Open Source Software Support
Tuesday, July 11th, 2006Adena linked to an article this morning that highlighted a web mapping application that was developed by ZedX for the USDA to track Soybean Rust infestation. Soybean Rust is a fungal disease that has had a significant economic impact in South America, and worries of it disrupting US soybean production have prompted many monitoring activities and efforts. Web maps are an excellent way to communicate these monitoring efforts. The article stated that $2.5 million were provided to fund this specific project, and although I’m positive all of that funding didn’t go to ZedX for the development of the website, a significant portion surely did.
The article is typical press release-like fanfare except for the interesting bit about MapServer:
”
The soybean rust system is an open-source, Linux system. Other than the
open-source code and the MapServer GIS mapping applications, ZedX has
written the code, Russo said.”
A search through the MapServer maillist archives (by the way, the MapServer project really needs to fix our archives, they’re atrocious) showed a few posts by ZedX folks asking normal technical questions about compilation or usage of software features. I couldn’t find or I can’t recall ZedX funding any specific MapServer enhancements or contributing developer/documenter time (if anyone knows of any activities that were supported by ZedX, please let me know and I’ll update this article).
I think it’s great that a company like ZedX can use MapServer to provide them with a significant competitive advantage. I also think that stating that MapServer is their secret sauce is great visibility, and articles like that contribute to the project in a roundabout way. I just find it disheartening that for a 2.5 million dollar project, nothing (no direct funding, contributed time, or contributed documentation) found its way back to the software that was an integral component in making it tick.
$5000 to certain software companies gives you a license to run the software and maybe a couple of phone calls to ask why it doesn’t work. $5000 to an open source project like MapServer gives you specific rendering improvements you might like, possibly a data driver to read specific data you need (that the other software tool can use either), streamlining of not-so-fun-to-develop-on components of the software, or even completely new features that the software didn’t have before. $5000 of contributed time can get you documents of poorly documented features, funds the addition of your own specific features, or anything else you might need. These contributions not only benefit you the contributor, but also benefit anyone using the software and directly supports the developer(s) who work on the project — perpetuating development and contributing to its vitality.
It is my hope that OSGeo will be able to provide a clearinghouse for contributions to its member projects and solves the issue of “great, I have some money/time/resources to contribute, who do I give it to?” Also, the ability to pool contributions together for larger efforts is something that is sorely needed. Those efforts are just getting off the ground though, and time will tell if that approach will be any more successful than individual-to-individual or individual-to-project contributions.
In a lot of areas, open source software is about leverage… leveraging collective knowledge, leveraging resources, and leveraging effort. Contributing to an open source project that is an integral component of your development strategy gives you and the project leverage — all for frequently less than the cost of a seat of some commercial tools.
