Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Jorge Gustavo Rocha]

I knew it, but that's explains why QGIS Server is so much better ;-)

On 10/06/20 11:34, Marco Bernasocchi wrote:
> Heck yes, Thanks Ray for the idea of a lighthearted historical deep dive
> 
> QGIS server [0], [1]
> - 2011 -> Born, (QGIS 1.6 - 27.11.2010)
> 
> Geoserver [2]
> - 2002 -> Born? (0.9)
> - 2003 -> 1.0
> - 2011 -> 2.1.3
> 
> Mapserver [3]
> - 1994 -> Born
> - 1997 -> 1.0
> - 2011 -> 6.0
> 
> So we can be 9y behind Geoserver and 17y behind mapserver ;)
> 
> Cheers all and keep up the amazing work, and thanks Jonathan for
> triggering the interesting discussion
> 
> Marco
> 
> [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20101130113806/http://blog.qgis.org/node/146
> [1]
> https://web.archive.org/web/20111010211800/http://linfiniti.com/2010/08/qgis-mapserver-a-wms-server-for-the-masses/
> [2] https://sourceforge.net/projects/geoserver/files/GeoServer/
> [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapServer
> 
> On 09.06.20 08:38, Raymond Nijssen wrote:
>> And imagine that
>>
>> Mapserver 1.0,
>> GeoServer 1.0 and
>> QGIS Server 1.0
>>
>> had all been released at the same date. What would these deployment
>> numbers have been like now?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Raymond
>>
>>
>> On 09-06-2020 01:18, Nyall Dawson wrote:
>>> On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 09:12, Tim Sutton  wrote:

 Hi


 Nice, thoughtful message below, thanks Jonathon. I wonder what it
 will take to move the needle above 1%? And whether we should try to
 use our funds to make that happen. QGIS is surely the most
 expressive way to do cartography of any GIS out there (acknowledging
 total bias on my part) and seeing that cartography on the web would
 surely please many people. Clients like QWC, QWC2 or anything that
 requires you to hand edit a config file or log into a unix shell to
 publish map services are probably the main limitation (no offence to
 those tools). Also the lack of an built in tiling server (with
 proper metalling and meta buffering) must surely be the other. 
 Maybe a more useful approach to your discussion below would be to
 promote funding the elements that add resistance to deploying QGIS
 server……but then we would be in new feature space and circling back
 to the idea of not funding QGIS Server with grants…..
>>>
>>> Something else to consider is whether technologies like WMS are
>>> ultimately just "dead end" technologies now, and possibly we'd be
>>> better off focusing on client side rendering of vector features from a
>>> server (QGIS or other), and providing a library which can do
>>> client-side rendering of vector tiles from QGIS symbology in as close
>>> to 1:1 as possible...
>>>
>>> Nyall
>>>
>>>

 Regards

 Tim

 On 8 Jun 2020, at 21:42, 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 

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Marco Bernasocchi]

Heck yes, Thanks Ray for the idea of a lighthearted historical deep dive

QGIS server [0], [1]
- 2011 -> Born, (QGIS 1.6 - 27.11.2010)

Geoserver [2]
- 2002 -> Born? (0.9)
- 2003 -> 1.0
- 2011 -> 2.1.3

Mapserver [3]
- 1994 -> Born
- 1997 -> 1.0
- 2011 -> 6.0

So we can be 9y behind Geoserver and 17y behind mapserver ;)

Cheers all and keep up the amazing work, and thanks Jonathan for
triggering the interesting discussion

Marco

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20101130113806/http://blog.qgis.org/node/146
[1]
https://web.archive.org/web/20111010211800/http://linfiniti.com/2010/08/qgis-mapserver-a-wms-server-for-the-masses/
[2] https://sourceforge.net/projects/geoserver/files/GeoServer/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapServer

On 09.06.20 08:38, Raymond Nijssen wrote:
> And imagine that
>
> Mapserver 1.0,
> GeoServer 1.0 and
> QGIS Server 1.0
>
> had all been released at the same date. What would these deployment
> numbers have been like now?
>
> Regards,
> Raymond
>
>
> On 09-06-2020 01:18, Nyall Dawson wrote:
>> On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 09:12, Tim Sutton  wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>>
>>> Nice, thoughtful message below, thanks Jonathon. I wonder what it
>>> will take to move the needle above 1%? And whether we should try to
>>> use our funds to make that happen. QGIS is surely the most
>>> expressive way to do cartography of any GIS out there (acknowledging
>>> total bias on my part) and seeing that cartography on the web would
>>> surely please many people. Clients like QWC, QWC2 or anything that
>>> requires you to hand edit a config file or log into a unix shell to
>>> publish map services are probably the main limitation (no offence to
>>> those tools). Also the lack of an built in tiling server (with
>>> proper metalling and meta buffering) must surely be the other. 
>>> Maybe a more useful approach to your discussion below would be to
>>> promote funding the elements that add resistance to deploying QGIS
>>> server……but then we would be in new feature space and circling back
>>> to the idea of not funding QGIS Server with grants…..
>>
>> Something else to consider is whether technologies like WMS are
>> ultimately just "dead end" technologies now, and possibly we'd be
>> better off focusing on client side rendering of vector features from a
>> server (QGIS or other), and providing a library which can do
>> client-side rendering of vector tiles from QGIS symbology in as close
>> to 1:1 as possible...
>>
>> Nyall
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Regards
>>>
>>> Tim
>>>
>>> On 8 Jun 2020, at 21:42, 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 

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Marco Bernasocchi]

Hi all,

On 09.06.20 11:23, Régis Haubourg wrote:
> Hi,
> I can't agree more with Andreas.
Same here,
>  
>
> Just note that we have major companies betting on QGIS server for
> production use and considering switching from Geoserver to QGIS server
> to get rid of the double administration task burden.

we also see more and more companies moving away from other solutions and
go to QGIS. The Desktop is often the driver, but more and more people
realize the huge advantage of having the same rendering on desktop,
server and specially mobile. At OPENGIS.ch we hope to contribute a
further big piece to the ecosystem with QFieldCloud.

