[Qgis-psc] Thoughts

Thu Mar 28 01:49:16 PDT 2019

Hi,

Thanks Paolo for sharing those thoughts, I think you are perfectly right
to raise this topic and we indeed are in a moment where this needs to be
discussed.

I share your view that most of us are now in commercial companies
offering services around QGIS ecosystem, and probably it is true that in
some cases, this leads to having less time to contribute back sometimes.

I'll share the situation here in France from my point of view. Up to
now, very very few customers have been funding QGIS contribution. I can
tell, because I was one of the very few funders (maximum 4 persons
probably). Two of us quit, and we fail into that situation where France
probably as higher user / population ratio in the world, which makes me
somewhat revolt and puzzled. I even see customers OK with using open
source, but refusing "to pay for the others" (yes). Users are expecting
a lot (macOs packages, reliability, documentation, etc..) but giving
almost nothing lead to this very moment.

So in my understanding of the situation, our main challenge is to
structure a power-user/funder/influencer ecosystem that rely on much
more numerous people. This will generate economic activity and
progressively lead us to a situation close to PostgreSQL ecosystem. I'm
very confident that the QGIS involved companies can work in a friendly
environment and respect each other in that scenario.  At Oslandia, we
are working closely with Dalibo - a postgreSQL expert company- and they
get m any users coming from the geospatial world. QGIS lead to postGIS,
postGIS to postgreSQL... They manage contributed back money to PostGIS
work this year. So +1 with Andreas, let's get closer with our elephant
friend.

What differs in our economic model, is that Databases are the
foundations of an information system. Companies accept to pay for
support contract because they can't afford to be left alone. The more
criticity, the more money they are ready to give. How do we get to a
similar criticity situation for QGIS desktop? I think QGIS server is one
way to go here, it is the reason why big companies get into serious and
critical apps with QGIS. 

I must also point out that this is not only a QGIS situation, the whole
OSGeo ecosystem is sharing this. My conclusion for the French situation
is that we need to work upstream, so I got involved into the French
Local Chapter of Osgeo, which hosts the QGIS user group, and our roadmap
follows the path open by Andreas and the swiss user group. We need to
switch from a benevolent base to a professional network there, and help
customers know each other, share good practices, budgets, emulate, and
give prooves of seriousness to their hierarchy. That doesn't prevent
form taking fun however !

Best regards, and let's keep inclusive, open minded and forward thinking
as always! This is why I love this community :)

Régis

Le 28/03/2019 à 08:36, Andreas Neumann a écrit :
>
> perpelexed
> On Wed, 27 Mar 2019 at 21:01, Anita Graser <anitagraser at gmx.at
> <mailto:anitagraser at gmx.at>> wrote:
>
>     Thank you for the thoughtful email, Paolo!
>
>     On Wed, Mar 27, 2019 at 7:44 AM Paolo Cavallini
>     <cavallini at faunalia.it <mailto:cavallini at faunalia.it>> wrote:
>
>         Among these, I see two lines that are to me particularly evident:
>         * the increasing number and importance of proprietary tools ... 
>
>         * the shift from a volunteer-only association... 
>
>         To be very clear, as Chair I do not judge these as problems... 
>
>         We are steadily growing stronger and bigger, and some of these
>         changes
>         might genuinely be unavoidable ...
>
>
>     I don't think we're the only ones in this situation but I'm having
>     a hard time identifying projects with a comparable community
>     structure. 
>      
>
>
> It is probably not comparable - but the PostgreSQL community manages
> to thrive in a shared commercial, but sticking to open source values,
> community. Most of the work done in PostgreSQL is paid work (probably
> close to 99%). But the companies involved share their responsibility
> for the project and work in a friendly environment where they respect
> each other and collaborate.
>
> EnterpriseDB and 2ndQuadrant, and other smaller companies have offices
> around the globe, hundreds or thousands of employees and customers
> (top customers like you can see f.e. at
> https://www.enterprisedb.com/about-us or
> https://www.2ndquadrant.com/en/postgresql/who-uses-postgresql/ and
> https://www.2ndquadrant.com/en/case-studies/ )
>
> Note that I don't talk about Postgis, which is unfortunately, often
> notoriously underfunded.
>
> I think that the PostgreSQL community could serve as  a future role
> model for QGIS. Not that I think that we will ever be as big or
> relevant as PostgreSQL - but perhaps we can learn a bit from them how
> they manage to balance commercial interests vs. a shared vision of an
> open project and community.
>
> I talked to Bruce Momjian last year (a PostgreSQL evangelist and
> EnterpriseDB employee). I think he would have some interesting ideas
> and experiences to share from his decade-long involvement with the
> PostgreSQL community.
>
> Should we try to reach out to other successful Open Source projects
> and perhaps find out how they deal with such problems that arise
> within our community?
>
> Greetings,
> Andreas
>  
> -- 
>
> --
> Andreas Neumann
> QGIS.ORG <http://QGIS.ORG> board member (treasurer)
>
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> Qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org
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-- 
Open Source GIS Expert / Water management 

mail: regis.haubourg at oslandia.com 
tél: 0033 184 257 870
---------------------------------
http://oslandia.com/

OSLANDIA IS AN INNOVATIVE COMPANY SPECIALIZED IN GIS ARCHITECTURE. WE
PROVIDE SERVICE ON OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE FOR WHICH WE ARE EDITORS OR
RECOGNIZED EXPERTS.

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