Thank you Jonathan for raising the discussion, I think this should be a good opportunity to focus on how we can gain a bigger "market share" and restart investing on the server with both time and funds.
Full disclaimer: I'm a QGIS server developer. It would be probably useful to start a discussion about how we can make QGIS Server better and what makes it lag behind "competitors", both FOSS and proprietary. - Is it missing features? - performances/scalability? - standard compliance? - missing protocols (WPS...)? - documentation/examples? - ease of deployment/maintenance? - security auditing? - plain marketing? I've personally found exceptionally productive the QGIS Server Meeting we had in Lion a few years back (that ultimately led to a deep refactoring of the server), I think we should organize a dedicated (online) meeting with the interested parties to start a discussion and share ideas. Regards On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 9:09 AM Andreas Neumann <a.neum...@carto.net> wrote: > > Hi Jonathan, > > You keep repeating yourself. You started the exact same discussion a year ago. > > You have a valid point, of course, I don't argue that. But if you think about > small organizations that do not have a lot of personal (or financial) > resources, it would be a lot of burden to invest twice the time in styling: > once for QGIS desktop and another time again for UMN mapserver and Geoserver. > Even if SLD output from QGIS improved (also thanks to efforts of Andrea Aime > and others), it still can't transport everything. If it would, then I would > better agree with your argument. > > For such smaller organization, speed (and I know that UMN and Geoserver are a > bit faster than QGIS server) is not the only important thing - it is also > their personal and financial resources and complexity of their software > landscape. > > And QGIS server has some other unique selling points: the proprietary > GetPrint command that doesn't have a match in Geoserver or UMN, the ability > to create Atlases from server, and who knows, in the future perhaps QGIS > server can run processing models. > > Greetings, > > Andreas > > On 2020-06-08 22:42, Jonathan Moules wrote: > > Hi List, > Some of you may have seen my blog post on the OSGeo-Discuss list about which > mapping servers are the most deployed. For those who haven't seen it, QGIS > Server has about 60 public deployments (1% of all of them), and it serves > 11,924 datasets (0.5% of all public geospatial WMS/WFS/WCS/WMTS datasets). > > Potentially controversial here and I appreciate it's not a competition, but > given the low uptake of QGIS Server compared to other Open Source offerings > (GeoServer: 964 deployments, 963,603 datasets; MapServer: 544 deployments, > 389,709 datasets), is QGIS Server something the grant program should be > funding? There are three Server proposals totalling €10,000, 22% of the fund. > > Now, before you get the pitchforks out(!), please consider the following: > > * Zero sum game - Any money spent on QGIS Server cannot be spent on QGIS > Desktop. (The grants mostly aren't things that will improve the shared QGIS > Core). (This reasoning also follows through to OSGeo funds). > > * Multiple solutions - Open Source (and OSGeo) already has a very healthy > ecosystem of mapping servers - does it need another one? > > * Limited number of users benefited - I don't have stats for it, but QGIS > Desktop is probably the most popular Open Source Desktop GIS, and is > certainly going to have many orders of magnitude more users than QGIS Server. > > * Playing to your strengths - QGIS' strength is it's Desktop and it's > generally good practice to play to your strengths. > > > So given the above, and that QGIS is already "winning" as an Open Source > Desktop (great job!), I'd like to suggest it's not a good idea to dilute the > limited resources by spending them on QGIS Server. Instead it seems that far > more people would benefit if that money was spent on Desktop, especially the > bug fixing programme. > > Or alternatively, given the "Unique Selling Point" of QGIS Server is its > integration with QGIS Desktop, those resources could be used to further > improve interoperability with GeoServer/MapServer/deegree/etc. Those are all > successful mature OSGeo projects that excel at serving maps, have an > architecture designed for it, and already have huge install bases. > > TLDR: QGIS excels at being a Desktop, and I'd like to suggest it should play > to its strengths and focus its limited funds there to benefit the most users. > > I shall now retreat to my bunker. :-) > > Cheers, > Jonathan > > Note: The above only applies to the Grant program and funding; how developers > wish to spend their time, and on which projects is of course their own > prerogative. > > (Disclosure: I have no horse in this race; I don't run or administer any > mapping servers, but I have done GeoServer in the past.) > > > > _______________________________________________ > QGIS-Developer mailing list > QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org > List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer > Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer > > > _______________________________________________ > QGIS-Developer mailing list > QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org > List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer > Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer -- Alessandro Pasotti QCooperative: www.qcooperative.net ItOpen: www.itopen.it _______________________________________________ QGIS-Developer mailing list QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
