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

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi all,

>
> * Andreas could you clarify if your intention is to have a data 
> provider that reads DWG on the fly, or a transformation tool that 
> converts it to e.g. spatialite with embedded QML styles that reflect 
> the original styles of the DWG data? If something like the latter then 
> Vincent’s suggestion of building a discrete tool packaged separately 
> from QGIS might be worth considering.

The goal is to read DWG on-the-fly and also auto-convert styling and 
labelling as close as possible. It should be possible to copy data from 
CAD to GIS and to snap to the CAD layers.

> * Just tossing ideas around, one alternative we could consider is to 
> follow the ubuntu route - when you want to install a proprietary 
> driver for your video card - they give the user a nice little message 
> indicating why it might not be nice to use it and then fetch it online 
> if they want to continue anyway. I think their model is quite good in 
> that they provide a balance between pragmatism and a more purist 
> approach that e.g. debian goes with. Perhaps other proprietary stuff 
> like ECW, MrSID could also be managed in this way and we get to raise 
> some awareness about which functionality is provided by proprietary 
> code, and those who want a ‘pure’ FOSS QGIS experience can have it by 
> not installing those binary blobs.

This decision would probably have to go into the installer. As far as I 
know, it is not so easy to "plug in" binary code at a later stage. But I 
would be fine with the approach that the user would be asked at install 
time if he wants to install with or without proprietary data providers. 
As far as I know, on Windows, if you want to have Oracle support you 
also have to accept the extra Oracle license.

Thanks,
Andreas