A very very biased observation: in 6 years of running OPENGIS.ch, we
were asked maybe once ot twice to deploy a geoserver instance, we get
monthly requests to do the same for QGIS. Maybe it's Switzerland, Maybe
is us, but most certainly it is not because of the complexity of
installing QGIS...

To me, this integration is a _major_ USP for the QGIS ecosystem. I'd go
as far as saying that it is THE usp.

> They fund progressively what is missing and QGIS.org helps sometimes
> for OGC certification testing and documentation but the majority of
> the fund are not made by QGIS.org

absolutely agreed, in fact if we had more fund I think we could invest
more in the server and make people more aware that QGIS is not only a
desktop tool.

That is also part of the qgis.org website refresh, where we have an
opportunity to really convey better the message of QGIS being all you
need to run your SDI.

>
> So yes, we have open ecosystems, I don't get the point of trying to
> cut (small) funds on a solution that is useful, supported by users and
> funders.

As others said before, I don't see this as a Zero sum game, on the
contrary, I  think that QGIS here as a real chance to get at it's real
concurrence which is definetly not MapServer or GeoServer.

It will still take a bit of time, but with amazing pace that we all are
pushing, we'll get there in less than we think.

Cheers

Marco

>
> Best regards
> Régis
>
>
> Le mar. 9 juin 2020 à 11:12, Andreas Neumann  > a écrit :
>
> Hi Jonathan,
>
> Rest assured - the majority of QGIS funds is already (and has
> always been going) into bug fixing. Again - both Desktop and
> server users benefit from that bug fixing.
>
> We publish our financial reports
> here: 
> https://www.qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/governance/finance/index.html
>
> If you look into the 2019 report, you can see that around 50% of
> our funds go into bug fixing and quality assurance (in some years
> even more). Only about 10% of our funds went into the grants in
> 2019. And from these grants, server received a small fraction. So,
> the absolute amounts of investments that QGIS.ORG
>  invests into QGIS sever is really negligible.
>
> Most investments done in QGIS server go directly from clients to
> QGIS development companies - and that has nothing to do with
> QGIS.ORG 
>
> If you talk about the number of users of a server installation - I
> think this is debateable: if you only count the admin of a server
> (regardless of which server), then the numbers are low - no matter
> if we talk about ArcGIS server, Geoserver, UMN, QGIS, etc. But
> every server easily has a hundred or sometimes several thousand
> users who use these services - don't you think. If I look at our
> small province - we have maybe 100 QGIS desktop users, but
> certainly several thousand users who use our Web-GIS and OGC
> services - don't you agree? And our services integrate with a lot
> of other applications that are vital to a province level
> government. So in this perspective, (QGIS)-server installations
> need to be multiplied with some factor to compare it with QGIS
> desktop user numbers.
>
> Andreas
>
> On 2020-06-09 10:38, Jonathan Moules wrote:
>
>> Hi Andreas, (& All),
>> A fair point, but I believe this is an important point and this
>> year I do have data to back up my point; in fact the grant
>> program is what motivated me to finally get around to doing this
>> analysis.
>>
>> It seems from the replies that while there are a few
>> differentiators, the key one is indeed cartography and styling.
>> (There's also an interesting conversation about vectors going on
>> there too). Some thoughts:
>> * The vast majority of WMS/WMTS layers are not cartographically
>> complicated, let alone beautiful. They're "here is a layer with
>> small green points for trees", and "this polygon represents
>> conservation areas". You can easily play around and see what's
>> out there here: http://www.geoseer.net/api-demo/
>> * WFS/WCS can't be styled server side.
>> * It seems like overkill to create and maintain an entire server
>> distribution that fundamentally only solves 

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Alessandro Pasotti]

Jonathan, I forgot to ask you: do you have any statistics/guesses
about the underlying operating system ?

It would also be interesting to know how much "cloud" technology is
used (AWS & C.).

Cheers


On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 10:43 PM 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



-- 
Alessandro Pasotti
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ItOpen:   www.itopen.it
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Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Jose Mercedes Venegas Acevedo]

Good day I think that being able to publish a project directly through QGIS
Server just by mounting the QGis project done on the desktop is just
fantastic if those tiny great details of QGIS Server were fixed would
definitely take off tremendously

Maybe integrating the lizmap plugin into the QGis core and giving the user
the possibility to choose their project to publish in an interface similar
to lizmap or perhaps with the qgis web client 2 project would make users
start looking seriously at QGIS Server and surely many would run to migrate
immediately because it would simplify many things in addition to giving a
lot of power to both qgis desktop and qgis server.

It is just an opinion that could be valued I only speak Spanish so I copied
the original text below in case something was not translated correctly with
google translate

Buen dia yo creo que el hecho de poder publicar un proyecto directamente a
traves de QGIS Server con solo montar el proyecto QGis hecho en el desktop
es simplemente fantastico si se arreglaran esos minusculos grandes detalles
de QGIS Server definitivamente despegaria tremendamente

Quiza integrar el plugin de lizmap al core de QGis y darle al usuario la
posibilidad de elegir su proyecto a publicar en una interfaz similar a
lizmap o quiza con el proyecto qgis web client 2 haria que los usuarios
empezaran a mirar muy seriamenet a QGIS Server y seguramente muchos
correrian a migrar de inmediato porque se simplificaria muchas cosas ademas
de darle muchisima potencia tanto a qgis desktop como qgis server.



El mar., 9 jun. 2020 a las 14:38, Andreas Neumann ()
escribió:

> Hi Henrik,
>
> Good idea. Now that Windows server has a Linux subsystem and docker, the
> easiest thing would be to use docker, I think. That way you would have
> the exact same setup like on Linux. No more strange Windows problems.
>
> It might be one path to use to tackle the windows installation problem,
> but it wouldn't be the only one.
>
> Alessandro: will you suggest dates for a meeting - perhaps by starting
> with a Doodle to see when most interested people would be available?
>
> Andreas
>
> Am 09.06.20 um 20:56 schrieb Henrik Larsson:
> > Hi,
> > I believe that a better deployment process for Server on Windows might
> > be one way for little a bigger market share. I think that there are
> > more people than me that uses Desktop today next to the Esri platform
> > that would gladly start to switch over to Server as a wms provider if
> > posible.
> >
> > A dedicated online meeting is a really nice idea (where do I attend?) .
> >
> > Regards Henrik
> >
> > Den 2020-06-09 kl. 09:24, skrev Alessandro Pasotti:
> >> 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 
> >> 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,

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Henrik,

Good idea. Now that Windows server has a Linux subsystem and docker, the 
easiest thing would be to use docker, I think. That way you would have 
the exact same setup like on Linux. No more strange Windows problems.


