[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > The entrance of players like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have altered the > landscape significantly because they bring large amounts of capital to the > game, which they are willing to spend, which provides incentive to the > market place. This means a willingness to invest in R&D and acquire > companies to gain a competitive advantage. This has pushed traditional GIS > firms to innovate more (I've seen more innovation out of ESRI in the last > three years than I saw in the previous 10), but still at a relatively slow > pace.
Sean, I wouldn't argue with the above, though I hadn't really thought of it in these terms before. > That all said what the FOSS community has achieved in the geo-space is > really very impressive considering the lack of incentives at least of the > financial variety. I'd argue that financial incentives still play a role in > FOSS. If you look at other thriving FOSS communities there is considerable > corporate sponsorship and several successful commercial spin offs. The only > spin off we can point to is CloudMade (please add others if I have missed > any). I can point to quite a number of integrator/consultant companies that are spun off or closely related to FOSS4G projects. Perhaps I'm missing your point about what counts as a spin-off? > It is really a shame that we do not see more sponsorship for FOSS4G from the > ESRI, MapInfo, Integraph, Microsoft, and Yahoo's of the worlds (Google and > Autodesk did sponsor). ESRI was an exhibitor (not sure about being a sponsor). But honestly, I'm not sure why you feel it is a shame that few of the above companies were sponsors. While I appreciate the money from any sponsor, I'm not sure why the above are of special value. In many ways I prefer sponsorships from more FOSS oriented organizations (such as mid sized integrators, etc), and end user organizations (governments, etc) to sponsorships from software vendors primarily selling proprietary solutions. > I also think it is damaging that we generally see > more direct competition with FOSS from the large enterprises than co-opting > or acquiring technologies. Again this decreases incentive which decreases > the willingness to take risks and innovate. This makes it very tough for > geo start ups to get VC funding because the big guys are spending more time > squashing than acquiring. It is an ecosystem and if you want to see > innovation from the ecosystem you have to feed it with incentives. > Otherwise it withers becomes corporate and lacks the dynamic economic growth > created by innovation. My 2 cents loosely based on stuff I read a long time > ago about innovation and economic growth ;-) I've seen lots of co-opting of open source technology (ie. GDAL) by major companies (Leica, ESRI, Autodesk, Google, MapInfo), and even a some snapping up of smaller companies (Microsoft swallowed two of my clients!). I am embarrassed to admit that thinking about VC funding, startups and the sort of ferment you seem to see as signs of health is somewhat foreign to me. I'm more pleased to see organically growing small and midsized organizations providing services, and contributing to the software pool in cooperative ways. I'd like to promise to think about this viewpoint more deeply, but the truth is that I'll almost certainly return to my head down, reactive-to-clients needs approach to life. Perhaps I should be on the geo-slugs list. 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 | Geospatial Programmer for Rent _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
