What happened to SpatiaLite during last years
Alessandro Furieri
alternative title: The business model of SpatiaLite
futrther alternative title: The professional career of an open source developer
-----------------------
I suppose that many of you are curious to know why the development of SpatiaLite
abruptly slowed during last years, and worst of all it became completely frozen in
the last two years.
Here is the full history; it’s a long tale, so prepare yourself for a quite long reading.
Remote past.
=============
I started working as a free lance C developer and as a software consultant during
early ‘80s. Until the end of past century my primary customers always were small
Local Councils, country Hospitals and little Bus companies mainly located in Tuscany.
All them had very little money to spend for buying software systems, and I was able
to offer ultra economy solutions based on inexpensive Xenix or SCO Unix;
just a single PC, two to five dumb screen terminals and a couple of dot matrix printers
were enough to fulfill the requirements of these little and unsophisticated organizations.
The application software was simple enough to be developed and maintained by a single
people (myself), but was exactly what my customers were expecting to solve their problems.
Many of these installations operated uninterruptedly for 10 to 15 years, and when they were
finally shut down and replaced by up-to-date industrial solutions leaved many users in the
throes of nostalgia and regret.
In the early 2000s it become impossible to stand up to competition from Windows,
so the whole operation reached its end point.
New experiences.
=================
During the first decade of the new century I was hired as a software consultant by the
Transportation Department of Tuscany Region; my initial commitment was to design
and administrate a rather big and complex database containing all bus and train timetables
and service calendars covering the whole region.
Only in a second time it emerged the requirement to complete the database by integrating
all geographic data about stops, routes and the road network.
Iit was my first contact with Spatial Data.
Once again, I had to face the problem of unbearable costs; using ESRI software and
Oracle Spatial was completely outside of available resources, alternative open source
solutions at the time were rather immature and unreliable and/or exceedingly complex,
so I decided to write my own application software from scratch.
My very first attempts were based on MS Access, but it clearly was a too crude and
limited solution; then I finally discovered the wonderful SQLite with its smart architecture
allowing for adding endless SQL functions … and SpatiaLite was finally born.
After an initial period of limited diffusion inside the Tuscan Community of Bus Services
Planners I understood that SpatiaLite could have a more general field of application,
so I finally decided to release a full fledged open source project.
Following years.
==================
When my commitment with the Transportation Department ended I was able to continue
the further development of SpatiaLite for two or three years using my own spare funds;
my previous incomes were good enough to allow such a solution, and my running cost
are very limited because I’m a pretty frugal person.
Finally SpatiaLite attracted some attention from the Territorial and Environmental
Information System of Tuscany Region that started to generously funding the project
for several years.
It was the Golden Age of SpatiaLite, that finally become a robust, complete and powerful
processing tool for crushing huge amounts of Spatial Data in a surprisingly efficient way
without loosing its intrinsic simplicity and lightness.
Unhappily, as any good thing in life, it was absolutely clear that such a magic combination
couldn’t stand forever; a new financing source was absolutely required.
New opportunities.
=====================
Around 2014 a new occupation unexpectedly emerged;
Tuscany Region decided to start a revolutionary reformation of its Public Transportation
System. Instead of continuing with the well established historical system based on many
independent local Companies (mainly owned by Municipalities and Provinces) operating
under conditions of protected monopoly,
All bus services of the whole Region had now to be handled by a single integrated
Company operating under the EU rules of free market competition.
Consequently a European public tender was launched to choose the new Company in
charge of managing all Bus Networks in Tuscany for the following 11 years.
Just few numbers to better appreciate the context; we are talking of about 5,500 workers
and 3,000 buses, for a total monetary value of more than 4 billion euros.
As it emerged later this was by far the most important and rich public tender ever launched
in Europe for Public Transport.
The two contenders: at the end of the games just two competing bids were presented.
One from the coalition of all historical Tuscan operators, the other from the French RATP
(the operator of Metro and Bus Services in Paris and the fifth transportation company of the
world) that already operated the Tramway network in Florence.
The French were obviously at a strong disadvantage as they lacked any direct first hand
experience about the Tuscany territory, but they quickly compensate for this by appointing
a team of local Senior consultants, and I was hired for supporting all project activities
by managing a Spatial Database of all bus services.
It was more or less the same role I had in my previous experience, and it initially appeared
to be a very reasonable commitment, well paid and not requiring any extraordinary effort.
The initial agreement was for six months for supporting my colleagues in preparing the
industrial project and the financial planning; in the case of victory I was expected to
support the transition process during the first year of operations.
