I totally agree with Jeroen in his arguing and want to stress this last
sentence:
NEVER IGNORE COMPANIES AGAIN IN OSGEO OR FOSS4G! THEY ARE NOT A THREAT,
THEY ARE A NECESSITY.
Till
Am 2016-05-12 09:17, schrieb Jeroen Ticheler:
Hi Max,
Good to have a summarized discussion about what OSGeo is. Let me only
react on the business side you discussed. I absolutely disagree with
what you are saying ;-) I'll explain:
People can only contribute voluntary (or professional) time if at
some point they earn a salary that pays their bills. And if
businesses
didn't flourish, there wouldn't be governments, universities etcetera
because there wouldn't be money for governments to fund itself nor
academia. I've been a government employee for many years and I'm
convinced governments and academia are indispensable in a well
developed society. Some things are better done there than in
business.
BUT, many other things are better done in business. I often see a lot
of distrust from the public sector towards the business sector,
including in your expressed view. This is harmful to OSGeo! If I can
send my whole company to FOSS4G to present our work, provide free
workshops, sponsor AND learn this is a highly valuable thing in my
opinion. It is ALL about individuals contributing and learning and
sharing knowledge equally.
I have spend many years in Africa, both as a child and as an adult.
As a kid I've even travelled on food trucks delivering aid in refugee
camps. I don't need many words to describe the impression that made
on
me: people (Tuaregs in my case) that lost their cattle and thus their
work, suffered deeply, but still had their pride and served us tea on
the edge of the desert. They had nowhere to go and were forced to
abandon their nomad lifestyle to settle as farmers on land that was
unsuitable for agriculture. You can't sink much further in life.
This led me to work at the UN and then change to business because I
thinks that's where the real difference can be made if done right.
One
of my main objectives is to develop knowledge that is non-exclusive
and also helps those living in less favorable economic conditions.
Technology won't be of much help to those Tuaregs, but I'm always
looking at opportunities to get some company kickstarted there
(hopefully under the GeoCat umbrella) so solid commercial activity
can
be developed locally. And for that, I won't ignore the commercial
interests I have because I'm convinced in doing so that the
development of a local company has the largest chance of success. And
thus this company can contribute to the lives of its employees and
pay
(the least possible, but proper amount of) taxes to its government.
When successful, also those employees could attend a local or global
OSGeo event. Every successful company can contribute significantly to
improving the lives of individuals. And open source is a great
vehicle
for this. FOSS4G and OSGeo are great vehicles for this too. Companies
must be able to benefit from them, because it is the people in those
companies and their families that benefit. And it is government and
academia that can then pay salaries to you.
NEVER IGNORE COMPANIES AGAIN IN OSGEO OR FOSS4G! THEY ARE NOT A
THREAT, THEY ARE A NECESSITY.
Warm hearted greetings,
Jeroen
Op 11 mei 2016 om 11:01 heeft massimiliano cannata
<massimiliano.cann...@gmail.com> het volgende geschreven:
BUSINESS AND OSGEO(EU)
OSGeo is an organisation of people. Not of sectors or groups or
parties. Of course people belong to categories and this tend to
influence the way they see the world. For this reason people tend to
contribute to the community for their competence and interest within
committees or working groups. It is not the mandate of OSGeo making
lobbies or acquire mandates. To me OSGeo should get together great
projects and people to offer the world the possibility of advance and
improve the life of people. I know It is a bit exaggerated but when i
think of open source i see it as a mean of equity: like making
accessible food and sanitation and drinking water and medicine to
everyone in the world. Making tools for a better governance available
to all.
OSGeo is about mutually sharing experiences, ideas, solutions not
building business. For this LocationTech which is a community of
companies / entities I understood is more suited.
So my vision is OSGeo focused on people not on companies or groups.
Splitting the community is not an advancement but a loss of value.
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