It might be one path to use to tackle the windows installation problem, 
but it wouldn't be the only one.


Alessandro: will you suggest dates for a meeting - perhaps by starting 
with a Doodle to see when most interested people would be available?


Andreas

Am 09.06.20 um 20:56 schrieb Henrik Larsson:

Hi,
I believe that a better deployment process for Server on Windows might 
be one way for little a bigger market share. I think that there are 
more people than me that uses Desktop today next to the Esri platform 
that would gladly start to switch over to Server as a wms provider if 
posible.


A dedicated online meeting is a really nice idea (where do I attend?) .

Regards Henrik

Den 2020-06-09 kl. 09:24, skrev Alessandro Pasotti:

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  
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 

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Henrik Larsson]

Hi,
I believe that a better deployment process for Server on Windows might 
be one way for little a bigger market share. I think that there are more 
people than me that uses Desktop today next to the Esri platform that 
would gladly start to switch over to Server as a wms provider if posible.


A dedicated online meeting is a really nice idea (where do I attend?) .

Regards Henrik

Den 2020-06-09 kl. 09:24, skrev Alessandro Pasotti:

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  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 

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Nyall Dawson]

On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 20:07, Andreas Neumann  wrote:
>
> Hi Nyall,
>
> Thanks for clarifying - I am relieved by your further statements ;-)
>
> I don't know a good replacement of ArcGIS Server portal (or whatever that 
> product is called currently). I agree that it would be great if there would 
> be a good replacement for that - and that would need further funding - and 
> perhaps a good collaboration between more than one of the OSGEO/QGIS 
> developer companies. I fear that any of the available OSGeo/QGIS companies on 
> it's own is too small to cover that fully. It probably needs something larger 
> on top of it, with the smaller already existing companies bringing in their 
> individual expertise to that larger entity. QGIS cloud from Sourepole was a 
> good start some years ago, but it would have to grow faster than it currently 
> does, and that would require a larger entity than Sourcepole (or most other 
> similar companies) are. And of course also more paying customers.

Just to clarify further -- I'm mostly talking about a
private/on-premises offering, rather than a SAAS type offering. Of
course, if someone wanted to take the components and offer as a paid
cloud service (as Sourcepole does/did), then that's great! But it
shouldn't be the initial goal...

nyall

>
> The building blocks are mostly there, yes.
>
> Andreas
>
>
> On 2020-06-09 11:45, Nyall Dawson wrote:
>
> On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 09:18, Nyall Dawson  wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 09:12, Tim Sutton  wrote:
>
>
> Hi
>
>
> Nice, thoughtful message below, thanks Jonathon. I wonder what it will take 
> to move the needle above 1%? And whether we should try to use our funds to 
> make that happen. QGIS is surely the most expressive way to do cartography of 
> any GIS out there (acknowledging total bias on my part) and seeing that 
> cartography on the web would surely please many people. Clients like QWC, 
> QWC2 or anything that requires you to hand edit a config file or log into a 
> unix shell to publish map services are probably the main limitation (no 
> offence to those tools). Also the lack of an built in tiling server (with 
> proper metalling and meta buffering) must surely be the other.  Maybe a more 
> useful approach to your discussion below would be to promote funding the 
> elements that add resistance to deploying QGIS server……but then we would be 
> in new feature space and circling back to the idea of not funding QGIS Server 
> with grants…..
>
>
> Something else to consider is whether technologies like WMS are
> ultimately just "dead end" technologies now, and possibly we'd be
> better off focusing on client side rendering of vector features from a
> server (QGIS or other), and providing a library which can do
> client-side rendering of vector tiles from QGIS symbology in as close
> to 1:1 as possible...
>
>
> Re-reading my message, I think it comes across unintentionally
> critical. I was actually just "pondering aloud"!
>
> I definitely agree that there's a strong use case for a server
> component which "just works" with QGIS, and I would hate to see this
> efforts abandoned. Indeed, my personal opinion is that what osgeo is
> really lacking is a unified solution to desktop/web/mobile. We have
> all the raw building blocks, but there's just no direct equivalent of
> ArcGIS portal where end users can easily publish datasets and maps.
> Boundless was filling this gap with their offerings, but that's a
> thing of the past now, and no-one has really stepped up to fill this
> need. Possibly geonode + QGIS server backend is the closest we get,
> but that's still needing significant investment before it's a really
> compelling competitor.
>
> I'd really love to hear what solutions others deploy when they're
> asked by a client to replace an ArcGIS desktop + Portal environment.
> Perhaps there's actually a need for **more** investment in QGIS server
> to fund development of a Portal style geo-cms, tightly integrated with
> QGIS desktop (and QField/Input)*.
>
> Nyall
>
> * minus the completely broken-by-design security and data management
> models used by Portal
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Nyall
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Tim
>
> On 8 Jun 2020, at 21:42, 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 

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Nyall, 

Thanks for clarifying - I am relieved by your further statements ;-) 


I don't know a good replacement of ArcGIS Server portal (or whatever
that product is called currently). I agree that it would be great if
there would be a good replacement for that - and that would need further
funding - and perhaps a good collaboration between more than one of the
OSGEO/QGIS developer companies. I fear that any of the available
OSGeo/QGIS companies on it's own is too small to cover that fully. It
probably needs something larger on top of it, with the smaller already
existing companies bringing in their individual expertise to that larger
entity. QGIS cloud from Sourepole was a good start some years ago, but
it would have to grow faster than it currently does, and that would
require a larger entity than Sourcepole (or most other similar
companies) are. And of course also more paying customers. 

