[Qgis-psc] Migrating to free software

[Tim Sutton]

Hi

> On 8 Apr 2020, at 13:03, Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:
> 
> Hi Tim, all
> 
> Il 08/04/20 12:46, Tim Sutton ha scritto:
> 
>> It’s a pity I was not allowed to join the meeting yesterday, anyway, I
>> have added my votes in the meeting document. If I had been there, I
>> would have suggested changing the wording as per my comments below:
>> 
>> 
>>  *
>>    Paolo suggests free software should be the first choice. We should
>>    choose proprietary alternatives only when it is proven that free
>>    software fails to provide a reasonable solution. The PSC should vote
>>    in case a proprietary solution is suggested.
>>      o
>>        +1 Jürgen
>>      o
>>        +1 Paolo
>>      o
>>        +1 Andreas
>>      o
>>        +1 Marco
>>      o
>>        +1 Anita
>>      o
>>        -1 Tim - Prefer that we vote on *any* solution (Proprietary or
>>        FOSS and choose it based on merrits rather than its license).
> 
> exactly, this is the main issue: for you licences are indifferent, for
> me they are the central point of our project. my logic: without a free
> and open source licence QGIS would never have existed.

I am afraid you are paraphrasing me incorrectly here. Let me try again: Whenever we adopt a new technology we should do it based on merit. License is certainly a factor but should not be the only factor. We should also consider functionality, convenience, effort, cost, time, available volunteers, security, privacy, how much it detracts from the central effort of making QGIS itself etc. These other considerations are not solved by magic. If, for example, you want to deploy some new tool that is FOSS while ignoring all other factors you basically commit all of us to dealing with the fallout so that you can tick one ‘FOSS Pride’ box. 

Also, there is no logical connection between the license chosen for the QGIS source code, and what backend tools we use. Open Source projects by the millions use all manner of tools, proprietary and open source, to produce their work. Those tooling choices do not impact on the credibility of the open source work they produce and it is a logical fallacy to imply that the two are somehow connected. If it did have, we should reject outright our Windows builds (and 99% of our user base) on the basis that the builds are made using a proprietary compiler.

So let’s focus on QGIS and use whatever tools help us to make QGIS the world’s best GIS without going over the top trying retool all our workflows so that we can tick some mythical FOSS purity box when we could be spending that time productively on QGIS itself. If the occasion comes up where we can easily and practically use FOSS tools and they serve our needs well, I’ll be the first to give the idea a big +1.

Regards

Tim


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Tim Sutton

Co-founder: Kartoza
Ex Project chair: QGIS.org

Visit http://kartoza.com <http://kartoza.com/> to find out about open source:

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Skype: timlinux 
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