[Freegis-list] Autodesk, DXF, OSGEO

[Arnulf Christl]

jidanni at jidanni.org wrote:
> I note the same Autodesk funding OSGEO is also the creator of .DXF,
> which one must jump thru HOOPS and turn purple even thinking of
> converting to other formats here
> on GNU/Linux.

Hi Dan,  
Autodesk is a fairly old and large corporation with a straight forward proprietary business model and patents and NDAs and everything imaginable to make sentient hacking beings suffer. For several reasons one part of this large corporation has awoken to the idea of Open Source and invested some hard money into exploring it. 

OSGeo took the chance to get some things off the ground more quickly than would probably have happened without some of that money (although we will never find out). 

Another fair amount of this money went into creating a new stack of code that is available under the LGLP at OSGeo. One of them is MapGuide the other FDO (http://fdo.osgeo.org/). Especially the latter one collides with lock-in strategies of proprietary business models. It is my hope that eventually this will be the key to all Autodesk formats including DXF. But there are still hordes of proprietary software vendors at Autodesk who have no idea what Free Software is all about *and* I believe changing the business model of such a large lump of commerce will take some time. So if they are not suicidal they will take their time. The rift between understanding FOSS and not understanding it can be seen in all larger corporations both in mainstream IT like in IBM (with patents) or in niches like ESRI (at least without patents). 

> And also they created MapGuide, which is the main impediment to me
> being able to use
> http://basicmap.moi.gov.tw/
> http://gis2.tccg.gov.tw/
> http://doorplate.taichung.gov.tw/

Maybe you want to check whether these are old versions or the new "MapGuide opensource". If it is the latter there is an active mailing list at OSGeo that surely will help you with technical isssues. 

I must admit that my main impediment in understanding the issue of the above pagesis the language (and that I don't have flash installed, yuck). What exactly do you want to do?

> I even went to the public library to use Windows(tm),
> but "no administrator privleges to install" MapGuide.
> 
> I doubt http://mapguide.osgeo.org/ can help.

Did you try or just doubt?

Best regards, 
Arnulf.