Release the Moose?

[Dale Trexel]

Thanks again to everyone involved in today's presentation.
Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to contribute much to the
development of GISmo itself, but I hope to use it as a learning tool to
see how XML can be used in a web-mapping environment, javascript for
client-side features, and other things I think would be really nifty to
know more about. Perhaps once I get more experience developing my own
applications I can contribute back to the project.

However, I did wish to share some ideas about names that I was musing
over after today's workshop. While GISmoOSE is catchy, it just doesn't
roll off the tongue. However, I realized that if the "mo" stands for
"map objects", then the GIS is kinda redundant. What about just Moose?
It could stand for something like Map Object Open Source Engine. A quick
search of Sourceforge reveals that there is no project called simply
"moose". There is the "Moose ActionScript Library" and "Moose Server",
neither of which are related to geospatial applications. I like the
simplicity of the name, the Minnesota connection, and the fact that we'd
have a built-in mascot - and the obvious device of having each of the
points on his antlers drawing connections to the various services that
Moose can bring together.

If just "Moose" is too generic, it looks like "geomoose.org" is
available - "Geospatial Map Object Open Source Engine". I also rather
like SpaceMoose, which you can kinda bend into "Spatial Map Object Open
Source Engine (no more redundant than GISmoose, when you think about
it), but it seems that Space Moose already has a presence on the internet.

Anyhow, something to think about when you need a break from thinking
about code.

-Dale