The building blocks are mostly there, yes. 

Andreas 


On 2020-06-09 11:45, Nyall Dawson wrote:

On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 09:18, Nyall Dawson  wrote: 
On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 09:12, Tim Sutton  wrote: 
Hi


Nice, thoughtful message below, thanks Jonathon. I wonder what it will take to move the needle above 1%? And whether we should try to use our funds to make that happen. QGIS is surely the most expressive way to do cartography of any GIS out there (acknowledging total bias on my part) and seeing that cartography on the web would surely please many people. Clients like QWC, QWC2 or anything that requires you to hand edit a config file or log into a unix shell to publish map services are probably the main limitation (no offence to those tools). Also the lack of an built in tiling server (with proper metalling and meta buffering) must surely be the other.  Maybe a more useful approach to your discussion below would be to promote funding the elements that add resistance to deploying QGIS server……but then we would be in new feature space and circling back to the idea of not funding QGIS Server with grants….. 
Something else to consider is whether technologies like WMS are

ultimately just "dead end" technologies now, and possibly we'd be
better off focusing on client side rendering of vector features from a
server (QGIS or other), and providing a library which can do
client-side rendering of vector tiles from QGIS symbology in as close
to 1:1 as possible...


Re-reading my message, I think it comes across unintentionally
critical. I was actually just "pondering aloud"!

I definitely agree that there's a strong use case for a server
component which "just works" with QGIS, and I would hate to see this
efforts abandoned. Indeed, my personal opinion is that what osgeo is
really lacking is a unified solution to desktop/web/mobile. We have
all the raw building blocks, but there's just no direct equivalent of
ArcGIS portal where end users can easily publish datasets and maps.
Boundless was filling this gap with their offerings, but that's a
thing of the past now, and no-one has really stepped up to fill this
need. Possibly geonode + QGIS server backend is the closest we get,
but that's still needing significant investment before it's a really
compelling competitor.

I'd really love to hear what solutions others deploy when they're
asked by a client to replace an ArcGIS desktop + Portal environment.
Perhaps there's actually a need for **more** investment in QGIS server
to fund development of a Portal style geo-cms, tightly integrated with
QGIS desktop (and QField/Input)*.

Nyall

* minus the completely broken-by-design security and data management
models used by Portal


Nyall


Regards

Tim

On 8 Jun 2020, at 21:42, 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 EUR10,000, 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 

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Nyall Dawson]

On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 09:18, Nyall Dawson  wrote:
>
> On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 09:12, Tim Sutton  wrote:
> >
> > Hi
> >
> >
> > Nice, thoughtful message below, thanks Jonathon. I wonder what it will take 
> > to move the needle above 1%? And whether we should try to use our funds to 
> > make that happen. QGIS is surely the most expressive way to do cartography 
> > of any GIS out there (acknowledging total bias on my part) and seeing that 
> > cartography on the web would surely please many people. Clients like QWC, 
> > QWC2 or anything that requires you to hand edit a config file or log into a 
> > unix shell to publish map services are probably the main limitation (no 
> > offence to those tools). Also the lack of an built in tiling server (with 
> > proper metalling and meta buffering) must surely be the other.  Maybe a 
> > more useful approach to your discussion below would be to promote funding 
> > the elements that add resistance to deploying QGIS server……but then we 
> > would be in new feature space and circling back to the idea of not funding 
> > QGIS Server with grants…..
>
> Something else to consider is whether technologies like WMS are
> ultimately just "dead end" technologies now, and possibly we'd be
> better off focusing on client side rendering of vector features from a
> server (QGIS or other), and providing a library which can do
> client-side rendering of vector tiles from QGIS symbology in as close
> to 1:1 as possible...

Re-reading my message, I think it comes across unintentionally
critical. I was actually just "pondering aloud"!

I definitely agree that there's a strong use case for a server
component which "just works" with QGIS, and I would hate to see this
efforts abandoned. Indeed, my personal opinion is that what osgeo is
really lacking is a unified solution to desktop/web/mobile. We have
all the raw building blocks, but there's just no direct equivalent of
ArcGIS portal where end users can easily publish datasets and maps.
Boundless was filling this gap with their offerings, but that's a
thing of the past now, and no-one has really stepped up to fill this
need. Possibly geonode + QGIS server backend is the closest we get,
but that's still needing significant investment before it's a really
compelling competitor.

I'd really love to hear what solutions others deploy when they're
asked by a client to replace an ArcGIS desktop + Portal environment.
Perhaps there's actually a need for **more** investment in QGIS server
to fund development of a Portal style geo-cms, tightly integrated with
QGIS desktop (and QField/Input)*.

Nyall

* minus the completely broken-by-design security and data management
models used by Portal







>
> Nyall
>
>
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Tim
> >
> > On 8 Jun 2020, at 21:42, 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 

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Régis Haubourg]

Hi,
I can't agree more with Andreas.

Just note that we have major companies betting on QGIS server for
production use and considering switching from Geoserver to QGIS server to
get rid of the double administration task burden.
They fund progressively what is missing and QGIS.org helps sometimes for
OGC certification testing and documentation but the majority of the fund
are not made by QGIS.org

So yes, we have open ecosystems, I don't get the point of trying to cut
(small) funds on a solution that is useful, supported by users and funders.

