[UrbanSim-Users] open source projects at MPOs

Dear UrbanSim users,

One of our commitments in the UrbanSim project is to make it open-
source and freely available, so that a community can form around the
system and so that we can build on each others' work. However, we
suspect that funding the development or enhancement of an open source
project can be problematic for some Metropolitan Planning
Organizations: there may be concerns from management or the governing
board, for example, that the organization is funding the development
of a system but doesn't "own" the result (at least in the
conventional sense of having a proprietary system that can then be
licensed and potentially generate revenue) or that the resulting
system doesn't identifiably belong to that organization.

We're interested in pursuing a small study of this issue and possible
approaches to addressing it. But before committing to doing so, we'd
like to get initial reactions from members of the UrbanSim users
community who work at MPOs to find out how often this problem
arises. Have these sorts of issues arisen in your organization or
region? Please either respond by personal email, or if you would
prefer to be anonymous, you can respond via a web survey at https://
catalysttools.washington.edu/webq/survey/kriplean/48184. (At this
point none of this would be part of a formal study - we're just
testing the waters.)

thanks!
   Alan
Received on Sun Jan 20 2008 - 16:36:49 PST