2022-08-24, 16:15–16:45 (Europe/Rome), Room 9
Spoiler alert, I believe the answer to the question posed in the title is a firm “no”. As such, this presentation will describe why a healthy commerce ecosystem is an essential component of the broader FOSS4G community. The presentation will describe several commerce models that both support open source initiatives and generate work and revenue for businesses. The commerce models presented will be complimented by real world examples of these models in action. The presentation will also describe the trend of large companies open sourcing some of the tools that they use to run their business and/or that support their products. The presentation will also describe the business importance of open source frameworks for both the broader Javascript development space (e.g., React, Angular, etc.) and the more specialized geospatial development arena (e.g., Deck.gl, etc.). Finally, while making money is appropriate within open source communities, it is always important that businesses contribute back to the open source ecosystem and best practices for being a good open source citizen will be discussed.
Michael currently works at Hexagon, focusing on our Google Maps Platform partnership. Michael’s work spans data science and partnership operations related to both the Google Cloud and Maps Platforms. Michael has been in the geospatial industry since 1986 and has worked in a variety of geospatial technology roles including seven years in Massachusetts state government. Michael has been a passionate volunteer in the geospatial open source software community since 2009 and was the Chair of the global Free and Open Source for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference held in Boston in 2017.