[Freegis-list] Street Mapping

[Jan-Oliver Wagner]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 12:49:11AM -0500, benkarl at texas.net wrote:
> On 27 Aug 2002, at 9:24, Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> > Free Software is also commercial software - e.g. in the case you decide
> > to pay a company for setting up the MapServer application.
> > If you like, you can even pay a monthly/yearly fee for updates,
> > maintenance etc.
> 
> Well, the first step would be finding one and checking their rates.  

a good option for North-America is DMSolutions

	http://www.dmsolutions.on.ca/home.html

They actively support the development of Free Software.

> > In order to ensure sustainable availability of high quality free
> > software you should make sure that the company you contract is
> > actively supporting Free Software.
> 
> We would be glad to support it ourselves at some level, if thats the 
> route we go for this, if we can just find out how to do so.

Well, paying Free Software companies is one way.
But to be sure that you really support Free Software and not
just a company that just grabs code and does not pay off for the
base work, always try to find out whether the company is honestly
dedicated to Free Software as a business concept.

Of course you may also build know-how in your group. Or even combine
internal and external support. With Free Software you have control
over this decision.

	Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/