[Freegis-list] GASB-34 compliance with open source software

[Jan-Oliver Wagner]

On Fri, Jun 06, 2003 at 10:39:28AM -0600, Jack Varga wrote:
> Furthermore, I'm looking for precedence in managing true community-based 
> development efforts to implement open source (in general) GIS/mapping
> systems. Or to find out if there would be any interest in assisting with 
> such an initiative, however moderate involvement may be.

Intevation did some Free GIS Software developments based on
contracts with customers. Thuban (thuban.intevation.org)
and MapIt! (www.mapit.de) being two of them.

Other examples are Refractions (PostGIS), DMSolutions (MapLab)
and Frank Warmerdam with various tools.

Commercial Free Software works. But it works different than the
proprietary business model. With Free Software you are selling
service, not boxes or any other sort of permission to use
a software.
Thus, you have to think about the solution for the client and
which value it means to him. Sometimes it really makes sense
for a customer to contract for new development instead
of bying in into a dependency to a single vendor.

But you seldomly will sell a huge development effort. Rather
think in smaller steps. So we do with Thuban. Another customer
might need a further feature.

However, it is also important to honour works of others.
Do it with implemention/documentation support or, especially
if a company stands behind a Free Software, pay them a small
amount (e.g. 1%) of your project budget if this project benefits
from their software.
A nice example for this is PostGIS and Refractions.
If we all pay them small amounts with our commercial projects,
they are put into a better position to progress with the
development.

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

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