Best regards
Régis


Le mar. 9 juin 2020 à 11:12, Andreas Neumann  a écrit :

> Hi Jonathan,
>
> Rest assured - the majority of QGIS funds is already (and has always been
> going) into bug fixing. Again - both Desktop and server users benefit from
> that bug fixing.
>
> We publish our financial reports here:
> https://www.qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/governance/finance/index.html
>
> If you look into the 2019 report, you can see that around 50% of our funds
> go into bug fixing and quality assurance (in some years even more). Only
> about 10% of our funds went into the grants in 2019. And from these grants,
> server received a small fraction. So, the absolute amounts of investments
> that QGIS.ORG invests into QGIS sever is really negligible.
>
> Most investments done in QGIS server go directly from clients to QGIS
> development companies - and that has nothing to do with QGIS.ORG
>
> If you talk about the number of users of a server installation - I think
> this is debateable: if you only count the admin of a server (regardless of
> which server), then the numbers are low - no matter if we talk about ArcGIS
> server, Geoserver, UMN, QGIS, etc. But every server easily has a hundred or
> sometimes several thousand users who use these services - don't you think.
> If I look at our small province - we have maybe 100 QGIS desktop users, but
> certainly several thousand users who use our Web-GIS and OGC services -
> don't you agree? And our services integrate with a lot of other
> applications that are vital to a province level government. So in this
> perspective, (QGIS)-server installations need to be multiplied with some
> factor to compare it with QGIS desktop user numbers.
>
> Andreas
>
> On 2020-06-09 10:38, Jonathan Moules wrote:
>
> Hi Andreas, (& All),
> A fair point, but I believe this is an important point and this year I do
> have data to back up my point; in fact the grant program is what motivated
> me to finally get around to doing this analysis.
>
> It seems from the replies that while there are a few differentiators, the
> key one is indeed cartography and styling. (There's also an interesting
> conversation about vectors going on there too). Some thoughts:
> * The vast majority of WMS/WMTS layers are not cartographically
> complicated, let alone beautiful. They're "here is a layer with small green
> points for trees", and "this polygon represents conservation areas". You
> can easily play around and see what's out there here:
> http://www.geoseer.net/api-demo/
> * WFS/WCS can't be styled server side.
> * It seems like overkill to create and maintain an entire server
> distribution that fundamentally only solves one (relatively simple compared
> to what QGIS Desktop can do) problem.
> * Rendering is only one part the QGIS package (Analysis, digitisation,
> management, etc.).
>
> If I'm honest, the "competition" on this point isn't really between QGIS
> and MapServer/GeoServer. It's really between QGIS and ArcGIS. Because
> ArcGIS does exactly what QGIS Server seeks to do: offer a single integrated
> solution for Desktop-> Server. And certainly ArcGIS Server does have a huge
> number of deployments (53%), however again, there really aren't many
> cartographically complicated outputs on there. And despite the huge number
> of deployments, most services and datasets are actually served by
> MapServer/GeoServer (about 60% of datasets between them!). Basically ArcGIS
> is deployed by local government and used for bitty-stuff ("here are our
> fire stations"), but if you want a real data-service then you go with
> GeoServer/MapServer/etc.
>
> Most importantly though, I think I haven't conveyed my core point well:
> this really is a zero sum game!
> Even allowing for the above, any funds spent on QGIS Server are not spent
> on QGIS Desktop. There are 60 public facing QGIS Server deployments. Even
> assuming that there's a ratio of 10:1 for private/public servers (made up
> ratio, feels too high), any funding on QGIS Server benefits only hundreds,
> or being very generous, maybe low-thousands number of users. Funding on
> QGIS Desktop however benefits as a *minimum* tens of thousands, potentially
> millions of users (no idea how many QGIS installs there are, I can't find
> the download-stats I remember seeing in the past).
> Heck, even pretending for a second QGIS Server had 100% of the deployments
> (a 100 fold increase!), there would /still/ be orders of 

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Jonathan, 


Rest assured - the majority of QGIS funds is already (and has always
been going) into bug fixing. Again - both Desktop and server users
benefit from that bug fixing. 


We publish our financial reports here:
https://www.qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/governance/finance/index.html 


If you look into the 2019 report, you can see that around 50% of our
funds go into bug fixing and quality assurance (in some years even
more). Only about 10% of our funds went into the grants in 2019. And
from these grants, server received a small fraction. So, the absolute
amounts of investments that QGIS.ORG invests into QGIS sever is really
negligible. 


Most investments done in QGIS server go directly from clients to QGIS
development companies - and that has nothing to do with QGIS.ORG 


If you talk about the number of users of a server installation - I think
this is debateable: if you only count the admin of a server (regardless
of which server), then the numbers are low - no matter if we talk about
ArcGIS server, Geoserver, UMN, QGIS, etc. But every server easily has a
hundred or sometimes several thousand users who use these services -
don't you think. If I look at our small province - we have maybe 100
QGIS desktop users, but certainly several thousand users who use our
Web-GIS and OGC services - don't you agree? And our services integrate
with a lot of other applications that are vital to a province level
government. So in this perspective, (QGIS)-server installations need to
be multiplied with some factor to compare it with QGIS desktop user
numbers. 

Andreas 


On 2020-06-09 10:38, Jonathan Moules wrote:


Hi Andreas, (& All),
A fair point, but I believe this is an important point and this year I do have 
data to back up my point; in fact the grant program is what motivated me to 
finally get around to doing this analysis.

It seems from the replies that while there are a few differentiators, the key 
one is indeed cartography and styling. (There's also an interesting 
conversation about vectors going on there too). Some thoughts:
* The vast majority of WMS/WMTS layers are not cartographically complicated, let alone beautiful. 
They're "here is a layer with small green points for trees", and "this polygon 
represents conservation areas". You can easily play around and see what's out there here: 
http://www.geoseer.net/api-demo/
* WFS/WCS can't be styled server side.
* It seems like overkill to create and maintain an entire server distribution 
that fundamentally only solves one (relatively simple compared to what QGIS 
Desktop can do) problem.
* Rendering is only one part the QGIS package (Analysis, digitisation, 
management, etc.).

If I'm honest, the "competition" on this point isn't really between QGIS and 
MapServer/GeoServer. It's really between QGIS and ArcGIS. Because ArcGIS does exactly what QGIS Server 
seeks to do: offer a single integrated solution for Desktop-> Server. And certainly ArcGIS Server 
does have a huge number of deployments (53%), however again, there really aren't many cartographically 
complicated outputs on there. And despite the huge number of deployments, most services and datasets 
are actually served by MapServer/GeoServer (about 60% of datasets between them!). Basically ArcGIS is 
deployed by local government and used for bitty-stuff ("here are our fire stations"), but if 
you want a real data-service then you go with GeoServer/MapServer/etc.

