Les-ejk

Thanks, Jachym. Your English is fine :)

By Sean Gillies on Mar 14, 2007

You are merciful :-)

You can now submit to english RSS channel too.

By Jachym on Mar 15, 2007

Great. I will subscribe.

By Sean Gillies on Mar 15, 2007

Hi Jachym,
Don’t forget that ESRI is reaching out to at least sponsor open source development through their membership in 52North.org. While I’m no expert on their goals, I believe it shows they see at least some benefit in the OSS development model if not particular projects, like ILWIS and the other 52North open source projects.

Also, they are using GDAL in their ArcGIS product. Some of their processing tools also support the use of Python (they actually ship Python in their products!). So, their engineers are not ignorant or antagonistic toward open source, at least not as far as I can tell. In some real ways you can say they actually rely on OSS.

I understand your concern about “marketing” instead of “producing” OSS products. Obviously attendees will be looking for the OSS connection, so “pounding chests” from a typical sales angle wouldn’t help them much anyway.

But, in your mind, how do they differ from other companies that are leveraging open source alongside proprietary code? I mean they now fund, implement, use, repackage, distribute and sell OSS components within proprietary products. Perhaps they only need to be communicating this more publicly in a supportive way to gain respect?

At this point they are users and supporters, perhaps someday they will be direct contributors too. But will they have to release one of their own products into open source before they can be regarded as supporting open source? Or, like many of us, can they remain users and supporters of certain projects/efforts and eventually gain more OSS karma? ;)

Just a thought that generally applies to many similar scenarios…
Tyler

By Tyler Mitchell on Mar 16, 2007

Hi,
thank you for you comment. Maybe just some paranoia revealed here. I was just curious, why company, which is far from what general user understands under “Open Source”, sponsors symposium like this. Maybe it is also, because I’m spending most of the time with direct concurent of ArcGIS — GRASS. GDAL can benefit from beeing used by ESRI, can GRASS that too?

I do not doubt, ESRI software engineers are nice guys – I think, there is no difference between “them” and “us” (maybe, yes – they are much better, then I ever will be ;-) We know, they are keeping their eye on us. But the developers are usually not the ones, who deside about sponsorship.

On the other hand, if ESRI would offer me ticket to Victoria and back, I would wear their T-shirt during the conference proudly :-)

By Jachym on Mar 16, 2007