The company that I work for (KSN Inc.) has a small sanitary district that has been our client for several decades. Because of some new government regulations they have to prepare base map and inventory of their entire sanitary system. My company beleives this is a good opportunity to implement a small and simple GIS for the district. My boss is currently having me look into different proprietary software systems that we might use to implement the GIS.
However, after taking a look at the proprietary software that is available in our price range, I really beleive that OpenJUMP is a viable candidate. Here is the problem: I don't have time with my other work responisiblities to provide dedicated programming services for OpenJUMP when these will be needed by the client (and they will be needed). I can't go to my boss to suggest OpenJUMP as a possible software package for the GIS implementation unless I have a third party organization that would be willing to work on customization of OpenJUMP to meet the client's needs. I'm not sure if we have any organizations involved in our community that would be interested in this type of work. (I know Larry Becker does something like this, Martin Davis has his little business, and I think the deegree Project also does this type of work.) If I can't find a company that is interested in this type of work I'll have to fall back on a proprietary solution. If we do have some companies that might be interested, I will prepare a short request-for-proposal. Here is what I am thinking I'll need out-of-the-gate: - Some enhanced SVG export abilities. I'm not talking about using Batik. I need something that is more precise and that maps the transition from OpenJUMP's task coordinate system to the SVG coordinate system in a predictable and repeatable fashion. I've already started fleshing some of this code out, but it isn't complete. I need to be able to get features from OpenJUMP exported as SVG tailored for Inkscape for map production. - Better support for DXF import and export. My company works with CAD data almost exclusively, and this project would be dealing with a lot of CAD data. I need a reliable DXF import and export plug-in. Something could probably be built using the existing DXF plug-ins, but it would need a little tweaking. I'd really only bei nterested in the following CAD entities: Lines, LWPolylines, Points, and Text. However, I'd like to see an underlying DXF parser that makes other drawing entities available to the client API. - Support for external tables. I don't want to use a database here. I just want to be able to view, manipulate, and query tabular data in an external file. I'd probably want to use CSV files, although I'd be open to an implementation that used binary files. I'm thinking I'll have a ballpark budget of $3,000 to $6,000, which is what it would cost to license a proprietary solution for the first year. I could likely make a similar amount available in subsequent years for additional development work. As part of the proposal I'd also like an approximate hourly rate for bug-fixing. All and any code developed under this project would be released under the GPL or LGPL, and the developing company could maintain the copyright. If I can make this implementation successful, there would be potential for additional business with other KSN clients. I think this is a great opportunity to get some paid development contributed back to the OpenJUMP community. I hope we have an organization that is interested. I wish I had the time to do the work myself. Please let me know if you'd be interesetd in responding to an RFP similar to the one I describe above. Or, if you are interested in cost-sharing the development of some of the improvements for OpenJUMP that I describe above, let me know that as well. The Sunburned Surveyor ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Jump-pilot-devel mailing list Jump-pilot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jump-pilot-devel
