Shareholding, Open Source interests and the OSGeo

[Arnulf Christl]

Hi All,
bear with me - this is probably unimportant, ambiguous and paranoid but I
chewed on it for a few days and finally now that it starts to make some
sense I wanted to share it with fellow paranoids. So pls only read on if
you are bored and don't have anything real to do.

The German version is not very explicit in stating "hat ... sich
beteiligt" meaing it "acquired some shares". The English translation of
the news item explicitly says a "majority interest" which in my
understanding makes a big difference:
http://www.conterra.de/en/misc/news/detail.asp?ID=373

A little background: The business conterra baed in Muenster, Germany is
gib time vendor and partner of ESRI (>12 years). Recently they started the
Open Source project 52N (security proxy, sensor web, etc. GPL) a
reasonable reaction to many German public administrations wanting a
transparent (Open Source) security solution. The business model is
somewhat complicated in keeping a core of the software under the direct
influence of one company rendering the construction 52N incompatible to
OSGeo principles. But find out yourself and comment, maybe I am just
overnoid again, you know...
http://www.52north.org/index.php?faq#7

I like this one, its kind of funny:
"(9) Does a dual licensing model bother the developers of 52°North software?
Principally, yes."

:-)

So far so good. This effectively means that ESRI is majority shareholder
of the principal member of an Open Source project. Anybody wanting to talk
to them to find out more about how this works, come to the Open Source
Park of the OSGeo at the Intergeo 2005 (they requested a project booth two
days before the above news item was announced. Now you teel me - am I
being paranoid? :-)
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Intergeo_2006#Professional_Service_Provider_Exhibitors

Best regards,
-- 
Arnulf Christl
http://www.ccgis.de