Hi guys, As you probably already know, I believe today's announcements are something worth being exciting about. Allow me to clarify my thoughts on this a bit and maybe help put things in a different light.
Foundation is only begun In a nutshell, several groups and individuals have agreed that a foundation is a good idea and they want to see it move forward. Someone, at some point had to at least start talking about how to do this. There have been no final decisions about how it will run, what it will do or even how much funding it requires. All that's been decided is that there will be a foundation and that Autodesk wants to contribute code to it. That is what has happened, the rest is unwritten and open for the community to decide. Autodesk's Role The assumption that Autodesk has somehow rolled in and taken the best seat in the house is far from the truth. We debated the issues such as naming and branding. Our group became comfortable with the ideas and thought they could at least serve as a starting place for community discussion. There was no name stealing, these were mutually debated and agreed upon ideas. No one was forced to sign the open letter. We could have told Autodesk to take their product and head out the door and they would have. Instead we tried to find the best possible way to work with them and build on the momentum around their open source announcements. We debated and struggled to get to where we are, but we also found some common ground. I see your point about DM and Autodesk's press release as being a PR win for them, but what I see is a win for the MapServer community in general. We got some great PR - more than we could have mustered on our own. Both those companies can speak for themselves, but I know they are excited about the foundation and how it can help the community. Are they interested in running the foundation? Not at all. Are they going to stack the deck and push it around? Impossible - you and I won't let it happen. An important function of the foundation is to protect MapServer from being controlled by any individual company or organisation be that Autodesk, DM Solutions, UMN or anyone else. So why talk as if Autodesk is taking over the world when it is still, and always will be, a community effort? I, for one, would never have signed the letter if I felt the MapServer community or the product were in jeopardy. I appreciate the concern from those of you who have built your businesses on MapServer, I certainly don't have as much at stake. But what I don't understand is why, for the broader community's benefit, the PR issue is such a barrier. Is that really standing in the way of your wanting to be involved in what you argue is a good idea? Tyler