Most importantly though, I think I haven't conveyed my core point well: this 
really is a zero sum game!
Even allowing for the above, any funds spent on QGIS Server are not spent on 
QGIS Desktop. There are 60 public facing QGIS Server deployments. Even assuming 
that there's a ratio of 10:1 for private/public servers (made up ratio, feels 
too high), any funding on QGIS Server benefits only hundreds, or being very 
generous, maybe low-thousands number of users. Funding on QGIS Desktop however 
benefits as a *minimum* tens of thousands, potentially millions of users (no 
idea how many QGIS installs there are, I can't find the download-stats I 
remember seeing in the past).
Heck, even pretending for a second QGIS Server had 100% of the deployments (a 
100 fold increase!), there would /still/ be orders of magnitude more people 
using the not-Server parts of QGIS Desktop by its very nature.

There are 3,102 open issues on the QGIS issue tracker. 95 are labelled regressions, 137 are "high 
priority", and 92 are "crash/data corruption". Just 49 are "Server". I'm not seeking 
to denigrate the project here; QGIS is a extremely complex tool that is an amazing accomplishment and by its 
nature it will have bugs. I raise these numbers to highlight that any money spent on Grants to Server (and 
yes new Desktop features) is money that isn't spent fixing these (I'm aware of the bug-fixing fund). 
Something I think the grant voters should be cognizant of.

Hope that clarifies,
I'll step back now. :-)
Cheers,
Jonathan

On 09/06/2020 08:09, 

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Jonathan Moules]

Hi Andreas, (& All),
A fair point, but I believe this is an important point and this year I 
do have data to back up my point; in fact the grant program is what 
motivated me to finally get around to doing this analysis.


It seems from the replies that while there are a few differentiators, 
the key one is indeed cartography and styling. (There's also an 
interesting conversation about vectors going on there too). Some thoughts:
* The vast majority of WMS/WMTS layers are not cartographically 
complicated, let alone beautiful. They're "here is a layer with small 
green points for trees", and "this polygon represents conservation 
areas". You can easily play around and see what's out there here: 
http://www.geoseer.net/api-demo/

* WFS/WCS can't be styled server side.
* It seems like overkill to create and maintain an entire server 
distribution that fundamentally only solves one (relatively simple 
compared to what QGIS Desktop can do) problem.
* Rendering is only one part the QGIS package (Analysis, digitisation, 
management, etc.).


If I'm honest, the "competition" on this point isn't really between QGIS 
and MapServer/GeoServer. It's really between QGIS and ArcGIS. Because 
ArcGIS does exactly what QGIS Server seeks to do: offer a single 
integrated solution for Desktop-> Server. And certainly ArcGIS Server 
does have a huge number of deployments (53%), however again, there 
really aren't many cartographically complicated outputs on there. And 
despite the huge number of deployments, most services and datasets are 
actually served by MapServer/GeoServer (about 60% of datasets between 
them!). Basically ArcGIS is deployed by local government and used for 
bitty-stuff ("here are our fire stations"), but if you want a real 
data-service then you go with GeoServer/MapServer/etc.


Most importantly though, I think I haven't conveyed my core point well: 
this really is a zero sum game!
Even allowing for the above, any funds spent on QGIS Server are not 
spent on QGIS Desktop. There are 60 public facing QGIS Server 
deployments. Even assuming that there's a ratio of 10:1 for 
private/public servers (made up ratio, feels too high), any funding on 
QGIS Server benefits only hundreds, or being very generous, maybe 
low-thousands number of users. Funding on QGIS Desktop however benefits 
as a *minimum* tens of thousands, potentially millions of users (no idea 
how many QGIS installs there are, I can't find the download-stats I 
remember seeing in the past).
Heck, even pretending for a second QGIS Server had 100% of the 
deployments (a 100 fold increase!), there would /still/ be orders of 
magnitude more people using the not-Server parts of QGIS Desktop by its 
very nature.


There are 3,102 open issues on the QGIS issue tracker. 95 are labelled 
regressions, 137 are "high priority", and 92 are "crash/data 
corruption". Just 49 are "Server". I'm not seeking to denigrate the 
project here; QGIS is a extremely complex tool that is an amazing 
accomplishment and by its nature it will have bugs. I raise these 
numbers to highlight that any money spent on Grants to Server (and yes 
new Desktop features) is money that isn't spent fixing these (I'm aware 
of the bug-fixing fund). Something I think the grant voters should be 
cognizant of.


Hope that clarifies,
I'll step back now. :-)
Cheers,
Jonathan


On 09/06/2020 08:09, Andreas Neumann 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 

[QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Maaza Mekuria]

I appreciate your viewpoint and assessment very much, Jonathan.

I trust the board heeds your advise and lead towards focused investment in
those things that matter to the majority users.

Thank you,


On Mon, Jun 8, 2020, 1:12 PM  wrote:

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> than "Re: Contents of QGIS-Developer digest..."
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> Today's Topics:
>
>1. QGIS Server and the Grants programme (Jonathan Moules)
>2. Plugin [383] Buffer by Percentage approvalnotification.
>   (nore...@qgis.org)
>3. Re: QGIS Server and the Grants programme (Tim Sutton)
>
>
> --
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2020 21:42:25 +0100
> From: Jonathan Moules 
> To: QGIS Developer Mailing List 
> Subject: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme
> Message-ID: <6987c634-eb32-57a5-9d4f-455c2c49f...@lightpear.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
>
> 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.)
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2020 21:23:42 -
> From: nore...@qgis.org
> To: juernja...@gmail.com, qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: [QGIS-Developer] Plugin [383] Buffer by Percentage approval
> notification.
> Message-ID: <20200608212342.2210.78484@2c6504964296>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>
> Plugin Buffer by Percentage approval by zimbogisgeek.
> The pl

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Alessandro, 

Good idea - I would be happy to join such a meeting. 


In our case (talking for my employer), it is mainly performance,
reliability, scalability and maintenance where we would like to see
improvements. A cache that can be shared between instances would be
great to have. And perhaps a management interface where one could get a
better insight to the state of QGIS server and it's cache: what projects
are cached, how much memory do they need, ability to reload certain
projects, etc. 


Of course, there might be other aspects as well, but the above mentioned
issues are our main pain points currently. 

