Folks, Having triggered quite a bit of fruitful discussion on the Jobs posting question, I'm now returning to an earlier effort - the Service Provider Directory (SPD).
This is basically a listing of contractors, integrators and solution providers prepared to offer various sorts of services around open source geospatial technologies. It has been online now for roughly nine months, and has quite a substantial list of providers. However, the foundation has done relatively little to promote it and we still consider it to be in a "fine tuning" phase. It was decided at the Board Meeting FOSS4G2007 that the Service Provider Directory should give searchers some guidance on which service providers are actually supporters of the foundation and projects. This helps searchers highlight the more involved service providers, and provides an incentive for organizations to support development and the foundation. This email is soliciting feedback from the community on this "prioritization" effort. A more complete discussion is available at: http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/SPD_Prioritization The base page describing the Service Provider Directory is at: http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Service_Provider_Directory The service provider itself is available off the main OSGeo page (under the OSGeo Community heading) for those unfamiliar with it. Briefly, the proposal is to add a column in the service provider which will indicate types of contribution by that service provider. This could be in-kind contributions to a project (as determined by the project) or sponsorship of the foundation. Service providers who are identified as contributors will be listed ahead of service providers who are not identified as contributors in any search. However, being listed in the service provider directory would still be free and we would not otherwise discriminate against service providers who have not been identified as contributors. This email is seeking feedback from the community on two main items: 1) Does it seem acceptable to give preferential listing (via order of returned results) to organizations identified as contributors? 2) Are project PSCs actually willing and interested in identifying contributors in a formal way? It would be up to projects to decide what criteria they want and to notify webcom of their contributors in some fashion. I'm also interested in general feedback on how to improve the service provider directory and on the "prioritization" effort. Please read over the prioritization proposal for details. http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/SPD_Prioritization Best regards, -- ---------------------------------------+-------------------------------------- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [EMAIL PROTECTED] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss