Hi Frank, Apologies if my analysis/rant was blunt. My intent was not to slight anyone or efforts made but to look at the issue from a macroscopic perspective. From a practical view if I were any of the big enterprises I listed I'd be watching my pennies very closely considering the current trajectory of the economy. Sponsoring FOSS activities I'm sure is one of the first places to get cut. We did not have the budget to do it for FOSS4G (hopefully next year) - although we at least were able help out with State of the Map this year :-)
The same goes for acquiring companies and supporting/partnering FOSS activities. Money and capital are very tights and these are the areas often first impacted. The bigger picture point I'm trying to make is that innovation and big ideas require time and resource to realize. The most common thread I see on Geowanking are folks lamenting there are not more big, grand, earth shattering ideas coming out of the space. IMHO it takes time and resource to make these type of innovations happen otherwise they never get beyond the listserve stage. Classically time and resources require capital. Typically capital at any thing beyond a small scale requires investors. Investors put money into an idea because they expect a return by someone purchasing an idea and resulting business. This can be another company acquiring the innovation/business or the market buying it through a public offering of one variety or another. If investors do not see opportunity for exits they do not invest. If you do not have capital it makes it very difficult to have the time and resources to sustain an innovation to maturity. When John Hanke was on the stage at Where 2.0 saying Google thought the GeoWeb was going to be as big as the page Web and would be acquiring companies at an equal pace - that got investors and capital excited. The companies that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were acquiring up to that time - got capital and investors excited. The result was funding for many of the companies people here are excited about like Earthmine, Everyscape, CloudMade, Poly9, etc. This was a big change from when the landscape was just the traditional GIS firms. I see this as a very positive thing, but over the last two year I've also seen the ecosystem change. Far fewer acquisitions and less capital being invested. I think this means a big opportunity for FOSS since it breaks the traditional need for large amounts of capital. In many ways it is the ultimate Schumpetarian creative destruction. FOSS solutions also become a lot more appealing when the economy gets tight. This all said FOSS still requires support. It is great to see Metacarta supporting OpenLayers, Stamen supporting ModestMaps, CluodMade supporting OSM and it would be great to see more of that (apologies to anyone I missed). Where I think it is a shame is when the large enterprises don't realize that FOSS is enabling them to innovate and be more efficient, and if they do not support them they are only hurting their long term prospects. If major companies "Leica, ESRI, Autodesk, Google, MapInfo" are "co-opting of open source technology (ie. GDAL)" then they should be supporting the FOSS communities behind them. Some are and some are not but I think there is a missing realization that all innovation needs incentive and support. The across the board contraction of incentive in the market I think is going to be bad for innovation and we'll see fewer big ideas coming to fruition. Maybe that is just the reality of the business cycle, but I think the companies that buck the trend and partner/support FOSS and acquire innovative new technologies will gain a serious competitive advantage when the business cycle swings back up again. best, sean FortiusOne Inc, 2200 Wilson Blvd. suite 307 Arlington, VA 22201 cell - 202-321-3914 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Frank Warmerdam" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, October 9, 2008 9:27:37 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [Geowanking] criticism of the foss4g entrance fee for speakers [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 _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