We would also help with some funding and I can help to attract others. 

Andreas 


On 2020-06-09 09:24, Alessandro Pasotti wrote:


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  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 EUR10,000, 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 

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Jeremy Palmer]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 4:25 PM Richard Duivenvoorde 
wrote:

> On 6/9/20 1:18 AM, Nyall Dawson wrote:
> > Something else to consider is whether technologies like WMS are
> > ultimately just "dead end" technologies now,
>
> Definitely not agreeing here :-)
>
> > and possibly we'd be
> > better off focusing on client side rendering of vector features from a
> > server (QGIS or other), and providing a library which can do
> > client-side rendering of vector tiles from QGIS symbology in as close
> > to 1:1 as possible...
>
> For full blown nice reference maps or aerials  WM(T)S is still the way
> to go. For simpler reference maps like Google, vector tiles will be...
>

XYZ/WMTS maps are certainly the way to go with raster products like aerials
or satellite data, which are for visualisation only. However, when it comes
to a national agency providing highly scalable vector map services, we have
concluded that using WMTS/WMS rasters has too many downsides. The key
benefits of vector tiles are:

* Faster generation of caches for serverless provision. Often you don't
need to generate vector tiles for each required client-side zoom
level/scale, and over-zooming is good enough. In some cases making raster
tiles with complex carto rules required massive computing resources and
timeframes. Even with cloud services, this is a key roadblock unless you
build very complex infrastructure architectures with auto-scaling. Even
then, it's costly to run and needs excellent expertise to set-up.
* Labels are nicely rendered client-side taking the device PPI into
account. For raster maps, generating maps for different DPIs becomes a
nightmare
* Being generally smaller which is essential for delivery to low bandwidth
devices
* Better user experience with seamless zooming and rotating of maps

I agree that raster maps can still produce nicer catro that vector tiles
(especially with combined raster/vector effects). However, raster web map
services have too many scalability issues, and in some cases, as mentioned
above, produce poor visual results or user experiences.  Of course, vector
WMS/WMTS still has it's a place for low volume websites.

In saying all of this, it would be great to get a seamless workflow from
data to published web maps. This needs to include having a style generator
(almost!) equivalent to QGIS desktop and a simple way to host and provide
maps at scale. I'm especially keen to see styling and export of vector
tiles in QGIS (it's almost there thanks to Martin and recent crowdfunding
initiative).

Cheers
Jeremy
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Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Alessandro Pasotti]

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  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.)
>
>
>
> ___
> 

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Raymond Nijssen]

And imagine that

Mapserver 1.0,
GeoServer 1.0 and
QGIS Server 1.0

had all been released at the same date. What would these deployment 
numbers have been like now?


Regards,
Raymond


On 09-06-2020 01:18, Nyall Dawson wrote:

On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 09:12, Tim Sutton  wrote:


Hi


Nice, thoughtful message below, thanks Jonathon. I wonder what it will take to 
move the needle above 1%? And whether we should try to use our funds to make 
that happen. QGIS is surely the most expressive way to do cartography of any 
GIS out there (acknowledging total bias on my part) and seeing that cartography 
on the web would surely please many people. Clients like QWC, QWC2 or anything 
that requires you to hand edit a config file or log into a unix shell to 
publish map services are probably the main limitation (no offence to those 
tools). Also the lack of an built in tiling server (with proper metalling and 
meta buffering) must surely be the other.  Maybe a more useful approach to your 
discussion below would be to promote funding the elements that add resistance 
to deploying QGIS server……but then we would be in new feature space and 
circling back to the idea of not funding QGIS Server with grants…..


Something else to consider is whether technologies like WMS are
ultimately just "dead end" technologies now, and possibly we'd be
better off focusing on client side rendering of vector features from a
server (QGIS or other), and providing a library which can do
client-side rendering of vector tiles from QGIS symbology in as close
to 1:1 as possible...

Nyall




Regards

Tim

On 8 Jun 2020, at 21:42, 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.)



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—









Tim Sutton

Co-founder: Kartoza
Ex Project chair: QGIS.org

Visit http://kartoza.com to find out about open source:

Desktop GIS programming services
Geospatial web development
GIS Training
Consulting Services

Skype: timlinux
IRC: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net

I'd love to connect. Here's my calendar link to make finding time easy.

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Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Andreas Neumann]

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 EUR10,000, 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.)

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Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Luigi Pirelli]

I'm not a backend guy nor a qgis server expert, but because years ago
involved in finding solution to grow style incompatibility among geoserver
and qgis via sld (before in Boundless end to nothing because there were any
tech solution... or I'm too tech limiteated to imagine a solution) later
adding support for sld/raster in qgis, I could say:

1) qgis server is mainly used to respect styling and avoid headaches in
converting to other style languages... and secondarily as wps engine.
2) geoserver side never considered seriously to think at qgis server as
renderer delegate... or at least was my impression with geoserver guys in
Boundless
3) There is no way to represent rich map style in a interoperability way...
sadly I agree with you, qgis is creating (yet) another de facto
style language and I'm not proud of this, but far from me to judge, I'm not
a cartographer too!
3) Style rendering is heavily moving to client side

so having this open point, I can't say what would be better or not
financing a qgis server grant... For sure would be better facilitate qgis
project style rendering in other server platforms, but the solution does
not pass using SLD!

Luigi Pirelli

**
* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luigipirelli
* Stackexchange: http://gis.stackexchange.com/users/19667/luigi-pirelli
* GitHub: https://github.com/luipir
* Book: Mastering QGIS3 - 3rd Edition

* Hire a team: http://www.qcooperative.net
**


On Mon, 8 Jun 2020 at 22:43, 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.)
>
>
>
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Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Andreas Neumann]

Fully agreed with Richard here. 


OGC standards are important and even required by law. Other protocols
are ok though, if they are in addition. If they prove to better in the
future than OGC, then they might eventually replace the former. But
first, they would have to prove good interoperability and that they are
better. 

Regarding vector styles: 


I hadn't seen a complex, convincing vector style client-side rendering
yet. Mapbox and Maptiler come closest - but even these two are "mickey
mouse" maps compared to what national mapping agencies in our countries
established in quality over decades in their printed and raster map
product lines. 


