-profit organization. ODA is a self-help organization of CAD vendors 
and projects that need to compete or interoperate with the market leader 
Autodesk.

If I had 500k Euros in my chest, I would wholeheartedly agree with you 
and fund the LibreDWG project to do a good job. Unfortunately this is 
not the reality. I even have a hard time getting the 32k necessary to 
pay Jürgen to implement the CAD/DWG import functionality.

I am trying to be pragmatic. I would like to have a solution for a 
problem that most communal GIS managers have. Architects deliver data in 
DWG and DXF format and we need to review against our GIS data. We also 
need to integrate CAD data in our database, or use it as digitizing 
background, also being able to snap against CAD data sources. My 
employer, along with many other GIS manager on the municipality level, 
needs to find a timely solution with a modest budget.

If you help me put together a fund-raising campaign to bring LibreDWG 
into a usable state, I am very much willing to propose LibreDWG instead 
of the Teigha library. Note, however, that the Teigha library is 
significantly more advanced than LibreDWG. It also has sustainable 
funding to keep it up-to-date with recent versions of DWG.

Vincent, Strk and others - it is easy to criticize the board. But where 
is the alternative? Something that can be delivered within 2016? On a 
high quality level? With a small budget <50k Euros?

Again - if you can help me find a real alternative I would be more than 
happy to follow that alternative route.

We can decide to be hard core GPL and fight everything else - but then 
we will most likely remain a niche project. Or we can be pragmatic, do 
compromises where reasonable, without betraying our core values, and we 
have the chance of making a real difference for many people and 
organizations in a meaningful timeframe.

This is my personal opinion,
Andreas

On 15.12.2015 20:00, Vincent Picavet (ml) wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On 15/12/2015 15:37, Andreas Neumann wrote:
>> Hi QGIS.ORG board,
>>
>> As you may be aware, Jürgen I worked on a proposal to allow import of
>> CAD data into QGIS. Jürgen provided an offer.
>>
>> We plan to use the Teigha library of the OpenDesign Alliance (ODA)
>> (https://www.opendesign.com/the_oda_platform/Teigha). It isn't GPL
>> compatible and it requires a membership fee with annual renewal.
>>
>> I was investigating whether OSGEO could become a member - this is
>> theoretically possible, but it would require a higher and more expensive
>> membership level than as if QGIS.ORG would become a member. I would thus
>> propose that QGIS.ORG becomes a sustaining member of the ODA, which
>> would allow to distribute binaries of the Teigha library for all of our
>> supported platforms, along with the QGIS binaries.
>>
>> Financially, the sustaining membership level would mean US $5000.- in
>> the first year and US $3000.- annual renewal in the subsequent years. I
>> would propose that QGIS.ORG would pay this membership fees from the
>> QGIS.ORG funds - and if you agree - will include it into our 2016
>> budget. See https://www.opendesign.com/Sustaining
> I am really wondering where we are going to right now with QGIS.Org.
>
> I already gave my opinion that the organization should not spend money
> to fund features. This is just an opinion, and I do respect that some
> would not agree. It would at least need a debate first though.
>
> But this yet is another story. Funding directly some proprietary
> software vendors ? Yearly ? Really ?
>
> I have no problem with QGIS plugins using some prorietary piece of code,
> circumventing the GPL. But this proposal is a different beast :
> * It is feature-related funding, for a quite large amount ( that's ok if
> it is not qgis.org paying, but this should be clear)
> * It would fund a proprietary software vendor ( definitly not ok)
> * It would package proprietary software with default QGIS releases ( not
> ok )
> * It would implement a technical (ugly) workaround for licence
> compatibility ( not ok in core or default installed plugin )
> * It is a recurrent spending, with a very difficult way back ( removing
> the user such a feature will be hard)
>
> Why don't you implement a separate proprietary tool with a end-user
> installer, having nothing to do with QGIS.org, OSGeo, nor QGIS
> distribution, that allows format conversion to QGIS project/data/style
> files ?
> We would not have to mess with proprietary software, and any
> non-opensource organization could pay the money to be allowed to
> distribute it. Even a simple end user could distribute this separate
> tool, paying the licence fee.
> But please, do not involve QGIS.org in this mess, we have plenty enough
> with the ECW opensource-not-libre dragon.
>
> Or follow strk's advice and improve the libredwg library. That's the
> right way to do things.
>
> Regards,
>
> Vincent
>
> PS : Jeff will probably not answer your queries as he resigned from
> OSGeo's board
>
>> I will propose to make this decision dependent on our ability to raise
>> the 32k Euros required to pay Jürgen for the QGIS-side development. So
>> far I only have confirmations for about 10k Euros. Still some work to
>> raise the full amount.
>>
>> Do you have any questions regarding this proposal?
>> Thanks,
>> Andreas
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