As you can see, it was a very reasonable commitment, and it was fully compatible with
continuing the development of SpatiaLite; unhappily no prediction has ever turned out
to be more fallacious then this, as we’ll see in next paragraphs.
At the end of the public tender Tuscany choosed the French offer, mainly because it was
supported by a sounder financial stability and by a stronger worldwide industrial experience.
Consequently I and my colleagues started to carefully plan what apparently seemed to be
an imminent transition process for quickly beginning our operations; but we sadly
discovered that many unexpected obstacles were present everywhere.
Very simply said, our competitors just refused to accept the final outcome of the public tender,
and started and endless series of judicial appeals at every possible level, beginning from
the Tuscany Administrative Court, passing from the Italian State Council and arriving to
the Court of Justice of the European Union.
All their complaints were regularly rejected, but in the meanwhile the years passed and
nothing happened waiting for the end of all judicial trials.
From my own limited personal perspective this meant that what was expected to be a
limited commitment lasting for no more than a couple of years unexpectedly ended up
for being a not-so-simple long term commitment of six years (until now).
But the worst of the history has still to come.
Starting from last months of 2018 it was rather clear that the infinitive series of judicial trials
was finally reaching its natural end, so we were preparing for an imminent transition.
The French management had become nervous, because the time passed and future
perspectives were still unclear, so they attempted to compensate for this by producing
an endless series of continuously updated contingency plans so to be ready to face any
possible future scenario.
For me it was a real tragedy, because being the unique member of the staff able to extract
useful data from our Spatial Database I was continuously overwhelmed by endless requests,
one more urgent then the other.
All our efforts were in vain; our competitors simply refused to start the transition process as
required by Tuscany, so the date for the expected switch off continuously shifted from
month to month.
I was forced to leave SpatiaLite to its destiny simply because I hadn’t any spare time to
dedicate to software development. For many long months I wasn’t any longer a software
developer, I’d simply became an SQL machine crushing a query after the other at a
frantic pace.
Since I had already been screwed by previous bad experiences, when any prediction on the
future development of SpatiaLite had soon proved unrealistic due to the pressing of
external events completely beyond my personal control, I decided to stop any community
interaction, reserving to come back once again in better times and only when I finally had
some tangible result to show.
In the meanwhile the “Tuscan bus war” had became a major political case, with nationalist
and anti-EU "Italexit" extreme right parties protesting against the announced “french invasion”
and the consequent “betrayal of national interests gifting a valuable strategic asset to the
worst enemies of Italy”.
Current state: we finally reached a perfect stalemate. It’s the most classic “Mexican standoff”
(see the attached picture) where nobody has the slightest idea about the final result of this
harsh confrontation.
All the Administrative Courts insist that Tuscany is expected to quickly materialize the practical
effects of the public tender.
The National Antitrust Authority is threatening our competitors announcing exemplary
punishments for their dilatory behaviors aiming to prolong forever their monopolistic
privileges.
On the other side, accepting the complaints of our competitors, the General Attorney
in Florence is accusing the President of Tuscany of fraud and false for having illegally
favored the French victory for political reasons.
This spring the Coronavirus emergency simply added a final touch of further craziness.
Happily enough, starting
from the beginning of
last July kind of an unexpected miracle
happened; a sudden “armed truce” started when it became absolutely evident to everybody
that the stalemate will continue at least until the next election of a new Tuscany President
fixed on next September 20.
I immediately took profit of a full month of unexpected peace and relax and the
Release Candidate of SpatiaLite 5.0.0 has been finally ready.
I’ve absolutely no idea about the future; the “Tuscan bus war” can easily restart
once again in next weeks, any possible forecasting is just impossible.
For now I’m satisfied enough for having been able to reach such a critical and
long awaited milestone.
… and this is the end of the history (at least, for now)
bye Sandro
Rodolfo Sabelli
Thank you for the Amazing work
Bas Couwenberg
Have you considered using Patreon or similar service to gather funding for SpatiaLite development to be less dependent on consulting contracts?
It's also clear that relying on a single development is not good for the health of the project, if you get hit by a bus the SpatiaLite family goes to the hospital with you.
What are your thoughts about growing the developer community?
antonio valanzano
I hope your working life will easier in the future so you will have spare time for Spatialite.
jan vaillant
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David Anderson
I have switched over to doing more raster based processing. I was wondering if any raster analysis functions such as those in gdal, georasters or raster stats are on in the works?