In our country, Swisstopo (the national mapping provider) experimented
with vector tiles. The result: 


* it renders slower than the raster tile maps
* the CPU of the client is busier than with raster tiles
* the cartographic quality is disappointing. Many years away from the
original raster tile quality

The main advantage of vector tiles would be that the user could switch
colors - but did you ever have the need to switch colors in a we map?
Defacing a map where cartographers spent a lot of time figuring out the
correct color combos? 


Replicating QGIS rendering for vector tiles outside of QGIS in a totally
separate technology from qt rendering would be an interesting project,
but would always be different, lagging and would be a lot of effort. But
if someone finds a sponsor for that, it could be interesting. 

Andreas 


On 2020-06-09 08:24, Richard Duivenvoorde wrote:

On 6/9/20 1:18 AM, Nyall Dawson wrote: 


Something else to consider is whether technologies like WMS are
ultimately just "dead end" technologies now,


Definitely not agreeing here :-)


and possibly we'd be
better off focusing on client side rendering of vector features from a
server (QGIS or other), and providing a library which can do
client-side rendering of vector tiles from QGIS symbology in as close
to 1:1 as possible...


For full blown nice reference maps or aerials  WM(T)S is still the way
to go. For simpler reference maps like Google, vector tiles will be...

Building a QGIS rendering engine in a browser, will always be behind (IF
it will ever reach the same amount of features).

In my view the unique selling point of QGIS Desktop/Server combi is (or
should be) the ease to create beautiful maps easily on a desktop and
then publish them (including metadata) to a server/service...
Just like our commercial brother does with it's services.

And mind you: while not perfect WMS/WFS are real standards understood
and used by a lot of servers and clients.

Vector tiles are great (or at least promising), but I've not seen any
client-side cartographic rendering of them yet.

Regards,

Richard Duivenvoorde
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Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Richard Duivenvoorde]

On 6/9/20 1:18 AM, Nyall Dawson wrote:
> Something else to consider is whether technologies like WMS are
> ultimately just "dead end" technologies now, 

Definitely not agreeing here :-)

> and possibly we'd be
> better off focusing on client side rendering of vector features from a
> server (QGIS or other), and providing a library which can do
> client-side rendering of vector tiles from QGIS symbology in as close
> to 1:1 as possible...

For full blown nice reference maps or aerials  WM(T)S is still the way
to go. For simpler reference maps like Google, vector tiles will be...

Building a QGIS rendering engine in a browser, will always be behind (IF
it will ever reach the same amount of features).

In my view the unique selling point of QGIS Desktop/Server combi is (or
should be) the ease to create beautiful maps easily on a desktop and
then publish them (including metadata) to a server/service...
Just like our commercial brother does with it's services.

And mind you: while not perfect WMS/WFS are real standards understood
and used by a lot of servers and clients.

Vector tiles are great (or at least promising), but I've not seen any
client-side cartographic rendering of them yet.

Regards,

Richard Duivenvoorde
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Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Nyall Dawson]

On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 09:12, Tim Sutton  wrote:
>
> Hi
>
>
> Nice, thoughtful message below, thanks Jonathon. I wonder what it will take 
> to move the needle above 1%? And whether we should try to use our funds to 
> make that happen. QGIS is surely the most expressive way to do cartography of 
> any GIS out there (acknowledging total bias on my part) and seeing that 
> cartography on the web would surely please many people. Clients like QWC, 
> QWC2 or anything that requires you to hand edit a config file or log into a 
> unix shell to publish map services are probably the main limitation (no 
> offence to those tools). Also the lack of an built in tiling server (with 
> proper metalling and meta buffering) must surely be the other.  Maybe a more 
> useful approach to your discussion below would be to promote funding the 
> elements that add resistance to deploying QGIS server……but then we would be 
> in new feature space and circling back to the idea of not funding QGIS Server 
> with grants…..

Something else to consider is whether technologies like WMS are
ultimately just "dead end" technologies now, and possibly we'd be
better off focusing on client side rendering of vector features from a
server (QGIS or other), and providing a library which can do
client-side rendering of vector tiles from QGIS symbology in as close
to 1:1 as possible...

Nyall


>
> Regards
>
> Tim
>
> On 8 Jun 2020, at 21:42, 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
>
>
> —
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Tim Sutton
>
> Co-founder: Kartoza
> Ex Project chair: QGIS.org
>
> Visit http://kartoza.com to find out about open source:
>
> Desktop GIS programming services
> Geospatial web development
> GIS Training
> Consulting Services
>
> Skype: timlinux
> IRC: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net
>
> I'd love to connect. Here's my calendar link to make finding time easy.
>
> ___
> QGIS-Developer mailing list
> QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org
> List info: 

Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Tim Sutton]

Hi


Nice, thoughtful message below, thanks Jonathon. I wonder what it will take to 
move the needle above 1%? And whether we should try to use our funds to make 
that happen. QGIS is surely the most expressive way to do cartography of any 
GIS out there (acknowledging total bias on my part) and seeing that cartography 
on the web would surely please many people. Clients like QWC, QWC2 or anything 
that requires you to hand edit a config file or log into a unix shell to 
publish map services are probably the main limitation (no offence to those 
tools). Also the lack of an built in tiling server (with proper metalling and 
meta buffering) must surely be the other.  Maybe a more useful approach to your 
discussion below would be to promote funding the elements that add resistance 
to deploying QGIS server……but then we would be in new feature space and 
circling back to the idea of not funding QGIS Server with grants…..

Regards

Tim

> On 8 Jun 2020, at 21:42, 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
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—










Tim Sutton

Co-founder: Kartoza
Ex Project chair: QGIS.org

Visit http://kartoza.com  to find out about open source:

Desktop GIS programming services
Geospatial web development
GIS Training
Consulting Services

Skype: timlinux 
IRC: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net

I'd love to connect. Here's my calendar link 
 to make finding time easy.

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[QGIS-Developer] QGIS Server and the Grants programme

[Jonathan Moules]

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.)




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